Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 38 Felicia Day- Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: June 20, 2014

Felicia Day, well-known for her roles on hit TV shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Supernatural,” her critically acclaimed web series “The Guild,” and her YouTube channel “Geek & Sundry,” joins Rhett & Link this week to discuss her latest project, "Spooked," what it was like growing up as a home-schooled misfit in the deep south, misogyny in geek culture, and the first time she ever kissed a girl- on screen. *NOTE: This conversation contains adult themes and language. 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 is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. Thanks for joining us again. It is another adventure at the Round Table of Dim Lighting. I've never called this an adventure, but I thought I would forewarn you. This week's episode is an adventure. Well, I'm all of a sudden excited. You weren't excited before now? Well, I was mildly excited, but now I'm really excited. It's adventure. I'm going on an adventure.

Do I need, like, a camelback or something? Yeah, you need to be constantly hydrated on this thing. Um, the interesting person from the internet that we're talking to this week is the one and only Felicia Day. She's not only famous for having red hair, which maybe she's not famous for that, uh, that. Well, she has red hair, okay? That's one thing. She's also known for her acting

on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural and as Penny on Dr. Horrible's sing-along blog, one of my favorites, among many other things. But she's more than just an actor. Oh, yeah, she's done a lot of stuff in the web space. I think probably one of the most successful web series ever. You know, going back years ago, six seasons of The Guild.

I know you've heard of The Guild. This is about the online gamers guild called the Knights of Good who play countless hours of a fantasy MMORPG called The Game. Now she wrote this, she produced it, she was in it. I mean, she basically, this is

her baby, the guild. Here's a clip. There's a saying, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, right? Can I change that to the closer your friends come, the more they look like enemies? I mean, come on. First Tink steals my server key, then Zaboo moves into my work. I was so dumb to think I could keep the game and the guild separate, even for a day. And then when they mix, it's like oil and water, fire and gasoline, nuclear dragon and fairy toadstool village. Those analogies got weird quick.

So the guild ended its sixth season run in January of 2013, garnering well over 100 million views. And, I mean, that's a lot. I mean, considering how difficult it is to create narrative content on YouTube. Felicia also co-founded YouTube channel Geek & Sundry

and is continuously creating quality geek and gamer-centered content for you on the web. And her latest project is called Spooked. She executive produced this, and it's being called a cross between the Ghostbusters and the Guild highly anticipated it's on Hulu and it's also on

the Geek & Sundry YouTube channel and you said the Ghostbusters but the movies are just called Ghostbusters did I say the Ghostbusters you said it's the

well in my mind cross between the Ghostbusters like the three guys yeah yeah I think of them as the three guys it's a team of paranormal detectives

so it is the like the Ghostbusters and the Guild people. Yeah. We'll go with that. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with what I said. Okay. We had a great conversation with Felicia. We touched on lots of topics,

including growing up as a homeschooled misfit in the Deep South, the circumstances that led to her writing the Guild, her thoughts on misogyny in geek culture, how she deals with trolls. And we talked about kissing girls on screen. Plus much more. So here it is, Ariel Biscuit with Felicia Day.

Right, and you gotta bow the head. Well, you gotta pretend, but your fork is in your hand. You're like... You're talking about saying grace? Yeah. Are we good? Is everything registered?

We're recording, and I think we should start by saying grace. Okay. No. Awkward. It's so awkward, because I don't even know. They do it in their head. They won't say it out loud, because then it's like, I'm saying grace, and I don't want to make a demonstration of it.

So then you're kind of awkwardly like, what should I be doing in my head where you're praying to whatever God you pray to? Right. And they could just be having some sort of fit. Or like, don't eat too much. Like somehow the internals like, don't eat all those potatoes. That could be like a diet thing. They're giving themselves a pep talk.

A pep talk. Okay. To Jesus. It is kind of weird because it's, they're basically saying, I want you to be a part of something that I'm doing without you. Yes. So it's this, it puts you on the spot to come up with something to do while they're doing their thing, like silently praying, their lips are moving a little bit.

Is that what you mean? Yeah, that's what I mean. But then they don't want to impose on you. They're not like, hey, can we please say grace grace because that feels like they're imposing the religion on you and yet they need their moment to say grace while you're in the middle of a conversation so they start so it is imposing it is imposing because they're stopping everything to say grace which is fine but then as me as a non-religious person i'm like already dug into my macaroni and i'm like well should i stop chewing? Should I

just slow down? Should I just stare at you? Maybe you should just continue eating. I mean, maybe that would be, that's the natural thing to do. I never want to do, it always feels awkward. Well, let me ask you, what have you done and have you, have you landed on a technique? Well, one time I bowed my head. A prayer stander. Yeah. It's like a bystander. Exactly. A prayer stander. That's true. I bowed my head once and I was like, this is stupid. I'm not talking to anyone. So then that felt false because then I'm like, well, I'm pretending to pray to a God. They're going to get pissed off that I'm a poser.

I'd rather just not do anything. So then I ate. They meaning the gods are going to get pissed off? Whoever's anywhere. Or your friend. I think she meant the person. The person who was being prayed to

or the entity. Ah. Because their eyes are closed. They're in their own thing right there. Right, right. And then, then I,

I stopped awkwardly, you know, so then you either join in, which is not, I wasn't joining in, it was just posing. Right. And then two,

just keep eating, which feels dickish. And then three, it's just posing. Right. And then two, just keep eating, which feels dickish. And then three, it's just kind of like a mid-chew stop, like let's pause. Like literally like I'm frozen in time. That's not bad. The freeze. The freeze is basically what I do, yeah.

Yeah, that face. And you look off. You seem to not be looking at, like if I was the prayer, you would- I would look down to imitate them, so it's kind of a half pray. But your eyes are open. It's a half pray. It's really just evaluating what I ordered at that point.

Like planning your first bite. Yes. You could just take, I mean, you could just take a moment of silence. Which it is. For what, 9-11? Just to center yourself Just to be like This person is praying

I'm just going to take a moment of silence Or you could just break your phone out No that would be the worst That would be the rudest Okay then just do the moment of silence I think moment of silence I do have a meditation app on my phone So I could break out whatever it is I listen to there When I intend on doing it which i usually don't get around to it but it's on my

to-do list every day no but i would think that uh growing up in alabama oh you wikipedia'd me oh it did more than that wikipedia it goes much deeper that this is something that uh you've you've dealt with you dealt with growing up i mean surely there was lots of people saying grace around you in Alabama. Not, well, yeah, I went to religious school for a couple years, but then we moved to Mississippi, which is even more pre. Yeah, more pre. I know, but then I did not go to school there. I was homeschooled because my mom was this hippie,

and she was like, this school system is horrible, and I don't want you to go. So just don't go. So where in Mississippi and what age did you move there? Ocean Springs, Mississippi. I moved there when I was, I believe, seven. Seven. I lived there until I was about 13. Is that near the coast?

It's on the coast. It's right next to Biloxi. That makes sense. Ocean Springs. Because my dad was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base. Okay. Yeah. So that's why I moved there and it was such

a bad school system i guess it was like ranked lowest in the country when we moved my mom was like you're not we're not having this there were other options that she could have done versus just keeping us at home i mean perfectly valid ones but at the time i didn't know that and she was i was like hey we're never going to school again. I mean, I'm not... Describe hippie mom in more detail. You know, we recycled before it was cool. We wore Greenpeace t-shirts. It was almost not even possible to recycle in Mississippi. It was not.

We had to drive an hour away to take our bottles in. It just meant using your own bottles again. Yeah, well, that's a version. But you're being serious. You had to drive over an hour in order to recycle. Yes. Yeah, it was like, I think it was even on the Alabama border or something. I mean, it was hardcore, guys.

And it's fine. I mean, like, I'm kind of a hippie as well. I don't, I mean, we can recycle in a bin now. It's fantastic. But this was hipster recycling. Well, you know, it reminds me of a story. We had a friend who is from Alabama who moved out here. And they're, as a husband and wife, they're both from there.

And the wife's mother came to visit them. And they'd been out in California for, you know, a couple of months. And they were recycling. And she was like, I'm concerned about y'all. Y'all are liberals. Because you're recycling. Yeah, so we understand the- The Southern cultural heritage of- It can be difficult to find a place to take your recycling.

It's true. Well, you grew up in the South and you just don't have the context that you should in life, I think. I mean, I did not know that Jewish people had their own foods until I moved to L.A., and I was like, what is this deli thing? I thought bagels were only frozen, and I honestly, honestly, honestly thought that. Oh, yeah, me too.

Did you think there was anything else but a frozen bagel? No, no. I am not lying when I tell you I didn't even know what a bagel was until college. Yeah. I mean, seriously. No, there's no diversity. There's no representation outside. And I thought that locks on a bagel

had to do with not being able to get it out of the freezer. I still don't know what you're talking about. Locks, L-O-X? Still don't know. He's still that much of a redneck. It's a smoked fish. Ah, yeah, okay.

Generally saltier than a smoked salmon. I do kind of know that. Yeah. I do kind of. I mean, it was a pretty good in the moment joke.

Sorry about that. But as a result, when I moved to L.A., I went to every single deli in Southern California and had matzo ball soup because I thought it was literally

the best invention ever known to man. It's a soup and bread at the same time. It's fantastic. Soggy bread, question mark. Well, yeah. Being homeschooled and in the South with the hippie mom who wanted to take you out of the school system and things like that and kind of had a different perspective on things, even within homeschooling, I would assume in the South you were isolated because there was a homeschool contingent, but that was also a religious thing.

No, those were all like crazy religious. Those were like the girls who wore hair shirts. And we tried to socialize with them a couple times, and there was just no connection there. Hair shirts? You know, like so religious that they had to wear dresses down to their ankles and they had to wear like button up white shirts that kind of cuffed at their, showing no skin. Basically, the Christian equivalent of a burka.

That's what a lot of these kids down there were raised as. And that was, there was no connection there either. Right. So you were taken out of the public school, but then the little homeschool gatherings that you could have had, that didn't work out. We had a couple and then we were like, no. We're not going back. Moving on. No. So who'd you hang out with? Nobody. Brothers and sisters?

I had a younger brother. I have. I have a younger brother. Sorry, Ryan. Yeah, he's still around. He's around. Yeah, we actually have a show together, Co-Optitude. He flies out every month and we record it together. But yeah, me and my brother hung out together. In general, I just had a lot of lessons. So I would not hang out with the kids at lessons, but I would be around them at lessons.

And I also did theater. And what kind of lessons are we talking about? Violin, dance, karate. You ever combine those three? I could. Because then it would be like Lindsey Stirling plus one plus one

Lindsey Stirling plus martial arts no she could do you could cut to her like just using a violin as a weapon like as a

as a CIA agent you can poke a mean eye out with a violin absolutely you can get yeah I actually saw that happen almost happen

it went at the Largo I was telling you about the Sarah Watkins thing, and she was playing the violin, and her brother leaned down, and she got this close, and nobody noticed it except me. There was no gasping. I was like, she almost put her eye out with a bow.

There's nothing worse. I got poked in the eye by a girl when I was six. With what? With her finger, her pinky. Oh, and you felt it go all the way in? It went all the way in. I had to wear a patch for six months. Oh!

So! I did that to my grandma. You did it to your grandma? Yeah. What did you do? I was about six years old, and I poked my nanny in the eye, and she had to wear a patch for like six months. And I would go there every Sunday to eat fried chicken, and I'd feel horrible.

There she is, old eye patch nana. Wow! I mean, she regained her sight. But how did this happen with you? I was on the tires, and it was just, she was balancing herself, and she had pointy fingers, and I just, I got an eyeball's reach of her. Jennifer. I always remember Jennifer. Jennifer and that finger. Yeah. There was no, there's no more pain.

There's no greater pain. I've never given birth, but I assume that there could be no greater pain Than getting your eye poked Yeah Like that I mean she scratched my cornea Like really bad Was there permanent damage?

If I could find her now on Facebook I'd tell her something What would you tell her? Just say it I'd be like Jennifer Just for the record You ruined my first grade The only grade I ever went to school

Thank you Oh wow You were the pirate I was a only grade I ever went to school. Thank you. You were the pirate. I was a pirate, and I did not like pirates. I was not a fan. So there was no upside. No, no. Did you wear a fashionable eye patch or just a black one? It was kind of like a cream color with metal.

Nobody even bothered decorating it for me. Because you could have done just like a some sort of headscarf that just happened to go over one eye. I don't think I was that stylish ever. If I had to do an eye patch that's what I would do. You really? It would be a bandana that went over one eye. Or a hairstyle like Aaliyah.

She only had one eye. She's dead. That's why she died. She died of lack of an eye. Didn't she die in a plane crash or oh no she died in a car crash in honduras because i was in honduras i loved her music let's just stick to that yeah there's a death perception joke in there somewhere but i'm not gonna make it because she's dead right okay or she's not who knows boy so how did you deal as a young felicia with these things did you did you pour yourself into the violin i did i just decided to be as good as i could at all the things that i actually had

human contact with and i just really liked the violin it was good it was good to spend some hours doing that and at the same time i did um i did I danced like three or four hours a day. I wanted to be a dancer, actually. Just like ballet? Ballet, yeah. Ballet, tap. I took all of them. And I did a lot of musical theater. So I specialized in being like the fifth orphan from the back

or like the can-can girl in Oklahoma. I never had major parts, but I was like the supporting player. And just being around people in the theater is fun. You're making something together. Even if you're a small part, you're part of the whole. And that was something I loved. And this is theater in Mississippi? Yeah. So what's the nearest town that you were?

Biloxi. Okay, so you were outside of a major area. Yeah, and there actually were a lot of people who were really into theater. I mean, they were people who moved back from New York, who just came home to do stuff. So I think anywhere you go, you can do theater. And that's what I always tell people if they want to be an actor. I'm like, stay home, get a lot of experience under your belt where you are first.

Because you don't want to just be going on a boat, you know, get on a boat or a bus to L.A. and just saying, ta-da, discover me. Because I did that and it took a long time to figure it out. But a lot of people just, you know, do that, which is not the smartest. So you were the background theater person. I would have thought that you would have kind of moved into the, you know, that starring role type of thing. That didn't happen. Well, I was so young.

I was like 14, you know, at the oldest was 14 or 15 when I was doing these things. So it was generally adults who had the starring parts. I was like the sister in Brigadoon. I was like one of the prostitutes in Sweet Charity like three times, you know. So it was, your dad was in the Air Force. Military, yeah. Air Force. Air Force.

And was your mom basically spending most of her time, you know, teaching you guys and that kind of thing? Did she have something she was also doing? No. Because, I mean, our wives are homeschool art kids. Oh, yeah. I know for a fact that that is a full-time job. It is a full-time job. My mom was pretty lenient in that we never did tests or anything.

I kind of just taught myself. I had a schedule that I adhered to that I made up myself that was pretty much educated me. So she was, you know, she always had, the one thing I will say is that she always had resources available to us in every single subject. We were always buying books. And I read thousands and thousands of books as a kid because I'm not doing anything else except sitting around the house, right? And this was before Netflix.

I mean, we just educate our kids with Netflix. No, I wish. If your wife could educate me, I would have a much different childhood. Yeah, no, but I had a very regimented schedule. And my grandpa really loved, he was a physicist, a nuclear physicist, so he was really impressed when I knew math proofs. So I put a lot of effort into my violin and math proofs only because it tended to impress people. And I got rewarded for that. And it just kind of, and I enjoyed it. Nuclear physicist. And he's your grandfather. So he just kind of, and I enjoyed it. Nuclear physicist.

So, and he's your grandfather. So, was he like involved in the development of like the. The laser. The laser. Yeah. I was going to say like the atomic bomb. No. Then the national defense systems, all that Star Wars stuff. He was really high up in all that during the 80s and stuff like that.

So, you know. He like helped invent real lasers that are used this is fascinating i know he was a great guy he passed away several years ago but he has like hundreds of patents in his name so um so your proclivity to math was uh to gain his approval more yeah kind of but also i enjoyed it i liked you know non on a problem in my head and um and and it was something my mom couldn't do so she encouraged me she was like you impressed grandpa because i could never do it was the you know with being so musical and then like enjoying math being into that which informed the? Did you see music as from a mathematical standpoint? Well, even for us with engineering degrees,

I think a lot of times when we're creating things, we see it from a mathematical standpoint that it's a problem to be solved. Well, there needs to be a joke here. It's kind of like arriving at a solution. Yeah. No, actually, I did a video on my personal channel last week about producing because I feel like people are really impressed when I'm an actor. But actually, I do a lot of my time is producing and making things behind the scenes.

And I made an analogy about a math degree coming in handy when you're trying to produce something well because you have an end result, like a proof, that you're trying to use the tools that you have to put together and make the end result happen correctly. Right. And that is the same as filmmaking, really. I mean, you have a goal, you have a script or, you know, a project, and you have to look around you and say, hey, what tools do I have to put this together to realize this end, you know, end result? And, yeah, I definitely think there's a mathematics. There's a music to comedy especially, in result. And yeah, I definitely think there's a mathematics, there's a music to comedy, especially, I think. You know, I'm pretty, you know, on the Guild specifically, I was really precise about how people not rewrite my lines and stuff.

Sometimes people have better alternatives, but in general, I was very strict about, say it the way I wrote it, because there was a music in my own head that tended to sing in my ear. If they changed it, it wasn't as, to me, appealing. Maybe it's just a control freak. That's also called a control freak.

Yeah, well, that can be a good quality to have. So even in terms of the rhythm of it? Like, oh, you didn't say that. When I wrote this line, I heard it being delivered kind of in this rhythm? Sometimes. To that extent? Sometimes people wouldn't get the intent. I mean, yeah.

I mean, obviously, I know people aren't in cages and their own individuality comes to the forefront when you're reading dialogue as an actor, but sometimes they wouldn't get the intention of it. I mean, only rarely have I said like, okay, just say it like this.

But usually when you tell an actor, okay, the intention here is to do this, then they get it and they know how to read the line or say it. But I think there's a certain rhythm to make, especially comedy work, because it's really all about timing. So you see that music and math kind of influence different things. The music maybe in your writing, the math in your producing. Yeah.

And also, I did a thesis paper on this, but music and math are generally... Because this is your double major in college, I double majored in college in mathematics and music. And there is a correlation between the area of the brain that deals with music, especially classical music,

and mathematics, theoretical mathematics. Right. So there is a lot of overlap there. So you're involved in performance. You're doing the theater thing and the music thing. Then you go off to Texas, double major in music and mathematics. At that point, when you made the decision to go to Texas, what were you thinking?

Well, my dad moved there. He was assigned there. We moved like, when I was like 13, we moved like eight times in two years, basically. So there was a lot of moving around when he was going to finish off his medical research and stuff.

Our light just came back on. I know. Our dimmed lighting failed, so we had to go with alternate lighting, but then the dim lighting came back. Well, now it's even more ambient here. Not as noir, but ambient. Yeah, so... But you turned down an opportunity to go to Juilliard,

right? Yeah, so I was accepted the pre-program for Juilliard, which is basically a feeder program to go into Juilliard. So, you know, I was accepted to it, but it was very... It's on the weekends, so basically you go on the weekends for like a year or two before Juilliard, and then, you know, that's a fast track to get into Juilliard and we couldn't afford to live in New York city. And my dad couldn't get stationed

anywhere around. So it would have been prohibitively expensive for us to have two house. Well, we weren't, I mean, listen, I grew up very poor really. Cause the lessons basically took all the money. So we never really had a new couch ever. I generally got my clothes from Goodwill. Like we were not poor. I mean, we were poor in that sense, but we always, my mom always had the best people tutoring us. So it was kind of, you know, those prior,

and I think those priorities like definitely stick with me. Yeah. You know, so yeah, I unfortunately couldn't do that, but I got a full scholarship to go to University of Texas because my professor taught there. And he was like, hey, you want to go to college? And I was like, sure. I'm 15. Let's get out of here.

Oh, so you went at 15? I just turned 16. He got me the scholarship when I was 15. It was full ride. I never – here's a fun fact. I do not have a high school diploma. I never got a high school diploma. But I have two degrees, two college degrees. And I don't know actually if that's legal anymore.

Like, I don't know if it's legal. Yeah, you shouldn't have shared that because they're going to invalidate this. Are they going to take it away now? Yeah, and then you know what? You're not going to have degrees anymore and your whole life is going to fall apart. Because you know what happens to people who don't have college degrees. It's true. All of them start going pumping gas.

You can just hang out here if you want. I mean. I like it. It's true. All of them start go pumping gas. You can just hang out here if you want, I mean. I like it. It's a pretty cool room. Especially with the lights back on. Yeah, ambient. We make it like

we weren't in the total dark. We just had the light of... We were just feeling each other. Like, okay, you go. Matt, you go. Yeah, like, just our eyes are wide open. We can't see anything.

Sensory deprivation in here. Okay, so then acting. I mean, you've got the music thing. You've got the math thing. What were you thinking that you wanted to do, and then how did it switch? I always knew I wanted to be an actor. Oh, okay. And I got on the bus and left.

That's why I was telling you earlier, don't do what I did, because I had no qualifications. I got my degrees because my parents said I had to get degrees. Okay. I got the math degree because my dad was like, you need to get a real degree if you're going to go to LA. And I was like, sure, here's a 4.0 dad. Boom, out of here. And I don't know if that was the smartest thing to do, but it's what I did. And I did volunteer for film festivals a lot. So I got a taste of the business of Hollywood. What was college like as a 16-year-old?

It was not anybody else's college. Basically, I took 18 hours a semester. I mean, I probably have like 250 hours, and you only need like 110 to graduate. So I have 250 hours of college under my belt. That doesn't make sense if you didn't even want to do it. I did because I liked it. Because you're an achiever i'm an achiever i love doing things i love studying i actually you know my my dream would be to go and i would i would love to go to ucla and get like a poetry degree or like a history degree you know that would be truly if i just won five

million dollars tomorrow i'm i might i'd still make it be making film but i would also be like hey i'm getting a grad degree in romantic poetry. Would you like to talk about it? Like specifically romantic poetry? I would, yes. That one I would start with. And then I'd go with like ancient Greek, you know, lifestyle. Like I like to see how people lived. This is all over the place. Anywho. No, I'm with you. But I was, nobody would invite me anywhere because I was illegal. I couldn't drive. My mom drove me to college every day. So, you know, it was not any con, it was not a real experience as far as like anybody else's experience, which is just. So you lived at home. Yeah, I lived at home. But Austin was significantly

different than Biloxi, Mississippi. Yeah, no, it was great. And like I said, I volunteered for film festivals. I knew I wanted to get into the film business because I liked theater, but I wanted to be on film as an actor. And my, you know, I did a little student film here and there, but mostly my experience came from volunteering for film festivals. And that was kind of like the height of the indie, you know, film world. That was when Sundance was really about the work versus like parties. And just being in that environment made me more excited to be there because it seemed like this rebellious, you know, I only saw the indie side of Hollywood. So I'm like, oh my God, people are out of the box. They're creating things. They're making people think differently. This is what I want to be part of. So that was your passion. That's where you

wanted to go. Yeah. Was it just because you're wired as an achiever or was there also something that personally happened in your life that kind of drove you to prove yourself? Was there any naysayers growing up, family, friends, anything like that? Anyone besides Jennifer poking you in the eye to say, Jennifer, I've got to. This is all for Jennifer. You said I can't do it, so I'm going to. I think that comes into play more when I'm in Hollywood.

I grew up sort of in a vacuum. I didn't know how people acted. I didn't know how girls were supposed to be. I didn't know anything but the sort of books and what I saw in lessons, which is all about being the best you can be at something specific. So I think that's what drove me the most is just achievement because I loved learning and I loved, you know, I got along better with my professors than my colleague, you know, my co-students, you know. So you earned the right to go to L.A. and then that's what you did. Yeah, absolutely. How did you do that exactly without a driver's license? You had one by then. No, I didn't.

How old were you? I was, I moved to 20. I was like 20, 21. After a full four years at Texas. It was five years, actually. So I just turned 21 when I graduated. Or I was about to turn 21. I knew a lot of people from the film festival, so I did know a lot of people.

So at least I had a little bit of an entree there into that world. And I had met some, you know, I'd done some acting in Austin. So I had a couple connections to get, you know, an agent or an idea of an agent or at least the idea of knowing what to do. I had, I met some actors who were like, hey, you should do this and get in this class and the blah, blah, blah. So I didn't go completely blind. I did have a somewhat of a little bit of a support system through the film festival circuit and some other actors. But it was pretty like, whoa, this is, here you are. Right. And so what was the first thing that you did to make money? Well, I had saved a lot of money because I was a professional musician during college. So I was one of the youngest people ever to join the Austin Symphony. I did weddings every single weekend. So I made hundreds and hundreds of dollars every single weekend. File in for hire. Yeah, basically. Which would have been, I could still be doing that. I have friends in Austin who still do that. They're freelance musicians and they make a great living and I could still be doing that. And I did a little bit of that here. But basically it was savings until I got a bunch of commercials. I lived off my savings

and I had saved, I lived at home. I had no expenses. I had full scholarship. So I saved every single penny and I was able to live for like a year and a half, almost two years just on that. What was that first commercial? Oh my God. My first commercial was a Starburst commercial. And I got hired, even though the director said in front of somebody, she's too white to hire. That was literally – because it was a summer commercial, and he was like, why is she so pale? Albino. Get this albino out of here.

What did she say? Did he say white, pale, or albino? He said albino on the set because he's like, take a light off that albino. I will never forget that. Oh, wow. Goodness. And then in the fitting, she's like, she's so pale. Why did they make me hire her? You know, he literally said that to somebody next and I'm like, I'm right here, guy. And, um, that's quite an introduction to Hollywood. Oh,

it was brutal. Like it was a wake up call. Cause I was always the teacher's pet, you know, my whole life. And then it's just like, I don't understand why you don't love me. Everybody does. I'm, you know, but acting is not about your, how hard you work. It's, there's a lot of other things that go into it, which was the biggest, probably learning curve that I had. But, um, but yeah, I mean, you are in fairness, you're kind of pale. I am pale. I mean, yeah, no, let's just own that. It's I own it. I am the palest person ever. I always have pale offs, you know, like, Oh, that's a pale, excuse sir can you just oh i'm whiter than you i i am waiting for someone to cast me as a ghost because every time i work on a set the i can see the dp take a light off me from the stand-in you know when you're on a tv show they have a stand-in sit for you and then when i come into the shot and sit down so they can look

they always take a light off and i'm like if i'm glowing so good somebody hire me to be a dead person the dp brings the light meter up to you, and it cracks. Yeah, cracks. It's like, phew. Well, I mean, you can play a ghost. I mean, you're producing this series. Oh, it's true. Well, if we—

It's already shot. If we get more funding for more episodes, yes, I will write myself in as something that glows. Legit. So that was the first experience. And then. Oh, but I didn't tell you, I got cut out of the commercial. Oh, you weren't even in it.

Yeah. They told me when it was going to be on. It was like 11, 15 p.m. on MTV. And I told all my family, I'm like, I finally got a real job, everybody. And we sat there and watched it. And I was not in it. And I did not understand.

I even called the next day. I was like, so what happened? They're like, this is what happens. They cut you out of things. So. What did you do in the commercial that you weren't in? I sat in a lawn chair and I went, I'm rich. That's it. Okay. Okay. I understand. In that voice. I didn't, I didn't use that sort of Greta Gartner. I'm rich. No, I just said, it was like some kind of sweepstakes where everybody got, and I'm like, what do the kids do with their money? Yeah.

And I was like, oh, I'm rich. And I was on the beach. I mean, legitimately, I do not look like I should be on a beach. Well, but that's where the tan starts. Never. I don't have, I don't, it's like a fish. That's where the burn happens. I would just burn, I would just explode like a devil.

Did it, did it get, was that a low point? Or did it get lower before Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Or whatever the big break was? Um, you know, I've had many low points in acting. Oh, how many? I, you know, I cut my hair off and I started working. It was like an instant switch.

Once I cut my hair off, people were like, oh, that flippy hair, Bob girl. I like her. So I did start getting a lot of commercials and those things can pay crazy money,

especially back then, you know, 10 years ago. It was like, you could make a year in a day, a year's worth of pay in a day, which I did. What was the big one? Oh, I saw you in blah, blah, blah. I was actually, ago it was like you could make a year in a day a year's worth of pay any day which I did what was the big one that oh I saw you in blah blah I was actually um I was actually a post office

represent I was a girl named Angie and I did one and I was kind of this frantic secretary girl and they liked me so much they wrote me like a campaign it wasn't a huge campaign um but we did four commercials and people would recognize me because they ran all the time on TV. And that was like, I got all my bills paid. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Hollywood. And it was fun. It was a cute little spot. So I tended to work a lot in commercials. And then I randomly went and auditioned for Buffy the Vampire Slaver as the guest star for the episode. And they liked me a lot,

and they had me go out and read some sides that they had just written, which is always my best when I don't over-prepare. And they called me the next day and hired me for an Asian girl part. Interesting. The part that I actually got hired for was supposed to be an Asian girl.

I'm sorry, whatever Asian girl I took a job away from. Is that what it said in the script? It did say in the script that Vi was an Asian girl. And then it was changed to albino. Albino, yeah. Flippy hair to albino. Flippy hair. You've got this, you have a brand obviously now, 10 years later

after breaking in and doing these commercials and you are the Felicia Day that you are now with the geek cred and all that comes with it. breaking in and doing these commercials, and you are the Felicia Day that you are now, you know, with the geek cred and all that comes with it. When you were starting this acting career and going out and auditioning for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, did you have something in mind like, I'm going to be this kind of actress?

Or was it just like, I just want a job as an actress? Did you have a vision? I did not. I don't think I had a vision. I found out that I enjoyed comedy after I started taking improv classes here, which it didn't occur to me. I wanted to be like an indie film actor when I first moved here because that's the world I knew. And then when I realized I had to be really weepy and probably was just like the victim of the week, I played a couple of those. Like, hey, I was assaulted.

And, hey, my friend died. And I'm just a hour show and just get one scene. I was like, this is not great. I don't like this. And then I started doing comedy and I loved it so much better. I mean, and I didn't even occur to me that I was good at it. So I took classes and, um, through doing that, I started getting comedy work, which, you know, at the time I would test for a lot of pilots that became big later. And I was always like, which, you know, at the time I would test for a lot of pilots that became big later. And I was always like second choice, you know. Like what? God, there were a couple of WB shows that, I mean, I tested for like the show called Samantha Who.

A bunch of comedies that didn't go but were pretty high profile. So I would test for pilots three or four times a year during that kind of four years that I was really just being an actor and getting a lot of momentum behind that. So in my mind, I wanted to be a half hour comedy actress because I really enjoyed improv. So those are the classes that you're talking about. You started taking improv classes? And then I took sketch writing classes later to kind of fill my time. So it was fun. You know, I don't think I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do. I just wanted to be in the industry.

And I think a lot of people move here with that. So that's why when I say stay and figure out who you are, it'll be so much easier because if you let everybody else define you, that was kind of my problem. I started being defined as like this flippy-haired secretary, and it wasn't what I felt who I was inside. And I was adopting this attitude that I was like, I could work like this for 20 years and I'd hate myself at the end of it. And so I was, you know, I, that was one of the reasons why I kind of started along the path that I did to kind of

rebel against being pigeonholed because I didn't define myself before I got here. I let other people define what they wanted to hire me as. And when did the guild enter the picture? How did that come about? So I always played video games all my life. That's one thing that my brother and I did to pass time. And this is when you move into the thing that a lot of people ask, right? I imagine people want to know the guild origin story. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's been told before, but, you know, you can always tell it. It's a lot of people haven't heard it. And I think it's a good story for anybody.

Oh, no, I want to hear it. Yeah. I don't, I don't. I want you to. You want me to leave? I always want to hear it in Pig Latin. Oh, okay. Pig Latin.

No, I want to hear the dark underbelly of it. You know me. The dark underbelly was that I became addicted to World of Warcraft for two years. And I stopped going to auditions. And I became addicted to World of Warcraft for two years and I stopped going to auditions and I stopped going to classes and I would literally play, not kidding, like morning to night. I would sit there and just play 12 hours a day, eight hours a day. Every single day was programmed because I was supposed to be online with people. You know, I took over my life because what I was doing as an actor, you know, I would get enough work to pay all my bills.

Great. But I wasn't busy. I wasn't challenged. And I was being defined in a way that I didn't like. And I didn't know how to take control back. So I basically just put it into becoming the best warlock that I could be. And that was, you know, that was the hard part. And after a while,

I had, you know, friends and they were like, you need to stop. There was an intervention. There was a little bit of an intervention, yeah. Did that take place within World of Warcraft?

No. Because that would be one way to do it. No, I think the guild fell apart and that kind of helped. The raiding guild that I was in fell apart and then I was like,

I'm so shattered. I have no friends left. And I was like, wait a second, you know? So that's when I decided to write something because everybody had been saying, write something and take control of your life. And I'd never, I didn't have a clue as to what to write before. But once that's, I sort of stepped back from that experience. I was like, well, I know something that people don't know about gamers. And I don't think that people have an accurate view of gamers. And I'd like to show them. And I can write a part that's perfect for me. That's a little bit autobiographical, but not completely. And I could put it in a half hour and Hollywood will just come running.

So good plan. I know, right? I'm so smart. 4.0. So that's what I did. I wrote it in 2006 and... Was it easy to write? No. It wasn't. I mean, you guys are writers. You know how hard to write. I mean, you have each other, which is nice. So you can't allow each other to get stuck in the mire

of creative torment, which I love being in. I just love it. It's great. Well, I'd say we're very intrigued about this specifically because we want to write long-form narrative content, but we haven't done that. Yeah, it's hard. It's difficult, and, you know, it requires a quietness in your life creatively

in order to sort of gather it all up and to reinterpret it as a whole. Had you even written anything? Was this like the first thing you just sat down to write? I had written sketches. So I've been doing sketch comedy at Acme Theater. Got it. But other than that, no, I'd never written. I attempted a couple of indie films, which were terrible, but I don't even know if I had finished but one of them, and it was very bad. So I put that away for a while, and no.

So the Guild was the only half hour. I wrote it as a half hour TV show. Okay. And that was literally the first time I'd ever written anything. So you just wrote a pilot. I wrote a pilot, yeah. But I had spent eight months just working on who the characters were, kind of trying to distill, you know,

because I had been online since I was a little kid because my grandfather was very technologically advanced. So we were always online even before there was any internet at all. He was logging onto the pre-internet, DARPA, you know, all that stuff. To operate a laser in space. Exactly. The other scientists used, I mean, that's where the internet came from. So my parents knew about that and they always had like online stuff. And so I always knew that you can connect with other people on the internet came from. So my parents knew about that and they always had like online stuff

and so I always knew that you can connect with other people on the internet and I was always on whatever service it was that you can connect online even through college

because you could log in through Usenet and talk to people. This is like really olden times, guys. I'm like a grandma of the internet.

In the olden days you'd have to dial up and it went whoosh. So then you took the pilot on a traditional tour of the TV labyrinth. I did. I showed it to anybody fancy I knew. And they were like, you are obviously a great writer. You need to be on staff somewhere. You know character really well. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. So this was so early people didn't have twitter like there was there

was myspace but it was more like you know for for those myspace people you know it was not a mainstream situation and gaming was even farther afield yeah well that's you know that's one of the just the things that i've been thinking as you talk about it and the time that this happened is that, did you have a sense of how forward thinking this idea was? I mean, now, you know, today, 2014, we're in this time where everybody wants to do something that's got some tie-in to gaming or comic books or whatever. And you were doing something that no one was doing. No. You know, at that time. It was very early.

It was early, early internet. It was early gaming. But it didn't sound calculated. It sounded like you were just expressing what you knew and had an unhealthy relationship with. Yeah, no, I wanted to show, I wanted to represent. And I think at the core of it, I wanted to show people that gamers were not just, you know, overweight dudes in their mom's basement being assholes. Like, it was super important to me. And I wanted to show people what I knew about gaming and feature the kind of people who I knew gamed, who were older men and moms and, you know, young, you know, hostile college girls, you know, there was,

there's such a breadth to gaming that was reflected in our world. And especially, I didn't feel like anybody even recognized the fact that women game or people can game together. But nobody spoke your language. So then what? Well, they were like, I don't understand this. I don't understand how people talk to each other over gaming. I mean, even today, people don't get it. So I was discouraged. And then a friend of mine who taught me my sketch class, Kim Evie, who you guys know very well. She read the script and was like, hey, my husband and I have been doing sketches for this thing called YouTube.

And YouTube started in 2006, as we all know. And this was literally January 2007. She's like, we've been doing sketches. And I had one go viral, her gorgeous tiny chicken machine show. And I think you should make this for the web. And I was like, great, help me. So we just decided to shoot the first 10 pages. And that became three episodes.

And we did it on our own dime. And we did it for no money almost in our garage because we were like so excited to take control of our careers and just have fun. I mean, there was no ulterior motive other than enthusiasm.

What was the initial reaction? I'm trying to figure out exactly when people stopped thinking this way on YouTube. Was there an initial reaction that they hoped it was real and not scripted? Or did you get to bypass that because it was obvious?

I think it was pretty obvious. I think it was. I don't remember people being confused about it being real or not. But the fact that Codex, I chose to write the show with Codex talking to the camera, I think created that connection. I think without that, it wouldn't have been as big a hit. And it was only in construction, I just thought, hey, this looks amusing. This is something I would watch. And I like this connection with the audience that I think Lonely Girl had just popped right around then. And I was

like, hey, I like this talking to the camera thing. And I'm an internal person anyway. And I want to talk about an introverted person. And that's hard to write because they're not proactive. And the audience doesn't like them. But this is a window into the mind of a character that you can start every episode with. So I don't think anybody thought it was not. Mostly people are like, I have a Vork in my guild. And I have a Claire in my guild.

uh, they, mostly people are like, I have a Vork in my guild and I have a Claire in my guild. And, um, and, and through my hard work, basically sitting on the computer 18 hours a day, just posting it everywhere on the internet. Like that's how the show gained momentum. And how did you, how did you know it was working beyond just, you knew it was good? One person liked it. I mean, that was really it. Like when I first saw those comments go up, I think we all wanted it to become a TV show. We're like, Hey, we're going to see this and it's going to be great and it's going to be a TV show. But once that happened, I was like, screw TV. People like my stuff.

I made this in my garage and they like it and I don't care if it's 10 people. This is the best thing you've ever watched. And I will sit here another 10 hours and I will email another 150 people personally to please watch my show. And that is literally how the guild happened. It was not an overnight success. We didn't have a million views overnight. Basically, we released one a month for the whole first season. And that was 10 months. So nobody would do that with a show now. I don't know if you could do it now because there's just too many things distracting people. But at the time, it allowed the show to spread word of mouth and grow. And the hard work that I did, basically sitting there,

emailing bloggers personally, going to every forum personally, thanking every single person who featured the show personally on every single website, that went a long way. And we funded the whole first season with a PayPal button. This was before Kickstarter was invented. We had put a PayPal button up there after the first three because I didn't have the money to fund anymore and neither did Kim. And surprisingly, people donated and we got enough to finish a whole season. So it was crowdfunding, like the earliest kind.

And it was so gratifying. And to me, that connection with the audience and the material, the fact that I was sharing something that I felt needed to be recognized and people responding to it. Hey, I haven't seen a girl gamer, but I know a bunch. Like that was important to me. Have you been surprised that, you know, thinking about how early the series was and how successful it was, YouTube hasn't really become a place where there are a lot of great web series, narrative series to watch. You know, there are still, there are some, but that's not really what defines YouTube even now.

It's still a lot of vloggers who are just vlogging, not as part of a series, but just vlogging. Yeah. And a lot of one-off videos and that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. series, but just vlogging. Yeah. And a lot of one-off videos and that kind of thing. Are you surprised that it hasn't really caught on? I... What's the problem? I, you know, I think that people underestimate how hard it is to make long-form narrative work and how much you have to spend time crafting it. I mean mean i don't mean to be a jerk about it but just because you write a first draft of something does not mean you need to shoot that

and expect it to be huge you have to have so much care and especially who are you calling out here no no i'm just calling out in general people people they they're like why did my web series get more views and i'm like i can tell you 15,000 reasons. And most of it is because the characters aren't real and the situation is not fresh. The great thing about the web is that you can break narrative. You can do things differently. And I think that we have yet to see creators do that because it started from such a user-generated sort of point of view with people just picking up a camera and going. And that's awesome i love that but it requires a million skills all put together to

make narrative work in a way that suspends disbelief you know when people come to win on the guild set they were like whoa i had no idea it took this many people to make it and it's not like i bloat the setup it's just like at a certain point everybody needs to specialize a little bit in order to make something really, really great. Like Spooked, you know, it took five months just to do post-production on those episodes. And I'm not saying you can't make something without that. But if you want to compete, quote, unquote, with TV and make TV-like things, it requires a lot more budget and at least expertise in a lot of different areas and crew. And that's a lot to wrangle. So it gets, you know, you have to just scale your vision. I think, you know, in the next

five years, a lot of people will have grown up seeing the web as a legitimate place to make art in a way. Right. Versus like disposable content. Well, yeah. So, so with the, with the new series Spooked, which just launched yesterday When we were recording this Was the plan So it's half hour Essentially sitcom length right So was the plan always To put this on YouTube

Yes It was part of the funded channel Initiative basically So we needed to put it on YouTube Because they helped pay for it. Right. But we actually released it also on Hulu. And, you know, YouTube is a really – I'm not a native YouTube personality, you know, and I admire people who do it.

Like, you guys blow me away because, to me, you are the epitome of sort of melding creativity and artistry with personality. And I don't – I truly – you are the epitome of it to me. So kudos. Oh, we're going to put that on a t-shirt. You should put it on. It's a really long sentence. I'm just going to loop the audio. As long as I can put Felicia Day at the bottom of it.

Yeah, but you know what I'm saying? You create things that should be created, that need to exist. And obviously your individuality is in it and it's thoughtful and that's what i love about and that's why to me it lasts and it's sticky and somebody will watch that a year from now and it'll still be relevant to their instrument because there's a spark of artistry there and um you know doing narrative like doing trying to do tv like stuff on youtube it's kind of an uphill battle i'll admit it it's harder it's not what the audience is used to wanting or consuming and it's um it's challenging

but to me you know that's what i i make what i love and i love i love long-form narrative i love getting characters together and just seeing them interact and i love and and to me if you there there's sort of a snobbery in Hollywood to the whole digital space and now everybody's moving in, but only to use it. And I, you know, it's just like, how can I exploit that? What network can I use to get people to advertise for me? Just seeing it as another place for content as opposed to a totally different. As a different medium. Exactly. And I, and I think if i have to be the person to put something out there that may not be you know um you know the hugest success but i'm still pushing

the envelope toward that because i truly believe the whole cable box is going to go away and you're going to get content of all forms everywhere you go so i would like to still be doing the things that i feel like i do best which is something like the guild or spooked. And I, you know, being on YouTube for the last two years, I never underestimated what it took to become big on YouTube. But, you know, being in it, I admire everybody so much more. And I think that, you know, when traditional Harley comes in and thinks there's some kind of magic wand to make the magic that the top you troopers have i think they're completely clearly fall flat on their face a lot yeah so well it's interesting that because of the success of the guild um and

everything else that you're doing you become a voice for these things that you're speaking about now long-form content narrative in this space particularly. But there's also the fact that you're becoming a spokesperson in the geek community for women. That's a thing that's happening. Yeah. I mean, it was inadvertent. I mean, it's inadvertent, but something that I feel, I hope it doesn't make myself take myself too seriously, but it means a lot to I hope it doesn't make myself take myself too seriously.

But it means a lot to me when like an 18-year-old comes up to me and is like, hey, I'm going into computer programming because of you and the guild. And you make it okay for me to say that I love gaming. And I'm a girl. And I'm a girl. Yeah. So it is a byproduct that I'm very proud of. And I try not to let all the pressure of expectation get to me. Well, how do you deal with the fact that, you know, geek culture has a strong reputation for objectifying women?

You know, when we see our female superheroes, they have to have all the right assets in all the right places. And we've got, you know, guys— Is that wordplay? you know, guys. Is that wordplay? And, you know, it's a reputation that I think there's plenty of evidence for. It's not undeserved reputation a lot of times. Being a female, what's it like being a female in that world where there's that kind of objectification that happens? And then does that impact when you're creating something? Are you thinking about, okay, I am a female in this environment and I'm going to go against the grain? How does that play into it?

Well, first of all, I don't think that geek culture is necessarily more misogynistic than any culture. I mean, hip-hop culture. True. Hollywood culture. Like, media culture. Who is on the front of—I mean, I'm sorry, Kim Kardashian is probably a lovely girl. Who is on the front of, I mean, I'm sorry, Kim Kardashian is probably a lovely girl, but what she represents to a little girl growing up, you know, I need to be like that to be successful. Those are not the tools that you want to encourage somebody to gather for their life because that is a very short window. And it's all reflective of what men want from a woman.

You know, that all those, I mean, it's fine. I, you know, it's fine if you're doing it for the right reasons. I like to look attractive. I love to have, you know, have this image of myself. But if you're only doing it to have the interest of men, you're kind of, that's kind of your own by men in a sense, right? So I don't think necessarily culture is, the geek culture is more biased toward women. I believe that geek culture originated in a much more male-centric world.

You know, it was more men who were the outliers in the way who were on – in all these subjects earlier on. And, you know, that's reflected in sort of their – the way they see the world. And now that women have become a lot more vocal about being part of the culture, you know, you get people who are butting up against two different perspectives on a culture. And I think the great thing about geek culture is that women do feel empowered enough to say like, no, this is my geek culture and I'm not going to back down about it. And I think that's more empowered in a sense than other mainstream sub pockets of genre, like mainstream media or whatever. Like it's harder. It's harder for women to stand up in those other cultures that comprise everything outside. I mean, like, look at a, look at a toy aisle. You know,

the segregation is everywhere. It's everywhere. If you start looking discriminately at every single poster you see and say, I'm going to put a guy in an outfit like that. And what do I think of that? If you start looking at the world like that, it transforms the way you think. You realize there are subliminal things that we accept as culture around us that do tend to make women the way, steer women in one direction and away from another. That's just what it is. I mean, so what I appreciate about geek culture is the advocacy of, you know, women being able to step out more and also the impact that it's having because it does, I love to see that there's measurable impact because there's a lot of vocal men and women about this, that they want

it to be more inclusive. They want it to be more representative. And we're dealing in worlds of fantasy. There's no reason not to be able to reinvent the way that we live. And, you know, most of the strong female characters, yeah, there's some people wearing tighty whities when they're flying around and like, you know, they're chain mail bikinis and stuff, but there are a lot of precedents where you see women captains on starships and things like that. And you see that more so in science fiction and fantasy than you do in like Law and Order and all that stuff, you know? And you speak into these things publicly. I want to talk about a recent tweet that you did.

that you did, but personally, do you still experience or have you experienced being objectified and what, how, how do you deal with that personally? Maybe not publicly. Well, I've, I'm every day, if you're on the internet, you're objectified. I mean, if I tweet about spooked, then, you know, several hundred people will click on it and as a producer, but if I post a picture of me in, you know, several hundred people will click on it as a producer. But if I post a picture of me in a pretty dress, it's like 10,000 people. And that's men and women who are reinforcing that. So that's just what society is. And it's interesting because then you have the choice.

Well, do I post the picture of me in the pretty dress or however you put it? Yeah. Well, of course I do because I like being, I mean, I like being in the pretty dress. Like, it's not like I'm manipulating, like, hey, I should post a bikini shot today. But I'm like, I just noticed the discrepancy about what people respond to. Um, I mean, that's just, that's just the way that the internet works, right? That's why everybody loves selfie selfies. But you know, as somebody who puts themselves out there, I mean, I make a video a week on my, on my personal channel and I'm on Geek and Sundry every week. And you know, as somebody who puts themselves out there, I mean, I make a video a week on my personal channel and I'm on Geek & Sundry every week.

And, you know, when I cut all my hair off for reasons, you know, it was quite hurtful when I had people commenting, oh, well, I'll come back when you grow your hair out. I mean, that happens every day about my you know and i and i noticed when we have girl hosts on our shows exponential number of the comments are more about their looks or um them being bitchy versus like a guy on the show and it really just that's just what it is and i try to push back a lot on that um but that's reality and you know and then there's always like Twitter people just harassing me right do you engage you said you push back are these like Twitter wars or

no no I block I'm such a blocker like it's like popping pimples it's like block block block block it's fantastic I'm like I don't need you

you have the freedom of speech to be the worst person ever I don't need you in my world and thank God for blocking and I've tended to be more aggressive about blocking people on our YouTube channels

because I'm like I don't need your hateful speech here this is this is a place where I want people to feel safe and feel like they're part of a community not that you're gonna do you know anti-feminist or homophobic slurs on there it's not just leave yeah yeah I um got new glasses and we made a video where I was like listen I got I got new glasses. I know you're going to be talking about it. Let's just devote 10 minutes of a good mythical morning to discuss my fashion choice, because I knew it was going to, the comments were just going to be about every opinion about it. Yeah. I haven't like had to prepare myself. Okay. You're not going to read the comments, but that's-

Do you not read, but you always read them, don't you? Of course I read them. Of course you do. I read all of them. I mean, I have to. But I can't, but that's almost a ridiculous example compared to what it is that you're describing that women in this medium go through. It's like me changing glasses every single episode of my show. And they always talk about it. Everyone caring about it instead of everything that I cared about, like what I'm saying. I'm caring about it instead of everything that I cared about, like what I'm saying.

Well, I mean, but appearance, yeah, appearance being so more weighted to how a woman is perceived. And it's like, it's fine. I mean, that's just what we judge people on appearance, and that's just who we are as humans. But when you're saying, as a female, you're irrelevant. What you're saying is irrelevant. Your appearance is the only reason I'm here, then that negates everything that I want to say. I mean, that makes me feel very devalued. Right. Your tweet was, it was a hashtag, yes, all women. Oh, yeah. Which brought out a whole toolbox of trolls.

Well, let me read it. When a woman makes a video, most comments are about tearing apart her looks or if they'd quote do her with a man, almost none. Hashtag yes, all women. What were, what was, what was the response? Uh, there were a lot of retweets. It was a very popular tweet. 5,000 favorites. Yeah, that was good. Um, I got a lot of, I mean, there were a lot of people just basically trolling for that hashtag to attack people using it. Yeah. And I got some very hateful speech. Not as hateful as when I've done things in the gaming world like the VGA Awards or I think, what else? There was, I had like someone, there were a couple incidents in the past where somebody said something really rude to me and people called them out on it and saying that I contributed to gaming and then people just got very, that was, I wouldn't actually hurt more when you're saying that I'm just a booth babe.

I think somebody mentioned I was a booth babe and the guy later apologized. Ryan Perez? Yeah, but he later apologized, which was cool. But then all these horrible people just piled on and started attacking me and devaluing my work. And like, I can take anything said about my appearance. I've probably thought it more than you have about my appearance. But when you attack my work or my motivation for my work, then you're, then I'm really sensitive about it because I try to embody what I believe in everything I do. You know, I've been had so many offers to do TV shows

or, you know, go off and do much, you know, bigger Hollywood quote unquote things. And I've turned them all down because I believe in the space so much. And then when you, you know, when I'm encountering things like that, where people just forget or they devalue everything I've done, it's like, well, am I stupid? You know, but you know, you just block it and move on and you see a really complimentary tweet and it's like, oh, the know, you just block it and move on and you see a really complimentary tweet. And it's like, oh, the wound is healed. You had to make a whole blog post to back up your tweet. Yeah.

You said, I'm a person who always has had a ton of guy friends. And the fact that there are many social situations where I'm not worth talking to as a person because I'm not sexually available makes me so sad for myself and for the friendships that could be but will never happen because to them I'm only there for a possible hookup. Wow, when you read it out loud, it sounds harsh. I love the fact that you said, I wasn't going to be on social media today. I wasn't. But then I tweeted this, and now I'm writing this whole blog post about the whole thing. Can you have guy friends? I don't know. I mean, I have a lot of guy friends, actually.

But I've been blown off in more social situations because I let the boyfriend word, the B word out. And that, again, is reflective of like of like well so i'm not interested i mean i'm i shouldn't be part of your world um because i'm a woman i can't we can't talk about the things that we mutually love together because i'm somehow deceiving you if i'm not sexually available like that was the sort of zeitgeist and that i've got my feelings hurt a lot well when you when you dive in in this way you know it's like you said, it's one thing, obviously these things are imbibed in your work and the way that you portray female characters

and just the worlds that you create. But then when you kind of stick your hand into the hornet's nest in this way on Twitter and then you've got the blog post, you're obviously not just limiting it to your work, you're engaging in social media, which we all know how crazy things can get. Do you regret that? Or is it like, no, this is part of how I're engaging in social media, which we all know how crazy things can get. Do you regret that?

Or is it like, no, this is part of how I am engaging in this issue? No, I never regret anything I do. I mean, I'm not an impulsive person. I don't tend to vlog about things like this. You never regret anything you do? Well, no, that's not true. But I tend to, when I feel emotionally strong about something, I tend to follow that. And I feel like if I feel emotionally invested in something, I feel like that will resonate with someone.

I'm like, I feel this strongly about this. I know someone else will agree with me. And I would rather, you know, I would rather talk about something substantial that will create a dialogue about something in a way that doesn't condemn people, but just kind of is a talking point. That's important to me because as an artist, if you get back to who you are, like you're here to create, you're here to reflect your being. And every one of us is unique. And unless you're really always digging and trying to redefine yourself and express that individuality, then you're not going to make great art. And that's kind of been a mission for me in the last like six to eight months, just to really re-engage with why I do what I do and what I want to say.

And that might be different from something I wanted to say five years ago. And that's good because that means I'm growing as a person. Do you think you tried to kind of recreate that atmosphere that led to the creation of the Guild? You know, you talked about how you were, you had money from the jobs that you were doing but you were kind of in this world where you didn't have you weren't running the business that you're running today uh were you trying to kind of create almost a sabbatical type approach to your life so that you could have that time yeah no so the last like six to eight months I have,

you know, I did, when Geek & Sundry first launched, I did a weekly show called The Flog. And I love that show so much, but it was a weekly show and I had almost no help. I didn't know how to use a teleprompter. I didn't use a teleprompter. Like this was me just like being enthusiastic about the show and I loved it so much.

And I had like one person who came in and shot it. And then other than that was me and somebody who moved in from Indiana to do it. I didn't have any help and I didn't know better. I just didn't know this world. And I made some bad choices personally that sort of burnt me out. And I think in doing a weekly show, I was pouring so much of my creativity into there. I had no well to go back to. So when I created Guild season six, the theme of that was, you know, surviving criticism and being an artist with all the criticism happening. That was actually the theme of it because it's the only thing I knew at that point after Geek and Sundry had just launched.

And after that, I was like, I have nothing right now. I don't know what to say. I don't know what I want to say as a creator. And I worry when I do little things that I'm frittering away the creativity that needs to be hoarded up in order to make something bigger like the guild. I mean the guild came out of years of work. I spent six months just on the characters. I did so many drafts of that script. And after probably a year and a half process, I finally put a camera up. But it was so much work and it was never good enough for me.

And I always was digging, like, who is this person? Who is this person? So I get to the point where it's like shorthand, I'll know exactly how they'll say a line. Or if I put two people in the same exact situation, these characters are so distinct that they'll talk completely differently. I mean, that's when you create, you know, something that can last 10 seasons or something, but it's not something in my skillset that I can do overnight. I'm sure there are people in Hollywood can do it, you know, very fast lately. That's not my process. And you had to create space. Exactly. And I'm still creating space. So what are you most excited about professionally this coming up? If you can

kind of paint a picture of what's next? Um, you know, as far as Geek and Sundry goes, we have some interesting things on the horizon. I wish I could say a bunch of things, but I'm in process on quite a few things. You want to just mouth it and then I will say it? Yeah.

Yabba-dabba-dabba. Yo, Gabba-Gabba, that name's already been taken. We're going to have a bunch of really cool announcements at Comic-Con. So if you're a fan of Geek & Sundry, come to Comic-Con. And I'm personally working on three writing projects. And I basically gave myself a year to write them. So there's no pressure. And if at the end I don't like it, I'm not going to show it to anyone.

And that gives me comfort in a way because I know that I'm creating something for the right reasons versus like, I gotta get something out there. People are going to forget about you. Well, you know what? You always have that sense that train's going to leave without you, but it's fine because another train will come along. I mean, really, honestly, LA especially is bad about that. Nobody's ever where they want to be in this town. And that sort of frantic sort of, I'm looking behind you to see if there's something better happening is so inauthentic and false and kind of a horrible

way to be or at least fidgety yeah fidgety it's like am I doing enough especially in this medium too not just in this town is there something else

is there could I be doing something else with my time now that's going to be more strategic that's going to be the thing that's going

to make all the difference exactly that thought goes through my head all the time I guess I'm that person. I'm sorry. No, I'm that person too, and I literally have to tamp it down because I

understand, having been here for so long, you guys have been, you know, we started pretty much at the same time, I think. There'll be another train. Yes, there's always another train, and it'll be the right train because literally every single thing I've turned down in the last year, a better thing has come along. Yeah, or you can just get on one of those things that's on the railroad tracks that you pump

up and down yourself. Yes, exactly. You just be like that weirdo. To carry the analogy further. Love it. I'll be like. Make your own train. You certainly already done that.

Yeah. Okay. Now, this is an odd thing to bring up, but it's something that's in my mind. It's a funny conversation we had. When we were hosting that thing, was it a marketing thing? It was marketing advertiser award where everyone was so drunk oh yeah they talked and they were taught they were the crowd talked the entire time yeah the three of us were reading off we were on stage reading off teleprompters and and it it was it we did great i thought it was it was fun i wouldn't say i'll never host anything again but certainly i need to be creating i'm i'm i'm putting a pause

i'm putting a pin in it. If it was an opportunity to riff with you guys again, I would be tempted. But I remember a conversation that we had backstage. It's kind of like being in a war zone, this type of thing. Who's going out next? Who's going out next to like,

in front of the firing squad. But I remember one of the conversations we had, somehow we got onto your first kiss with another woman was on stage. Not on stage. It was in front of cameras. It was on set. It was on Supernatural.

Yes. So I wanted to acknowledge, wow, that was how did we get there? And I wanted to go back there. How do we get there? I don't remember go back there. How did we get there? I don't remember how we got there. This is like a lucid dream that ended. Yeah.

Well, as long as we go back to it, I don't care how we did. I just, can you retell me that story? No, I mean, no, because I've played several lesbians. And I think that's awesome. Like, that's great. And sometimes I think that it's Hollywood's way of getting a really smart girl in there who doesn't have to be perfect looking. And they have to just be like, well, she's just not sexually attracted to the guy. But I've been very lucky in that the characters I've played who are lesbians have not been that.

They've been really well-rounded, awesome characters. And I play Charlie on Supernatural. Right. And the first time I ever kissed another girl was the actress on Supernatural. Right. And the first time I ever, the first time I ever kissed another girl was the actress on Supernatural. And she was like. And did you know it was, it was in the script?

Yeah, it was good. Well, I'm an actor. She was like, oh man, I don't know if I want to do this because we don't have to kiss when the camera's not on us. I'm like, yeah, no.

I know that. I don't, this is not, I'm not getting all up in there. Like this is not like playtime for me. I'm trying to be appropriate. And then she comes and she's like, yeah, no. I know that. I'm not getting all up in there. This is not playtime for me. I'm trying to be appropriate. And then she comes and the camera rolls and she's all up in my grill.

Was that the story? You're talking about she seemed really timid and then she was all tongue. It was more aggressive than I would have thought. But she's like an actor. She committed. So maybe I should have committed more.

I guess my follow-up question was, and still is. Still is. Was there a sense in that conversation ahead of time, it's like, should we practice? Is there something to this? No, there's no practice. Have you ever never done a love scene? No. Oh.

And so to me. I've done many. No, actually, no. Link did a kissing scene in one of our videos but it was with his wife oh she insisted upon being

she would my she wouldn't let you put Kristen in a video Christy has never been in a video and then I come home and I'm like listen

the script calls for me to make out with a woman and she was like tell me when to be there and she said you can only shoot the back of my head wow and she was like tell me when to be there and and she said you can only shoot the back of my head and I was like well that's that's fine just you have to lean in and be the aggressor and so just look at the amount of strategy it went into my conversation with my own wife to to make out

on camera and if I had to make out with a guy on camera it seems like there'd be a lot of logistics to work out ahead of time you had to really I mean really it was only like let's not kiss off camera when the camera's on I was like yeah of course so that was it that was the only negotiation happening but she assumed that you would like to practice I don't know what she was assuming I think she was just a little bit nervous and I was like yeah i would be fine about it yeah i mean listen i would be nervous to kiss a girl on camera and then if i had to kiss a guy on camera being not gay then that would be even more like okay now they're right it was fine it just it was lips they were a little bit too soft that's all my opinion of it was not in a bad way i was just like this is softer than normal right they need to be normally calloused and there needs

i need to feel like bristle. Bristles. So it was weird for her but it was nothing for you. It was just... It was not not weird. I mean, it was a novel.

I wish I'd done it in college. There you go. Wow, novel, okay. You know. And so, and you... Written a novel

or you made out with a girl in college? And you played a couple other lesbians and then the first episode of Spooked features a lesbian couple. Yeah, and you know, we got some great comments that I blocked everybody.

Oh, you too. And what was the strategy there? Because obviously it's like, I mean, there's one strategy which is like, hey, let's start, let's go episode one with a lesbian couple because everybody will be into that. No, it was me, you know, listen. I mean, doing scripted on YouTube is, as you know, challenging. And I always think not like let's throw lesbians in there, but let's do something that mainstream TV would not do.

That's always in my mind. If this feels too much like TV, then I know 100% that it's not going to catch people's attention. Right. And our script, literally, we were trying to find a guy to play Alison Hayslip's part. And I was so upset. I was like, there's something wrong about this. There's something wrong about this. It's not special enough.

It's not special enough. And the director and I were like, well, why can't it be a woman? And then once we said that, I was like, oh, wow. The whole character arc where the dad not liking them getting married means something. So there was substance. them getting married means means something so there was substance so we made that artistic decision because there's substance there for the for the character for the story arc of the story versus like let's just do a stunt that was never my intention it will never be my intention and the fact that we can represent a lesbian couple um being just people in a show that

should happen everywhere it's the same thing with the guild like we should have asians and people of color not calling attention look i'm the i'm the person of color like that's how or i'm the smart girl like it just should be and that's what i feel is kind of false about tv when i see it i see that it's sort of they're pulling from the same cast of characters over and over and the same kind of actors and the same scenarios. And I'm like, we've all seen it. We've all seen it being done probably better than this. Like, let's just go out of the box and portray people that we aren't used to seeing.

And that's why I particularly love that casting choice, which literally came like two days before we were shooting because we couldn't find a guy DJ. And it all works out. Yeah. Well, listen, we appreciate the time that we've had together to pick your brain. Well, I don't know. I was a little rambly, but I appreciate your having me on. This table has some of the people I admire the most on it, like Tabiscus and Jenna Marbles and Grace over there.

And now you need to sign the table. I am totally honored. And there you have it, our ear biscuit with Felicia Day. So she was off the radar and is now just kind of coming back into the intersphere of the web. She did a sabbatical like a professor. You know, this is the kind of thing that I'm into. That's the term that they use, professors. Sabbatical. Like when they take an extended leave.

But, you know, I hear, you know, she talks about this, finding this creative time. You know, I'm interested in that. But I'm also just interested in, you know, she talks about this, finding this creative time, you know. I'm interested in that, but I'm also just interested in, you know, hobbies like woodworking, furniture building, foam sculpture. You're interested in hairstyling. You could get a hairstyling kit. Think of all the things that we could do on a sabbatical.

And we don't have to do it together. I mean, I do think that we should. We probably shouldn't be together. A, we're not gonna do a sabbatical. I can't even spell sabbatical. And we don't have to do it together. I mean, I do think that we should. We probably shouldn't be together. A, we're not going to do a sabbatical. I can't even spell sabbatical. I don't think you can take one unless you can spell it. Oh, you can look it up. But I'll Google it.

Yeah. And then maybe that'll gain me interest into it. Well, sometimes you can spell it. You're so bad at spelling a word that you cannot Google it. Has that ever happened? Oh, wow. Like, you can't even get spell check to recognize it. Like, you're like, I can't even get close enough.

That happens to me trying to spell silhouette. I try to spell silhouette, and I'm like, I can't get close enough to have it tell me that I'm wrong. That's how bad I am. But if we take a sabbatical, I do think it needs to be for creative purposes. There needs to be some applying ourselves. I'm going to create a lot of stuff.

Foam sculpture, furniture. No, I think that we would write a lot more music. Chests of drawers or Chester drawers as you refer to them as. Yeah, like it's an uncle. I got an uncle named Chester drawers. Write a lot of music. Okay, I'm down with that. But separately? I mean, you can't be on a

sabbatical together. That's weird. You're gonna be on my sabbatical? Uh, yeah. Maybe we should take a sabbatical with semi-regular check-ins. Like maybe two cabins in the woods separated by about a mile. So you definitely have to walk.

But there's a line of sight, so we can communicate by like... Or a can phone with a string between the two cans. Yeah, that would probably impede the creative process. But yeah, we could do it separate. I don't care. Whatever. I'll go to my own cabin.

I don't need a line of sight. I mean, we're not that codependent, are we? I don't think so. But as long as the can string will reach. Let Felicia know what you thought of her ear biscuit. Her Twitter handle is Felicia Day. It has two I's in it and it has two A's in it and it has one E in it. That's how you spell it.

Also, remember, you can support the show by going over to iTunes and leaving a review or a rating. You can also leave a comment on SoundCloud. That's another place you can listen to the podcast. Let us know what you think about the podcast. Hashback. Hashback. Hatchback. Oh, man. I need a sabbatical or else

I'm going to keep saying things like hashtag. Hatchback Ear Biscuits. Hashbag's a totally different thing. There's going to be no hashbags on the sabbatical. Hashtag Ear Biscuits. Sorry.