Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 1 Grace Helbig - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: September 27, 2013

Grace Helbig, creator of the web series Daily Grace and the 2013 Streamy Awards' Personality of the Year drops by the table of dim lighting to talk with the guys about her mom…and more. Grace shares what it was like growing up, how she got her start with comedy, and what it takes to make her consistently hilarious daily show. If you don't know what a "poof" is, that's about to change. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. This is the inaugural episode of our audio-only podcast. There is no video being shot of this, to your disappointment, I'm sure. Or at least to our knowledge. Which is good, because I've got on flip-flops. People give me a lot of flack about that. So this is a new thing that we're very excited about.

Thank you for being here for this. Our plans are to do this every week and see where it goes. I don't know. Is history being made here? I'm not going to go so far as to say that. Well, I mean, technically, history is always being made. You alone in your room whimpering to yourself or accidentally burping after a meal. Is history being made?

The question is, is it notable history? And I don't want to make any sort of prediction as to whether or not this will be notable or memorable. But it is for your entertainment purposes. But, you know, it's also for our entertainment purposes. One of the things that we've been talking about is how this is not what they may expect. This is going to be a little bit different. Rhett and Link podcast. This is this.

So we want to warn you right at the top. Number one, this show is not about us. Right. You see enough of us saying things that we think. And, you know, if you watch Good Mythical Morning, our morning talk show on YouTube, our second channel, Rhett and Link 2, you see us talk every single weekday about something that we think, our perspective on something. You can see and hear a whole lot of us. And this is not just more of that type of thing without a video component.

Right. This is a conversation with another person. Of course, our guest this week is Grace Helbig. She is not sitting here now with us at this point in the process. It's just the two of us kind of preparing you for what this is this week and for weeks to come. There are going to be conversations with other YouTubers, friends of ours. It may branch out from there. You know, we have what we think is one of the greatest jobs in the world. We get to make YouTube videos full time. And there are these other people who are doing the same thing or things very much like that. And we just think this is a moment in history that's pretty interesting.

And we've gotten to know these people, especially since we moved out to Los Angeles. Who are pioneering the space. Yeah, there's so many people out here who are doing the same thing that we're doing. And we always find it fascinating to just talk with them. Talk with them about how they got started doing this. Talk with them about who they are. You know, not the daily Grace that you see every single day on YouTube,

but who was Grace as a little girl, and, you know, where she grew up and what her relationships with her parents were like and this kind of thing. What shaped her to become the person that she is? And we got to assume that there's enough of you out there who are interested in the people that we're going to be talking with, like Grace Helbig, that you're going to be fascinated by this conversation in the same way that we are. So that's the first thing is that this show is not about us. It's about a conversation that we're interested in having with someone else. Hopefully you'll be interested in listening.

I think the second point we want to make is that this show in particular is not necessarily family-friendly. As we have authentic discussions with other adults, there may be topics that come up that aren't appropriate for kids. So I know that we've developed an audience out there with our family-friendly content, so we just wanted to say up front that things may not go that way. You know, I have conversations with my wife and with my friends that I don't have with my kids around because they're kids, and I think that we want to set up this table.

Literally, we are at a round table here. It's wooden. Where other YouTubers, other guests can come on and they can be themselves. They can speak authentically, honestly, give their story in the words that they want to use. And so we don't want them to censor themselves. We want them to be themselves. So first, I think there will be topics discussed that are for adults. They're not for kids. And there may be language used that is not appropriate for kids to hear. So up front, we just wanted to say that may be the case in general, given the approach of this show. okay we put a lot of time into this we actually put about five minutes into it and ear biscuits is what we came out with and we're just going to go ahead and tell you right now what we came out with yeah well i'm thinking i'm taking it's like we we put some dough into the oven of our brain

and we came out with ear biscuits and they're a little bit undercooked we acknowledge that but i think the idea is that biscuits are great everybody Everybody loves them. They're warm. And what if there were little biscuits that you could put in your ear if your ear were to eat as opposed to your mouth? That's kind of where I was going with that. Now, in England, I think biscuits are cookies. They are, which is even better than actual biscuits. Not according to me, brother. I mean, if you've ever been down south and gone to Bojangles and got a biscuit, or if you've ever been down south and gone to Bojangles and gone to Biscuit, or if you've got a grandma in the south who's made a biscuit, it's not a cookie.

If it's a cookie or if it's a bonafide biscuit, if it's for your ear, you should love it. The point is that biscuit means absolutely positive things in every language. Yes. Every culture. In Swahili, biscuit means good tidings. You don't know what it means. It probably doesn't exist in Swahili. So as we've already said on this week's show, we've got Grace Helbig. Looking forward to that conversation. Honestly, we've already had the conversation. Hopefully you're looking forward to it. Spoiler alert. You know her from her daily

show on YouTube, Daily Grace. She's also the 2013 Streamy Awards Audience Choice Personality of the Year winner. And she's the co-producer and the star of the upcoming movie Camp Dakota, a scripted project with Mamrie Hart and Hannah Hart. No relation, I don't think. Maybe we need to talk about that later. Premiering on chill.com. So let's get into it. Our conversation with our friend, fellow YouTuber, amazingly hilarious Grace Helbig. Now, Grace, we were trying to figure out the first time that we met you. Oh. And I have a clue to this.

You do? I do. Okay. This is going to sound a little creepy. Is this a game clue to this. You do? I do. Okay. This is going to sound a little creepy. Is this a game? It sounds like you're- I know. And I know.

I know when I first met you guys. Okay. Well, I want to tell you a quick story and see if this all lines up because the other day I logged into my Facebook account, which I do not do because I really don't use my personal Facebook account anymore. Yeah. Nor do I. Because when I started my Facebook account, it was like,

oh, this is a promotional thing. I need to make as many friends as possible. Right. So when I reached the friends limit, which was really the fan limit, at that point it became useless to check this inbox, right? But I was like, I seem to remember that I had personal interactions with people other than friends on Facebook back 2008, 2009. And this is just weeks ago.

I start going back through those, and I found some very interesting interactions with people for another time. But then I see Grace Helbig. And she says, nice meeting you last night. Something, something, something. Nothing inappropriate. Right. No, I'm a total pro. I'm like, what?

What happened? What did I say? And I was like, I just put it all together. We met you in the lobby at the Streamys. In the lobby at the Streamys? Oh. Is that what it was? No.

You know where we met? We met. No, it was the, yeah, it was the Streamys, but it was the pre-party to the Streamies. Yes. It was the night before the Streamies when they had that, yeah, in a hotel lobby that like get-together of everyone. And I was there with my friend Michelle. Michelle, who you had the channel with.

Yeah. And Michelle met you guys first. Michelle Vargas. Vargas. And then she like introduced all of us in that night and i was like those guys were so nice she's like southern southern um yeah that is so crazy because i remember going to that event i was there to do red carpet interviews and i was flown out by my Damn Channel from Brooklyn with Michelle, and we were just in that room thinking, oh, my God, these are real people from the Internet. This is crazy.

And we were very not educated in the YouTube space at all and didn't really know. Which is why you talked to us. Which is why I was like, these guys are tall. Let's talk to them. This is crazy. They're easy to spot. Yeah, exactly. I thought about replying to your message just a couple weeks ago.

Oh, my God. That would be so weird. Nice meeting you, too, Grace. And I would have instantly been embarrassed. Four years later. 2009? It was 2009, I believe, yeah. Wow.

So we go way back, you guys. Yeah, we do. Now that I realize how far we go back, yeah. Yeah. That was a whole blur. And then the streamies happened the next day, and that was a fun time for all. Yeah, it didn't go well for anyone who doesn't know, but it went so well that they didn't have it the next year.

But then they had it the next year, and you won the whole thing. Isn't that how it worked? I did not win the whole thing. You won the streamies. I won the streamies, yes. I won the entire streamies. Yeah, so what a weird

chain of events. We're like, wow, we should have replied to Rhett's Facebook message. We can be friends now. We witnessed the whole thing from the balcony. That's, oh, whoa.

It's a sore subject. We were in the balcony of the streamies, so. Times have changed. No, he's talking about a few months back. Yeah, just a couple months ago. Yeah, a sore subject. We were in the balcony of the streaming, so. Times have changed. No, he's talking about a few months back. Yeah, just a couple months ago. Yeah, times have changed. The takeaway here is always respond to your social media.

Yeah, right. No, that's crazy. Yeah, that was my first time around a lot of YouTubers, and I was really starstruck. Coming from New York. Now, let's go back all the way. Where are you starstruck. Coming from New York. Now, let's go back all the way. Where are you from? I'm originally from New Jersey. Jersey.

Yeah. I don't really have an accent at all. So people are always surprised. Did you ever? No. I'm from South Jersey. And in South Jersey, it's, I guess, more of a Philadelphia type of accent than the Long Island, like, talk more, let's go.

And when I went to college, I went to college in North Jersey, and that's where I was like, oh, this is where the stereotype lives. All the girls are wearing leggings and Uggs and having poofs, which I adopted all of those things when I was in college. Really? Yeah, I wore leggings, and I still do. Is a poof a hairstyle? A poof is Snooki, you know Snooki, as an icon in this world. It's when you take the front of your hair and you like tease it up high and then you wear the rest of your hair down. Okay, when was the last time you did that? Probably when I Facebook messaged you.

I had a poof going for years before Jersey Shore came out and really made it a Jersey thing. Is there a record of the poof on the internet? Oh, yeah, big time. Really? Yeah, big time. You've made videos with the poof. My first My Damn Channel videos for two years, I've had the poof in them. Not on YouTube, but on MyDamn had the poof in them. Yeah. Not on YouTube,

but on MyDamnChannel.com. Okay. Yeah. I wish, that's the thing about podcasts is that you can't see the wonder on your faces. I'm like, I've already learned something. The poof. Yeah, the poof is a big deal for Jersey girls. But yeah, I'm from New Jersey and then went to college in North Jersey

and then moved to Brooklyn right after with Michelle. Michelle and I were college roommates. Okay. Yeah. Now, your mom has an accent though. No, not a Jersey accent. But first of all, big fan of your mom. Oh, thanks.

When she made the, not that we've met or hung out or anything, but when she made the appearance on your channel for a couple of episodes of Daily Grace. She is a sweetheart and she went to VidCon for the first time this year and people were walking up to her and like getting photos with her and she felt like a celebrity and had a really wonderful time and she's very excitable. So I was worried that she was actually going to spontaneously combust with all the excitement that was happening at VidCon. But yeah, she's really sweet. I know every time I make a video with her, she has ideas for the video already. Like she writes down ideas.

Oh, really? Yeah, she's into it. Does that mean she's going to start her own channel? I wish, and I think the internet would love that, but she is technologically not savvy enough. If there's a kid in South Jersey that wants to intern for my mom and help her edit some videos, I'm sure she'd love it. Mom intern. Mom intern.

That's what the Craigslist ad will say. Exactly. Mom YouTuber intern. She has good hair. She's got very thick hair. There's a lot of bangs going on. She has big time 80s bangs still. For years and years and years, she did the tease the bangs up and wear the bangs down at the same time.

It was very, very coif, very beautiful. What does she do or did do or whatever? For a living? Yeah. She has worked for years as a teacher's assistant in a special needs classroom. So she has incredible patience and is very, very kind as a human being. She is a hero. She's a hero.

I mean, she definitely needs a YouTube channel. She's a hero that makes no money whatsoever. Right. It's insane. But she puts up with so, so much. And she's the sweetest woman. Okay, so what was it like growing up with the sweetest woman in the world? Well, because she worked in a special needs classroom,

she didn't really know how to turn it off, so she would kind of treat me and my brothers like we were special needs. When in doubt. Yeah. So she would ask us things numerous times in a row or remind us of things very, very often or speak in a really high sing-songy

cadence to us. So she was really great, but she's very much just so over-the-top sweet and patient, but also incredibly flighty. She'll tell a story six times in a row to you, and you're like, yeah, you told me this story already. Well, maybe that's just she's trying to drill it in. Repetition and teaching, it's that thing again. Exactly.

My mother-in-law was a teacher's assistant for, I guess it was second grade. She just retired. But she cannot get the, like you said, that teacher's cadence and the volume. Whenever you talk to her, she's talking like she's talking to a classroom full of children who will not listen. She talks to you like that? Yes. She talks. And this is on the telephone because we talk on the telephone a lot.

My mother-in-law. But when you, I'm so happy that you're here. Let's open the Christmas presents before we eat food tonight. Because that's when we'll see her at Christmas. Where is she from? Kinston, North Carolina. Oh, from North Carolina. I didn't want to really turn on her accent,

but if you want me to go... But it's just the volume. It's like, bring it down, girl. My mom sometimes doesn't understand. I think she's got voice modulation sometimes, or she's not aware of the volume at which she's speaking, even in

Kohl's. She loves Kohl's so much. Do you guys have Kohl's in North Carolina? She speaking, even in like a Kohl's. She loves Kohl's so much. Do you guys have Kohl's in North Carolina? She likes to speak loudly in a Kohl's. Yeah, she loves it. Like I can hear, she'll call me from Kohl's to just check in. I found this blouse. I know, exactly. I don't know how to text you a photo of it.

Yeah, she's really bad at texting and anything that's technologically related. So were you a performer in the family? Like, was it, were they all like, oh, this is totally expected that Grace is going on to this career? Kind of, and also, no. I have all brothers, so I'm the only girl. How many brothers? I have two brothers and two stepbrothers. And my older brother and my older stepbrother were really close

and they would make all of these sketch comedy movies and videos together and I would think that they were so funny and so hilarious and them just off the cuff riffing with each other was so hilarious. So I always was trying to make them laugh. And it wasn't until we took a family vacation to the Poconos and in the car I started doing, I think I was in fifth grade and it's when South Park came out and I started doing a Cartman impersonation in the back of the car and my older stepbrother Mike started Which sounded like?

I wish, it was something like, that's Kitty's cream corn. Really spot on. Yeah. Yeah, really good. And I just did it once, like, by myself in the back because we had a Jeep Cherokee, and my three brothers would sit in the back seat, and then I would sit all the way in, like, the trunk area. So you, like, did it into the corner to test it first? Yeah, exactly.

You're like, okay, yeah, this is good. This is ready to roll out. And my stepbrothers started laughing so hard, and I was like, I got him, I got him. And then I just kept doing it again and again and again because I am my mother's daughter. Repetition. Yeah, and I love that.

But then I went to college to be a screenwriter, to write movies, and it wasn't until I started taking improv classes in New York City that I started to get into the performing side of things. So from the Cartman impression to the screenwriting, what connect the dots? So I, yeah, how did that happen? First, you got out of the Jeep in the Poconos. We got out of the Jeep. We had a lovely family vacation. Really nice. I think we went snow tubing and my stepmom fell off of her tube and sprained her ankle.

That was a really fun time. You're not supposed to stand on it. I know. She hit a curve and it was like this tube like luge type of thing. Like a snow luge. The old tube luge. Yeah. And she fell out of the tube and the walls of the snow she like smashed her ankle into.

She is not athletic by any nature. So I decided I wanted to go to college to do something creative, something in the communications field. So I was a communications major at first, and then I started getting into writing and really liking writing. Where? College where? I went to Ram of Poe College in North Jersey. What? Yeah. It sounds great.

Ram of Poe? Ram of Poe. Is that an Indian tribe? Yeah. R-A-M-A-P-O. Oh, so it's not three words. No, it's one word. And I got a full scholarship there.

It was the first college I applied to. And I was like, okay, I'm done. Great. I'm going to go there. And it's not the, it's a good school it's not a party school people leave on the weekends all the time so like the social side of the college was not huge um but i got into writing and i had a professor a screenwriting professor named roberto marinus who he's great he's super great what a name. He sounds like a Hispanic superhero.

That's called a luchador. Yeah. It sounds right. But he kind of like took me under his wing and became like a mentor for me, and he and I were writing scripts together. Really? Yeah. Your professor.

So he saw this potential. Yeah. Oh, she's good. Yeah, he did. No, not that. Okay. It didn't go that. Oh, she's good. Yeah, he did. No, not that. Okay. It didn't go that route. All right, good.

But he and I started writing some scripts together, and then he got a Disney fellowship and moved out here. Whoa. Yeah. Roberto. Roberto. Yeah, he's doing it. I don't know what he's doing now. Yeah, he just got you here.

Yeah, he built me up, and then he got his script sold to Disney, and then he left. Okay. But he, yeah, I wanted to do some form of writing, and then Tina Fey became really big in pop culture, and I really idolized her and wanted to do sketch comedy. And I really idolized her and wanted to do sketch comedy. Started a sketch comedy television show at my college and then started taking improv classes my senior year of college in New York. I interned like a crazy person when I was in college because my college was a 40 minute drive outside of New York City. So I had six internships while I was in college because I was like obsessed with working and with trying to get involved in the entertainment business in some way. And so one summer I lived in

New York for three months while I was interning and I wrote to a bunch of improv theaters because I wanted to take a sketch writing class, but I didn't have the money to pay for a class. So I wanted to intern at the theaters and I wrote to UCB, I wrote to the Magnet, I wrote to the Pitt, and UCB had a waiting list for their internships. And the Pitt was like, yeah, come down on Friday. So I interned every Friday night at the People's Improv Theater for a year. And then they had a not full level one improv class and I last minute decided to take it and really, really loved it. And then went up through all of their classes

and got on a house team there and was performing every week and it was really great. Well, it's interesting that, I mean, obviously you're a performer, but there's, I mean, one of the things that we enjoy about your videos is that it's, you know, to call it a vlog is almost to sell it short because it's always very funny. And it's obviously there's a writer's mindset that kind of comes with it.

Thank you. You can definitely see that. Because, you know, I find it interesting that you did the impression, you got some attention, and then that kind of was like the beginning of like, oh, okay, I can do the funny. And then, because we definitely can relate to that, you know, getting a laugh in class. And I still think we're riding on that attention. I mean, I definitely feel like there's a big part of our career continues to be propelled by wanting to be the center of attention. Yeah, positive feedback really pushes you.

Because before every improv show, I would be so incredibly nervous that I'd be like, this is the night that my stomach explodes on stage. Like, this is going to be the night. I'm so nervous. But I did an improv show every single week, and every single week I was equally as nervous. But as soon as it's done, you have this, like, euphoria of wonderful, positive energy and feedback, and that's what keeps you going to the next show next week, even though the moment or the hours before of, like, sheer torture and torment of it being so stressful just immediately wash away as soon as someone laughs at you in the audience and

gives you feedback. Yeah, that's great. I think for us, the euphoria is great. That's what I'm saying. But at the same time, I don't know, we're pretty, we're so analytical. And I think we always skip to the whole kind of beating ourselves up or, oh, we could have done that better. Or just kind of, I want to make this better the next time.

Or this wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. Do you beat yourself up? Did you even back then kind of thing? Sometimes, but the wonderful thing about having been trained in improv is that you learn that everything's kind of transient. Like the show doesn't exist before it happens and then it exists in this moment and then it's gone. The scenes you did are gone.

All the jokes you made are gone. So you let it go and then you have to create a brand new show next week. And that philosophy and that format of performing has really been so helpful for Daily Grace because it's a video every single day. And sometimes, yeah, they're not the best and I get bummed out that they're not awesome every single day. But the idea of, oh, that goes away and then there's another video tomorrow is something that drives it also. It's just the constant like hamster wheel of creating creative.

Right. I also, I don't know your story of how you guys got started doing web video. Because you guys have known each other since you were babies, right? Six years old, yeah. Well, we came out of different wombs. Okay, that's good to know.

In different states. And so we're not twins or brothers. You did know that, right? I didn't have to go back that far. I didn't have to clarify all that. No, I, yeah. And now if I'm your mom, I'm going to tell you all that again. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, first grade is when we met. Okay. Did you look at each other in first grade and be like, that guy's cool? Or were you like, that guy's dumb? No, it was that guy's also in trouble right now. Literally, we were held in from recess for writing profanity on our desks. And then we had to color pictures of mythical beasts, which is why now— And that's where the mythical—

Really? That's where the mythical— That was your punishment? Well, we just had to color. They were like, you can't go out for recess. Everyone else was at recess. Oh. We were inside coloring and so I look up and there's the other tall, weird looking

dude coloring. I'm going to be his friend I guess. He's the only guy in here. He's my only option. But it was very quickly kind of realizing that when we did something funny, whether it was individually or together, and you know, the older we got, the more it became like, okay, let's, I guess we've become a

comedy duo. It was getting that response, which, which happened in like a live atmosphere in front of a crowd for, for a long time, like in college. Yeah. Did you do live performance in college? We did, like we were involved with a group in college that that like a campus ministry that met together every single week so we and so we kind of turned that into like a comedy club almost well there was an mc right oh really and

so we would be like okay and the guy was you know he was funny and he was like a junior in college and then so we got in good with that guy and then replaced him basically right and so was there an audience yeah i mean there was like our freshman year there was like 150 people wow by senior year there was like 1500 holy crap so it was like a big event and like we we started writing comedy songs and making videos for it and then it and even after we graduated we stayed involved like kind of going back and making videos for it. And then it, and even after we graduated, we stayed involved, like kind of going back and making videos. And then we started taking some of those videos and putting them online. And then some people started taking those videos and putting them on YouTube. And it was just, it kind of just created itself. I mean, it was okay. You see now all of a sudden you've got, you were performing for a thousand people. Well, now a thousand people watch the

video in the first minute, you know, and it was like, okay, this is a way to reach an audience. And then it begins to kind of feel itself. And then it just becomes this, I'm sure that it's pathological in a lot of ways, just what we do and what you do on a daily basis. Now, don't draw her into this. Don't draw me into your neuroses. I'm sure we have a big problem. And you do too, right? Well, let me ask you, I'm sure we have a big problem and you do too right well

let me ask you i'm gonna i'm gonna confess to you that what i do and i i have told myself a million times that i'm gonna quit doing this yeah but what i do every single morning is i roll over i get my phone i pick it up and i go look at the comments on the latest episode of good mythical morning oh and i and that is not a healthy thing obviously and we don't you know let's let her say that maybe maybe she's gonna be like do you do that is healthy you do anything like that yeah that's sick you i'm you are a horrible gross person uh i yeah i wake up in the morning i check i definitely check my social media i um because at this point in my life there are probably close to 2 000 daily grace videos that live on the internet um and i used to check the comments every day all day long and get really affected by them but at this point I check them to make sure that I

didn't accidentally slip something into the video that I wasn't supposed to. Right. Or to make sure that there wasn't a huge glitch in editing that I didn't see. Because those things will be pointed out in the first ten minutes. Yeah, exactly. I've put up videos that have five minutes of black space

at the end without realizing it. Well, I'm a huge fan of those. That's a strategy. Yeah, and then I just have to go in and try and put annotations over it and make it seem like it was intentional. But at this point, I read them. I'll go to check, and I'll read a few of them just to get the general vibe of how people are feeling about it. And then I kind of walk away just to make sure that I don't let myself go down the rabbit hole of getting too affected.

I like to maintain like an overall pleasant vibe and make sure that that's okay. And then keep myself away from really – because you read a hundred comments that are so complimentary and they're wonderful. And you read one that's like you try too hard and you're like do i try too hard ranger cage seven two okay forget about it you're fine you're fine four hours later you're like yeah but then at the same time you have to go through because for your comment episode you're going through comments yeah that's the time you're comments. Yeah, that's the time that I really... So you're still reading them. Yeah, that's the time that I really comb through them and I check them out. You like get good and drunk first or what? Sometimes, but most of the time not.

I just go through. I really look for when I'm looking through comments, especially from YouTube because that's where the concentration of comments lies, I look for the most like thumbs up ones. I just kind of like scroll through and I read them as they go. And I look for ones that are thumbs up that I know I can make a joke about or I can riff on or something. Because Daily Grace isn't written every day. It's improvised. And I make like a mental outline of what I want to talk

about and how I want to talk about things, but I don't write anything down unless it's a complicated video and I need to know that I'm making certain points at certain times for things. Um, or especially when I need to make announcements and I, I'm really horrible at including all information in announcements. So you just have to write that down before. all information in announcements, so you just have to write that down before. But yeah, I definitely have an addiction to social media in general. I think as a millennial living in this universe of the digital world, I definitely wake up and check my Instagram and check Twitter and check YouTube. Also, I let my videos upload overnight, so I wake up and check it to make sure that one

has uploaded because there have been numerous mornings that YouTube's just been like, nah, not today. And I've been like, oh, no. Okay. Now we upload. So you don't confirm. You just go to bed. I go to bed.

Maybe it'll happen. Maybe it won't. Yeah. I live my life like a craps table. Everything is a gamble. Just spinning? The table itself doesn't gamble. It just spins.

It's very uncomfortable to sleep on. Not good for the back. Well, one of the things, too, about you as a person is I definitely— many people have said this, but we've always said this. It's like I would not be surprised if all of a sudden next week we found out that Grace just landed a part on this sitcom that's about to come out. So we definitely feel like you're equipped to do that. And so there's this traditional media thing that I know that you are still involved in and still developing and auditions and that kind of thing just from knowing you. But at the same time

there's this huge the the daily grace and everything that goes with that and you know streaming's personality of the year and you know where are you at in terms of my life yeah what you know where you want to go and and to tie that in with just how interactive just what we're talking about with these comments, I think one of the things that we think sometimes is, you know, you just have this really vocal group of people that almost, when you do something like Daily Grace or Good Mythical Morning, it's like they feel like you owe them something every single day. And you start dealing with this very vocal minority that's like, you guys changed this, or you guys are doing this a little bit different, and now it sucks. very vocal minority that's like, you guys changed this, or you guys are doing this a little bit different, and now it sucks. Yeah, there's a weird social responsibility now as a content creator, and I always try

and put myself in the viewer's shoes. I love Real Housewives as a show on television, and I look forward to the Real Housewives of New Jersey at 8 p.m. on Sunday night, and if I were to go to Bravo on 8 p.m. at Sunday night and it wasn't there for some reason, I would feel let down. So I understand the sensation of providing content to someone and non-verbally making an agreement that you are going to continue to do this, especially with Daily Grace when it's a known fact that it's five days a week and it happens Monday through Friday. So I have, I've created this format and now I have to stick to it. But I am also now like, I came from traditional acting, writing world, and I definitely want to make that part of my reality now and we just got done shooting Camp Dakota which was it's going to be a feature film which is amazing and not

something that I had anticipated happening this year but came up as an opportunity so I said yes because it made sense for how I want things to progress in the future. I want to do TV. I want to write a book. I want to keep doing movies. I want to create more web series. I want to kind of elevate the Grace Helbig brand that is how it's going so far and just amplify it. Amplify is a big term that everyone seems to be using now.

I love it. We always called this podcast Amplify. We do? We do call it that everyone seems to be using now. I love it. We almost called this podcast Amplify. We did? We did call it that, yeah. What is this podcast called, by the way? Is it not named yet? No, it is. It's called Ear Biscuits.

Is it? What do you think? That's great. Why would you sigh out of, like... You know, you go through a lot of names. I'm confidently behind Ear Biscuits. Yeah, I shouldn't have done that. Ear Biscuits sounds great. I shouldn't have done that.

Yeah, it's delicious content for your ears. There you go. Now we have a tagline. Yeah. Now, Daily Grace, I want to go back. When you came up with that name, you obviously came up with this whole, I'm going to do this every day. Why? And what's with the My Damn Channel thing?

So here's how I became a vlogger. I was performing at the People's Improv Theater once a week. And meanwhile, as I moved to Brooklyn with Michelle, we started making Grace Michelle videos as a way to document two girls moving from New Jersey to Brooklyn and trying to kickstart their careers in the entertainment business. And it was also how we hung out at the end of the night. We had jobs and we'd come home and have a glass of wine and be like, let's make a video together and talk about our days. And then one of us would edit it because we both took editing classes together. And so it was a fun hobby for us to use Final Cut. And through the People's Improv Theater, there was an audition that got sent out to all the performers um to be a narrator on

a web series called bedtime stories which was uh for my damn channel.com and it was a comedy series that took children's uh like grimm's fairy tales and made them like super raunchy and like over the top adult retellings of them and i got cast as the narrator that wore pajamas and really bubbly and cutely told these really awful, awful fairy tales. Like, give us a touch point. I don't even remember at this point, but it was like Hansel and Gretel go to the woods and they have sex with each other. And so it would be like me being like...

And how did you change it? Oh, yeah. Because that's the one my mom always told me. But so the CEO of My Damn Channel, after the web series had gone up, found my Grace and Michelle videos and brought me in and wanted to experiment. And they were on YouTube. They were on YouTube, yeah. And they had MyDamnChannel.com as their website, and they were on YouTube,

and they were doing really well in the Internet space. They had You Suck at Photoshop. They had Weiny Days. They had Horrible People. All of these web series that were really groundbreaking at the time. And so I was so excited to be working with them. David Wayne and Kristen Schaal were, like, comedians that I loved, and they were all in web series for My Damn Channel.

So they wanted me to experiment with a daily web show, five days a week, that would be, I would be the host of their website. I would direct people around their website and say, hey, did you guys see horrible people yesterday? What did you think? Make sure you check out You Suck at Photoshop tomorrow. And so it was more informative and a way to communicate on their website with their viewers rather than just putting up all their stuff and never talking to them so for three weeks that

happened and then it went pretty well and i at the time had quit my day job to wait tables in new york because i wanted to pursue comedy as a career. And I wanted my days to be free for auditions and that sort of thing. And eventually they I was able to quit working at the restaurant to keep doing Daily Grace full time for them. And it wasn't until Sarah Palin became big in pop culture that My Damn Channel asked me if I could do an impression of her on Daily Grace. And at this point, Daily Grace only lived on MyDamnChannel.com. They weren't on YouTube. They had their other series on YouTube, but Daily Grace was specifically for My Damn Channel. And I did an impersonation of Sarah

Palin. It went really well. And so that kind of like lit the fire of doing other comedy bits and impersonations and characters on daily grace and turning it into my own series rather than it talking about the website and then that was in 2008 that all that happened and in 2010 after two years we decided to move it over to youtube because it's very hard to get an audience to watch videos. You did Daily Grace for two years. Mm-hmm. On MyDemChannel.com. If you go to MyDemChannel.com archives, there's like a thousand videos that live there. And they were all on my iSight, on my iMac, and I edited in Final Cut every day.

So they were really, really awful quality. But I like to think that the content was decent quality. Was it, so it wasn't much different than what we would see now? No, it wasn't. What we do see now. It wasn't much different. There was just no structure. Every day was whatever I wanted to talk about, any character I wanted to do.

I did commenting on comments like very occasionally, but it wasn't a weekly thing. So it did become a little – it was so fun, but it was a little stressful to wake up and have an infinite possibility of ideas to make for a video that day. Two years. Two years. You did that before you put it on YouTube. Before I put it on YouTube. Before they, and then they decided.

Yeah. A guy named Jesse Cowell came, who is big in the red versus blue rooster teeth community started working for My Damn Channel and he really was an advocate of moving Daily Grace to YouTube because that's where the audience is they weren't getting the numbers pushed to MyDamnChannel.com because it's just so hard to get people to watch videos on any other website so in 2010 he and I sat down and he was like, let's, we need a structure for this. If it's going to go on YouTube, I think that would save your brain. And I totally agreed. And we came up with the structure and I got an actual camera and shot, I got a 7D. I was so excited. And then I was like, I don't know how to use this thing. So all of my videos are kind of out of focus.

I'm really framed awfully. And yeah, so we started doing it on YouTube in 2010. And it's grown into what it is now. 2010. So three more years. Three years.

Almost three years. So five years you've been doing this every day with just breaks occasionally? I've taken like a week off maybe two or three times. But for the most part, it's been every day. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's been crazy.

But it's also at this point the same with like how the euphoria of getting positive attention is addictive. It becomes like a workout every day to make a daily grace. It's like, oh, okay, I made this thing. I have to make my thing and then I'm done for the day. I have to do my job for the day because everyone always asks if I stockpile videos and I shoot them all in one day. And sometimes I do if I know I'm traveling and it's gonna be difficult to shoot. But most of the days I shoot the day before and I edit that day and then I put it up and it feels like exercise. And when it's done, it's like, ah, what a relief.

How do you think that affects your, like your friendships, your relationships? Having to do that every single day because it's like alright y'all this has been awesome but you know I gotta make this video yeah I mean the thing is I've made a lot of friends in the YouTube space because we all have a common understanding like Hannah and Mamrie are my two best friends now

because we have a very common understanding of working and getting, I just shot two videos with Hannah before I came here and that was like last minute she's like are you around you want to shoot yeah okay we go over shoot for an hour and then I leave and uh yeah it's a respectful thing that everyone understands but I really try and do I try and balance life and work I like to go out to eat I like to go out to drink I like to be around people but then i like to work by

myself so i try and maintain a balance some days it sucks and some days it's awesome have you ever had to do anything um like we've we've got a project coming up where we're going to be doing something where it's kind of like a it's a branded project uh but it's going to be like we're vlogging but we're going to be doing it recording it i think on friday uh of next week and we're going to have like a client and you know an agency and all these people in like like watching us we're going to be right over and on the other side of that wall giving you notes the whole time yeah sure. Yeah. So, and it's like an unedited. Oh, come on, guys. It's like an unedited, like, seven-minute piece. Oh, wow.

That's like loosely scripted. We call our videos pieces. Yeah, wow, okay. So it's up to what you decide. Yeah, you're making art. I'm making finger paintings. No, no, no, far from it. But have you, is it always been that?

Is it always you in a room? You know, obviously sometimes you have guests. We've had the privilege of being a guest on your show. Yeah, we've had the privilege of having my dog try and bite your faces off. But is there ever anybody on the other side of the camera, other than maybe a friend that sits in, or do you not let anybody do that at all? Yeah, I'm kind of a control freak in that way. I shoot them all by myself. I edit them by myself. Everything is me. And I've thought about getting an editor. I've thought about getting a camera person. I've thought about doing all of that stuff.

it would be really difficult to bring someone else on because the schedule is really inconsistent. And to hand footage to an editor at 11 o'clock at night and be like, here, have it done now for tomorrow is, I think, not respectful to another person. So at this point, it's all me all the time. But now but I have worked on other projects with clients. I just launched today a web series called Grace's Faces that's with Bobby Brown, the makeup artist, and it's a web series about makeup. No, it's not the R&B artist. No, it's not. It's a little disappointing, honestly. I know.

Trust me. I've had numerous conversations about what could have happened had it been him. But the problem is since they're sponsoring you or however you want to say it you can't play that card you can't talk about the artist you know i imagine that they're like rolling the eyes big time yeah well i just thought joke was awesome i didn't see that coming right you know but you can't go there well the thing about them is they're actually really respectful of me maintaining my voice and like authenticity of how I would normally do things. And those are the kind of like brand deals and things that I try and align myself with.

So they didn't say, no, Bobby Brown, the, you know, the guy from New Edition. Yeah. None of that guy. Yeah. They haven't said it yet because I haven't brought it up yet because you have taste I respect a brand I apologize for the joke

but yeah I also did a bunch of Lowe's commercials I saw those yeah it's very strange we get very excited in our house when we see those it's the commercial where it's like get Lowe's get Lowe's get Lowe's

get Lowe's and you're like it's twerking but it was kind of before and then I catch on a fire and then yeah

it goes awry but I did those I love when people leave me comments like you're the girl from the Walmart commercial but I

everyone thinks that like Lowe's approached me as Daily Grace and was like be in our videos but i had been auditioning for commercials in new york for like three years and then i finally booked a commercial and it ended up being eight commercials but daily grace almost didn't keep me from getting that part because they were worried about the brand of daily grace interfering with the brand of lows and so but as soon as they aired and the social media was really responsive to it, you know, then they were like, yay, great, good, we took a risk and it paid off.

Yeah, so it's always really strange when you have brands and other people because you guys have done everything yourselves for a really long time. Yeah, and I mean, and we do we do you know having wives and children that that is that definitely impacts your schedule yeah but i just having one dog i'm like oh i'm never having a child yeah you know i i guess i can understand what you're saying about it's it's hard to get someone to help to maybe free you up when you're doing, you know, you're doing your show out of your house in your own space in your own time. For us, we have to protect our family times. And then, you know, we've built this space.

Like, literally, I don't know if you knew this, but we built this building. Yeah, I saw a bunch of nails sticking out of the wall. Everything we used was from Lowe's, though. Oh, thank God. Did you guys get a MyLowe's account? Yeah, we both have one. And a business one. Cha-ching! I got this podcast sponsored by Lowe's. So we can have people here who

are doing things to help us get things done. You know, there's this separation. It's a lot cleaner. Yeah. I wonder what you're going to do when, because it's when I cleaner yeah but yeah because i wonder what you're gonna do when because it's not it's it's when i mean camp dakota obviously the the people behind that understood your schedule i know you guys shot over like two weeks three weeks and that was really wonderful to be on set and be like oh you you take that footage and you give it to an editor

wow what a concept i don't take that home with me and edit this scene that we just shot. But they understood that you're Daily Grace and you've got to go make Daily Grace. But what if you do get that sitcom or that major role in a comedy movie and then they're like, okay, no, no, no, just leaving set every day to do your thing. Do you want to edit her stuff? Is that what you're getting at? Are you trying to apply yeah i know i know i movie oh great i just i need way more star wipes in daily grace so you're my

guy uh yeah that has been um conversation and has um come up a few times because this year has really been like kind of a turning point for my career and been really wonderful um that yeah when that time does come that's going to be a serious thought my brain tends to work and like that's not a problem right now so i'm not going to think about that but i do once um one if things grow further i definitely want to bring people on and have people that can help alleviate some of the stress so I can focus on just the creative from time to time. But, yeah, it's taking the first step and finding people. I mean, I'd love to have a fully operational system of people that are awesome and can help me make Daily Grace and Grace Helbing and whatever I do awesome, I don't know how to hire people. Where do I find them? What if they suck?

Well, you can get the lowest parking lot. It's not bad. Yeah, I've seen those guys. They're really good at putting a roof in. It's like you were trying to trap her there. She could get more of those ads, man. So what I hear you saying is that there's no end in sight to Daily Grace. It's not like, okay, well, at some point when I'm the next Tina Fey, the inevitable,

then I'm not going to be doing this Daily Grace anymore. I think I couldn't not do internet. I mean, if anything were to happen it would downsize the the amount of content would become less but i couldn't just not make content i i like making videos i like posting instagrams i like tweeting i like participating in the social media environment and i even if i was so so busy i think i'd wake up in the middle of the night and be like I have to put something on tape I just have to it's uh it's built into my system now um but yeah I think moving forward that's the goal is to like build it out bring people on that makes sense and

and are cool and and figure out what's the what feels right moving forward. Let's talk about your experience working with us on Christmas Sweats. Oh my gosh. I was thinking about that on my way over here, about how fun it was recording that song with you guys and Hannah and how exciting it was. Give us your perspective. My perspective was I didn't know you guys very well. I was so

excited that you asked me to collaborate with you i was equally excited that hannah was on board too because i know hannah it's always more comfortable when you're like i definitely know that person i don't know those two guys yeah i don't know what they didn't return my facebook message so i'm still bitter about it but we'll repress it and get through this project. Yeah, and I love your comedy sensibility about things being a little absurd and a little nonsensical, but ultimately silly and fun. And I loved it. And the fact that I got to wear sweatpants is so, so great. I hate wearing girl clothes.

So getting to wear sweatpants was like the best costuming and wardrobe ever. Well, we had to have the conversation between the two of us before you showed up. I mean, there was no question we wanted you in the video and everything, but there was the point where I was like, well, can she sing? Yeah, I know. When you guys asked me that and I was like, oh no, no, not at all. Was this, did you, am I supposed to sing? Oh no. We've heard the singing in the uh

well we did a little research did you see my music um well at the time i think what we did is we went back and we saw a few daily graces where you sing and i was like okay this is not sing the thing it's not really every time oh yeah where i'm like just talk singing yeah but see that's me sincerely trying to say well i learned that's funny like just talk singing yeah but see that's me sincerely trying to say well i i learned that that's funny if that's all she could do that's perfect great but if she can do more we might insult her by asking her only to do that i know i did have that uh that like sinking feeling on the way to your house i was like we're doing a song wait oh no hannah can sing oh no am i supposed to sing oh no i'm gonna lose this gig

oh no but it was great and it turned out so great and the best part was that my family loved it they thought it was so fun it was on the today show or a good morning america one of those yeah and my parents on christmas morning yeah and my parents were like... On Christmas morning. Yeah, and my parents were like ecstatic about it. They were like... Because I was like, they're not going to understand that this is like... My stepmom, she's like, I don't get it, but I really enjoyed it. But they loved it, and that's how I knew it was a good... Yeah, once my family sees something on Good Morning America or the Today Show...

Yeah, it's validated. Then their boy's finally done something. Right. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, this is maybe breaking news here, but we've got another idea for this Christmas that we would like you to be a part of. Yes. All right.

Yeah. I still can't sing as long as that's okay. We can't say what the idea is. Right. We're not going to reveal it, but it's, you know. We don't actually know what it is. You guys, this is how deals are made. They're made, recorded on a podcast.

Right. There's a social responsibility to say yes. You're saying a couple of years later, when we're deep in litigation, we'll be playing this podcast. Meg, you agreed. You agreed. We have the audio right here. That's right. There's a record.

Yeah, so we're working up some sort of concept of a sequel. That's exciting. Do you still have those sweats? Did you wear them home? I have, yeah. I have the sweats. Hannah wears the sweats like in her normal life. Yeah, she like wears them in normal life.

She brings them. Where do we? We went somewhere recently and she was just wearing the red sweatpants out. And I was like, what? You're wearing? She's like, I don't give a crap about anything right now. Yeah, they're so great. They're in the back of my closet with my koala onesie and my ghillie suit.

So they're in good company. Okay, good. With your what suit? Ghillie suit. Ghillie suit is a suit that looks like moss or a tree that hunters wear to blend into the environment. I should have known that. Duh. It's a common culture.

No, we surprised Hannah on her tour for Hello Harto in Toronto, Mamrie and I. And Mamrie bought us ghillie suits to wear to surprise her. You came out of like a bush? Well, we ran into a bowling alley that she was in, bowling, wearing ghillie suits and screaming Hannah Hart smells like farts over and over again. And she thought that it was just like two crazy fans that were like coming to murder her in this bowling alley. And then we took the masks off and it was great. That's also documented.

Wow, really? Yeah. I have a problem videoing things that I do in my life. But that's in your personal archive. It's in the Daily Grace. Oh, really? Yeah. The security guards at the bowling alleys, they don't take No, here's the thing that happened. Daily suits for granted.

That was the only they were the only people in the bowling alley at the time. And her and her producer and shooter on the tour, they were bowling and they were about to leave. And so we ran over from the hotel. We walked down the highway wearing ghillie suits. And we walked past people. We had to be like, don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid. We're just surprising a friend. We're girls. We're nice, charming, sweet girls. We're not doing something like really crazy. And we did that as we walked into we had to walk through the bowling alley bar and the bartenders were just like, what? We're like, don't worry. Don't worry.

This will all make sense in like 10 minutes. And then we surprised her and then we all took shots. And it was great. A great time. Awesome. Yeah. Super fun. Then you shot game or whatever. Shot game. Yeah, exactly. No, I don't hunt. Or skeet. Skeet.

Skeet shooting. You don't need camo. You don't need camo for skeet because skeet are inanimate. Oh, yeah, true. And it's probably very uncomfortable. Well, this has been a great start. This has been the first podcast. Do you guys feel positive about it?

Was it a good experience? Yeah, I feel like we bought it. You did great. You did great. Oh, bought it. You did great. You did great. Oh, thank God. I did great. Rhett, you leave a little to be desired. Yeah.

I made a Bobby Brown joke. That was great. At least it wasn't a Whitney joke. Oh. Right. It wasn't. Too soon. You didn't bring her up.

That's right. Until now. The whole podcast. That was the pep talk you guys had before the podcast. Whatever happens, don't bring up Whitney Houston. This is rule number one for Ear Biscuits. Well, the other thing you're going to do in closing here is you're going to

be the first to sign this table. Oh my goodness, what a... This is kind of like, you know... It sets an expectation that we're going to have other guests. It's not an original idea, but, you know, it is an idea. If this podcast had any visuals, people would understand. This is a beautiful, beautiful 20-foot mahogany table that I'm signing right now.

It's really gorgeous. Thanks for doing this. Thank you guys for having me. This is so exciting. And there you have it. The first ever Ear Biscuits episode is in the bag. Ear Biscuits. We put these in bags, and then people download them into their bag. We pour out our bag, people download them.

You're downloading this, or you have downloaded it, and you've listened to it. It was with Grace Helbig. Yeah, well. If you didn't realize that. I don't know if they needed a summary. I wouldn't call that a summary. I feel good, though. You know, I think one of the things that I like about this link,

and I hope that you like it, too, is I feel like I sound like I'm about to fall asleep. And so maybe there's people out there who have fallen asleep during this and now they're just totally asleep. And now we're speaking to them in their dreams. And so you think about it, there's somebody out there and they're dreaming and they may be trying to fly. Yes.

You can do it. Just jump up. Just jump off of that building. If this is a dream dream you won't die it's a myth that if you die in your dream you die in real life if this is not a dream

and you're actually on the edge of a building listening to this don't jump off a building for the record but I think at the same time that it might say a lot about this new venture

in entertainment if we're making people fall asleep maybe it won't last very long. Yeah, that's the red flag in most people's books. Thanks for listening. We will do this next week. So hopefully you will be here to catch it in your bag.