Good Life Project - Arian Moayed: Fear Never Leaves, Just Keep Going [Best Of]

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

Maybe you’ve seen today’s guest, Arian Moayed, on HBO’s Emmy-Award winning show, Succession, where he played Stewy. Or, in movies where h worked with legends like Bill Murray, Spike Lee. Or, on stage, where he was nominated for a TONY. Or, you might’ve caught his groundbreaking thriller, The Accidental Wolf (http://theaccidentalwolf.com/), which he wrote and directed, starring Kelli O’Hara, Laurie Metcalf, Denis O’Hare, and a cast of 36 Tony nominations. Stumbling into a love of acting, Moayed began to pursue it as a career early in life. He was met, as most actors are, with an unending parade of "you can't do that's." But, to him that just meant, make it happen on your own. "Do" your way through it. And, so he did. Which has been an enduring theme in his life.Arian's family fled Iran when he was just a little kid, taking a years-long journey that split the family between different countries, and eventually landed them just outside Chicago, where they set about building a new life in a radically different world. Acting became a fast passion and he began to develop a genuine love for theater and set about crafting a career. But along the way, he also realized that acting, for him, was also a pathway to writing, advocacy, and education. He became an award-winning writer/director and co-founded the theater/film production and arts education venture, Waterwell (http://www.waterwell.org/), where his heart is most boldly on display in the guiding the growth of teachers and 6-12th graders in New York City’s free theater training program, and exploring not just performance, but citizenship, service, equality, advocacy, justice, and what it means to be human. We all need more of that these days.We're so excited to share this Best Of conversation with you today.You can find Arian Moayed at:Website : http://waterwell.org/personnel/arian-moayed/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/arianmoayed/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So maybe you have seen my guest, Arianne Moyad, on HBO's Emmy Award-winning show, Succession, where he played Stewie. Or maybe you've seen him acting in movies alongside legends like Bill Murray, Spike Lee, or on stage where he was nominated for a Tony. Or maybe you caught his groundbreaking thriller, The Accidental Wolf, which he wrote and directed, starring Kelly O'Hara, Laurie Metcalf, Dennis O'Hare, and a cast of 36 Tony nominations. But what you likely didn't know about his powerful, quote, backstory, as a lot of folks in the acting world would call it, is that Ariane's family fled Iran when he was just a little kid, taking a

years-long journey that split the family between two countries and eventually landed them just outside Chicago, where they set about building an entirely new life in a radically different world. And acting became a fast passion for Arianne, and he began to develop a genuine love for theater. But as is common in the field, he was met with an unending parade of, you can't do that. To him though, that just meant make it happen on your own. And that is exactly what he has done. Yes, with the collaboration of so many people, but it was the attitude that says, I will not stop just because somebody says this is going to be really hard, that pushed him through. So do your way through it became his mantra. And that's exactly

what he did, building a really beautiful career. But along the way, he also realized that acting for him, well, it was also a pathway to writing and to advocacy and education. And that's where his sort of deeper heart started to plant itself. He became an award-winning writer-director and co-founded the theater and film production and arts education venture, Waterwell, where his heart is most boldly on display in guiding the growth of teachers and sixth to 12th graders in New York City's free theater training program and exploring not just performance, but ideas of citizenship and service, equality, advocacy, justice, and what it means to be human.

We all need more of that these days. I am so excited to share this best of conversation with you today. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I believe in curiosity. I just think that we can't do anything without it, really.

And just asking people. It's basically a version of empathy. You know what I mean? And like empathizing with who people are and what they do. Were you the curious kid? Like is this something that's been a part of you for your life or something you've cultivated? Yeah, I don't know. I think the circumstances of my life, you know, being born in Iran and then moving here as young immigrants in the 80s where Iran was like enemy number one, if you recall, you know, and like Iran, Russia, which we're kind of back there again. I kind of felt that like, you know, I was so curious about this world, this culture.

And I think that's kind of where it started. Also, you know, it's crazy. It I think that's kind of where it started. Also, you know, it's crazy. It was crazy. My parents don't speak any, my parents' English is not great. You know, they came here when they were 40 and 50. Do you know what I mean? It's not like they, you know, I'm 37. So like imagining myself in three years time taking Olive and Ivy and Chrissy and saying, Hey, we're all going to move to China. We're going to make life better in China. I mean, that's all you can be is curious, I guess.

Yeah, I guess. So how old were you when you actually left Iran? Well, we left Iran. It's hard to tell because the time period was so crazy. There was a war happening. I think a lot of people, especially who are a bit younger, don't really remember that whole window of our history and our relationship with Syria. Yeah, the Middle East. Yeah. Yeah, I know it's complicated. It's long and it's going to either bore or fascinate all of you guys. But the truth is, it's hard to

talk about because there's so many levels to how crazy it is. One is my mom was married to my dad at the age of 13. My mom was 13. My dad arranged marriage. Which was pretty standard. It was on the outs in that time period. Yeah. But my parent, my mom's mom was a single mom. She was the youngest. You know, she couldn't make it happen. And so she had to like, you know, she than my mom's side was. And so they got arranged. My mom had her first kid at 15 years old, her second kid at 16, and her third kid at 18, and then had me when she was 35. So my siblings are 17, 18, and basically 20 years older than me. And then the revolution hit in 79 and then a war hit right after that because Saddam invaded with, you know, and then got the support of the United States, you know, because we, of the Iranian hostage situation. And then we were in a war.

And so everyone was closed inside as there was bombings happening all over Tehran and all over the border. And so we were indoors. And when people get indoors and there's a lot of fear in the air of uncertainty, you procreate. And so the baby boom in Iran happened at that moment in 79 to like 85, where like 60% of Iranian population right now in Iran

is under the age of 40. It's fascinating. You walk down the street and everyone's young. So anyway, and then, and then crazily, my brother, my oldest brother was 16 when he graduated high school in Iran. His name is Amir. And then he went to a school, he got, he got accepted to a school in Chicago, right? When he was 16. So 16, like 20-ish, he's in Chicago-ish, ish, ish, or like something like that. And then the revolution hit. And then my brother was like, should I come back? And my parents were like, you're never coming back here. We'll come to you. And then in that time period, my youngest, my brother that's closest to me, who's 17, his name is Omid.

Omid was drafted in the Iran-Iraq war and fought three years in that war with a couple of my cousins who have passed away, who died in that war. One of them, which died in that war. And then my brother was in war. My sister was in the middle there. I was in war. My sister was in the middle there. I was just born. We got the F out of town and we went as far as my dad's connections and money and connections could take you. And that was Dubai. We got to Dubai. We had lived in the United Arab Emirates and we were there off and on for about five years. And then, and then we, and then, you know, a long period of time, you know, no one heard it from my brother was fighting this war and, and trying to, and trying to try to like move three pieces ahead while also like making sure the pieces back here, you know, it's a chess game, you know, and, and a dangerous one. And then my dad, then we had word that omid was alive we went back to iran my he got back he was you know now 1920 you know fought three years in a war in a city called omid his name is omid which

means hope and where everyone like was slaughtered and murdered and died because it was a brutal war, brutal war. And he's a 20-year-old brainwashed, PTSD-ed kid. And in that time period, as we're figuring out to go back to Dubai and come back, my sister falls in love. And falls in love with a guy. And then that made things tricky. And then we all left and my sister stayed. So my sister got to the States

in 2003, we all left in 85. So, and, and then we came to the States and again, you know, the, the analogy that the Chinese, like us, like you and me and you taking your family and just all of a sudden going to China or whatever, a language that you don't know, or a culture that you don't know. And you're like, this is the best news for us now, you know, you're gonna, it's not gonna be easy. And so in all of that, you just get a, you know, a sense of like the world in a very kind of complicated way at a very young age. And not only do they not speak the language,

they don't know what Christmas is. They don't know what Hanukkah is. They don't have any idea why people are going to church all the time. They have no clue why the cars are this way. They don't know why the food is packaged. There's nothing that is familiar. There's nothing that you can empathize with as an Iranian living in the States and being like, I know this thing. And so in all that, you are learning rapidly, you know, in a very drastic way. And so that curiosity might have had something to do with it. I'm not really sure. Yeah. And then plus landing in the States at that time in our history. And where did you end up in Chicago? Yeah, we had to go to Chicago. My brother was in Chicago. So that's how we, I mean, it's always, we always like, why didn't he go to schools in Los Angeles? We always joke about like, we picked the coldest city.

So when you land there with the rest of the family then, was there at the time an Iranian community there? Or were you sort of like, okay, here's a group of people who are not like anyone else around us? Both. You know, there was no Iranian community. I mean, a small one. There's Iranians everywhere.

Just like there's, you know, Tibetans everywhere. You know, there's Jewish folks everywhere. They had to find it. And, you know, a friend of mine who was a friend who was a cousin of the guy that you went to high school with, remember him? He lives in Chicago. Let's get his phone number. That's kind of the game that you play. And then all of a sudden, you know, we were just talking about like, you know, communal, communal, is that the right word? Communal. Communal. Communal. I added an extra liquid U in there.

Yeah, I'm still saying it. I'm not going to say it. Where all these people come together, you know, we, Iranians would do that all the time because we only had each other. But also, you know, we weren't rich. We had no access to anything. And so we all of a sudden were dumped into, we weren't impoverished,

but we dumped into the lower middle-class neighborhoods, which are apartment buildings and all this stuff. And so those neighborhoods are full of immigrants. And so all of a sudden, you're instantly bonding with Haitian and Taiwanese and Korean and Jewish and Jehovah's Witness. I mean, it's just, and you just become friends with everybody that is not, that only understands America as a second place. You know, it's kind of like, you know, when you go on a trip to like a country with like a group of like Westerners or you meet a bunch of Westerners and all of a sudden you can like connect, be like, oh my God, this is so different than it is or

whatever. It's kind of what happens to immigrants. You just go to the people that kind of like know, you know, that. And that's what kind of what happened. And, you know, the next steps were kind of like the greatest things that my parents have ever done. And again, kudos to them for their ingenuity. We went, we lived in a pretty, you know, kind of crappy neighborhood in the north side of Chicago at the time called Andersonville, which is now not crappy. It's like the new Williamsburg. And, but, you know, I came home with, I found a pocket knife at school. I asked my parents, you know, my brother, my oldest brother, like what the middle finger went and how, and like the first like three months. And I was swearing a lot and I was in an ESL class. Well, the ESL classes were full of Hispanic speaking. So I was now all of a

sudden speaking Spanish. So all of a sudden my first language outside of Persian was like Spanish, broken Spanish. It was a thing. And my parents, in all of their wisdom, they said, let's move to a really, really, really rich neighborhood. Rich, upper-class neighborhood. And live in not the upper-class part because there are those neighborhoods. And that's what we did. We moved to this apartment complex that was full like full of these, you know, immigrants. But we went to this great schooling.

And the reason why it was the greatest decision is because all of a sudden I had access to public school education that was really inclusive or it seemed inclusive and art, a lot of art. So is that where sort of the light bulb went on for you? Yeah, kind of. There was that on for you? Yeah, kind of. There was that side to you? Yeah. All of a sudden, it was just, it was fascinating. And you know, I probably saw so much, you know, and I'm using trauma with the small T of just my parents and my lifestyle uprooting and like not, no.

And I was watching small little traumas happen left and right, you know, not even about money, though. Some of it was about money, but some of it about language and culture and loneliness and, and, you know, all that stuff that I kind of also felt like it was my duty to make everyone feel good maybe. And so I remember doing a lot of like things that other people wanted to still

like, so like people would feel better. So then that involved some level of performing. Yeah. I was playing piano a lot. I was, you know, I was, was playing piano a lot. And, but I was also like, I made everyone laugh. I knew how to like do jokes, you know, I just, and, and again, this is also weird and funny, but my parents, you know, I just, and, and again, this is also weird and funny, but my parents, you know, like all, all immigrants, you only will get the Hollywood entertainment that's like 10 or 15 years ago. It's not like now that like everyone's getting like direct access to whatever blacklist it's back then you're still dealing with the things that were 15 years old. Do you know what I mean? And so like we, Iran missed Star Wars. Like we never had Star Wars

until honestly I was like 12, 13, because then I was like, what's Star Wars? But we did, my parents love Charlie Chaplin. So I watched Charlie Chaplin films when I was a kid and my parents love, I love Lucy. And I watched like every I love Lucy episode. My parents really understood Three's Company, which was like a modern show at the time. So we watched Three's Company all the time. And so these were my like social influences. And whenever they wanted like a dramatic movie, we would watch like comedy that came from Lucille Ball that was so addictive to me and I could do it. I could like pratfall and like do all these like, I don't know, like silly things. So that's kind of how it all started to be quite honest. So when does, I mean, so, so you're getting drawn to this on a personal level and expressing it and playing with it and dancing with it. When does it click in your mind that, huh, this might actually be something bigger for

me? And I'm curious also coming from the, like your parents, I mean, some of, a lot of times like the classic story when you were a first generation immigrant is that there's, there's a strong emphasis, you know, in the family, in the community on education and in following one of the quote professional tracks. And, you know, that may be, you know, in the family, in the community, on education, and in following one of the, quote, professional tracks. And, you know, that may be, you know, like... Yeah, doctor, lawyer, businessman. Right. And maybe I'm sort of like, you know, like painting with a broad brush there, but sort of like a common cultural phenomenon that you see. When you start to express, hey,

you know, like there's, I think maybe my thing is actually not that, but it's more along the arts and more along performance, which is notoriously, you know, the automatic assumption is, oh, great. So you're going to, you know, like, I'm going to be paying my kids rent for the rest of their lives or just, you're going to struggle. I'm curious whether you had, like, how did that, those conversations happen with your folks? That's a very good question. I mean, you know, and quite honestly, it's so complicated because I was doing a lot of shows. I was just doing a lot of shows. So they saw it. And they also saw that, like, I was just telling you earlier, but I'll say it again. Like, I went into my senior and junior year asking my high school teachers, what do I need to do to get like a B? Like, what? Like, I don't need to like get all

fancy with it. Just what's the B, what, what does B look like? So they, my parents also knew that, that like, I could have excelled at that kind of stuff, but I just was like, just let me, you know, so they kind of knew it. You know, it's funny. A lot of this was because of my brothers, my oldest brother, the one that was here, who, who is, you know, an Iranian that was in the first 16 years of his life in Iran and then in America. He was an engineer, he was like a computer engineer. So, and in Iran, really like, it's more important to have education

than it is to have like money in a weird way. Like we always say, we always say like this, you know, is like saying, oh, she is a top level engineer. And that's how you would describe them in introducing someone.

They would say like, oh, Jonathan, meet, who is a, I'm literally saying Mr. Engineer. You know, that's what the level is. So my brother was that. My other brother ended up being a doctor anesthesiologist, you know, in the D.C., Maryland area. So my parents had bragging rights.

So that was kind of like nice. They kind of gave you cover. Yeah, a little bit. And, you know, without trying to get too, I don't want to like start crying on you, but my mom and my dad, you know, instilled a lot of, you can do absolutely anything you want to do. And they made it seem like they nurtured an environment that said, you will do whatever you want to do. And so there was never any crazy doubt about it. I mean, there's always doubt. I'm still, I have doubt right now saying what I'm saying to you. Do you know what I mean? But it's, but there was never a feeling that whatever I wanted to do,

I wasn't going to like try my hardest, love it as best as I can and like excel at it. My dad always used to say, you can be a garbage man. I don't care. But if you're not the best garbage man, pick something else. You know, and that was like, that's also a very hungry, immigrant-y, survival of the fittest mentality, where I see it in immigrants, you know, sometimes more than I see it in second, third, fourth generation Americans and Westerners, is that there is this ability to, we came all the way over here through war, through language barriers, through culture.

We did all of these crazy steps and now all of a sudden you can do anything you want to do. And that's kind of like the household I grew up in. And I remember telling, and I think my parents kind of wanted me to be a doctor. And then I remember I was 17 and I was in my room and I had my biology book open in my senior year. And I think I was failing this class. I was just not doing well in this class. It was like an AP biology class that I was stupidly taking because I don't know why.

And I was failing at it, and I should have gotten out. And then my dad comes in and he goes, are you okay? And I just weep. I started weeping. And uncontrollable, when you're trauma-y, you know, short breath, you can't control it, it's just coming all out. And he's like, what's the matter? I don't want to be a doctor. And he's like, what do you want to do?

He's like, I want to be a doctor. I want to be a doctor. He's like, okay, okay, who cares? Who cares? Calm down. You know, all in Farsi. And that was it. And then that senior year, like, you know, every, you know, I'm sure you've talked to so many people, everyone's got their own little things.

Pieces just fell into my lap. Two things fell into my lap that I could not ever get rid of. One was, one was, I took a film studies class my senior year of high school, and we read a book called Rebel Without a Crew about Robert Rodriguez and how he made the movie El Mariachi on $7,000 of drug money. And in the end of this book, there is an appendix 1A, and there's a couple lines in there that says, how do you be a great film director? Make 17 bad movies or something like that. And I was 17 and I read that and it just, it broke my brain. I understood it. Oh, if you do something a lot, eventually you're going to get someone good at this thing. You know, it's the 10,000 hour rule. It's like all these things that

we've, you know, I've heard. Eventually you're going to just like stumble into something okay. That made a lot of sense to me. And then I read, as I was like visiting schools, I read this David Mamet book, which is crazy because I'm not a David Mamet fan anymore, but I read this book called True and False and I read the whole thing and I didn't understand anything that he was talking about. But one of the things that he says is, you want to be an actor actor act. I'm like, oh yeah, I understood that as well. Like this is, this just made sense to me. Like,

oh, you want to be an actor to act? Who's, who's going to stop you from acting? And so then all of a sudden, I think that's when the, you know, entrepreneurial spirit started like kind of really like,

you know, that's, it opened the door for that. You know, it opened the door of like, I can do anything really. And it also, I mean,

how, how powerful for you to gain those two lessons so early in life that i think so many of us are still struggling to figure out now like one is if you want to get better something you're like okay study it but but more than anything else just do it just do the thing like do the hell out of it you know over and over and get it really wrong right a lot and that's the second part right which is that and especially when you look at some form of the arts, like people tend to, you know, whether you're coding like some like app or whether you're painting or whether you're acting, people tend to, I think, judge pretty early on. They're like, oh, this, this person has it or this person doesn't. And there's

now, I mean, there's actually like pretty strong body of research that actually backs up what you were just saying about that one, was it Rodriguez quote? Yeah, I'm messing up the call. Yeah, well, whatever it is. But the idea that, no, in fact, for the best of the best, yes, there may be like the thinnest slice of humanity, which is some sort of like bizarre savant-like thing. But the vast majority of people who we hold up to be some of the best at the best whatever they do in the world, they're not that person. They're the ones who have produced a stunning volume of work. Like the idea that becoming extraordinary even at the arts is in no small part a volume game.

And it's the people who like say, okay, let me bang out these 17 movies and learn from each one. So I can get the crappy stuff out behind me and start to be less and less and less crappy and then maybe at some point half decent and then maybe at some point good. Having that mindset early on, so powerful. Yeah. And it wouldn't have happened if I didn't take this. I'm telling you, in my public high school,

a film studies class that I couldn't have been at unless my parents moved. You know, like it all led to that moment. And to go off right off what you're saying, there is, you know, there is no possible way that if you do something for long enough, you're not going to have some expertise in that thing. You know, Tom Ridgely, who I, you know, who's the co-founder of Waterwall with me, he's the artistic director, who we will talk about in a second, I'm sure. But like, we started this company together. And in college, my senior year of college, he and I, who were roommates, he would say, like, listen, man, we're going to shoot for the moon. But if we end up in the clouds, we're still flying. And it's like a great way of thinking about it. It's like, yeah,

I would love to be in the clouds flying. You know, I would love to be on the moon too, but wouldn't it be awesome to just even be flying? And, and we're still going to go for the moon, you know, our whole lives ahead of us. And so, and so those, those things never kind of ended for me. The do, do, do, do, do, do. It's still, I still say that in the industry, you know, there's so many people that have plays or movies or scripts and they all want me, they send it to Waterwell or send it to Waterwell Films or whatever. And they want us to do it or somehow, you know what I mean? Like for us to produce it or whatever. And I understand that. And I love that grit. I love that persistence of it. But half the times the answer to their question is, I'm so sorry to

tell you this. You're going to have to do it. Your script is probably amazing. It probably is great. You're going to have to do that thing. And you're going to have to do it and you're going to have to do it and succeed at it for the next one to be, for the next one to be, and just like moving up the ladder. Because there is, I don't care if you are a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, a mortgage broker, you're going to have to do this thing. Eventually you're gonna have to do stuff.

They always say in the acting business, like how do I get an agent? Like young students that come up, how do I get an agent? Help me get an agent. And I always say in the acting business, like, how do I get an agent? Like young students that come up, how do I get an agent? Help me get an agent. And I always say, you know, the agent gets 10% because they do 10% of the work. They make a couple emails. They get you an audition.

They hopefully struck a deal. The 90% is you, man. You're like, so like, get ready. Just having an agent doesn't mean that your life is over and they're going to make everything okay. You still have to do 90 difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations,

iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Continue. Okay, so you get the lessons, right? You get the download, the knowledge bomb, but then at the same time, this is a profession, which is notoriously brutal, notoriously filled with rejection, notoriously filled with walls, which means you have to keep doing and doing and doing, doing, doing in, in a space, in an industry, which chews up a lot of people.

One of the things that I have found across all different people in all different industries is that at some point, one of the biggest catalysts for somebody saying, I'm willing to keep doing this and then get to a point where, okay, so I'm starting to break through or break out is the sometimes near magical appearance of a mentor in some way, shape or form. Some person who comes in and says. This. Yeah. Was there anybody like that in your life? You know, I feel like everyone around me has that person.

Honestly. I feel like I take everybody's best and I just steal it. And I tell them that I'm going to steal it. I feel like Tom Ridgely is my mentor. He's my age. Do you know what I mean? This professor in college who said to us in a directing class, in the theater, A plus B does not equal C.

A plus B equals giraffe. And he said that to us. And again, like, oh, you can do anything. In the theater, you can do anything. Art is anything that you want to. I don't have to fit in any norms. I don't have to wait for anyone to tell me what to do. I don't have to wait for another.

You can do anything. You know, if you say giraffe, you might as well say blue. You might as well say, you know, you might as well speak in Farsi. It doesn't matter because you can do anything. And then, you know, and Tom, you know, Tom is a big deal because Tom and I met in college at Indiana University. I went to Indiana University because the undergraduate advisor, I asked him, how many shows can I do here? And he said to me, as many as you want. I ended up doing 15, getting closer to that 17.

I met Tom my freshman year. We both were cast as freshmen in the lead on the main stage production of Indiana University, where all these were supposed to go to MFA students. We became friends. 9-11 happened. All of a sudden, we said, we got to do something. We have to actively try to better the world. Literally, that's not hyperbolic.

We were very game on, you know, our influences were Martin Luther King, Gandhi, you know, like these people. And just like these were the people that we were doing. And then we were reading like Julie Taymor and Peter Brook. And so 9-11 happened. Tom and I, the summer before, decided that we're going to come to New York. I'm going to start a theater company, whatever the heck that meant. I mean, we had no idea what we were talking about. 9-11 happened. We moved to New York. We wrote a show in a month and a half, performed it one time at the Collective Unconscious. It was just $500 of our money

that we rehearsed on the roof of our apartment. And I learned from Tom's resilience, you know? And then the first show was one show, $500, called Lost in Yemen or The Bazaar Bazaar, a pretty like radically progressive, insanely, you know, irresponsible play. But we were 22 and we wanted to change the world and then we did another play right afterward with a couple of other indiana university friends three others

and then we picked the duplex cabaret theater if i'm being honest with you we didn't even know it was a it was a gay you know cabaret theater we just found out that you they just take the door we didn't have to pay them rent which was mind-boggling to us like We didn't have to pay them rent, which was mind-boggling to us. Like, we don't have to pay you? You're just going to take them? Okay, great. We're not going to bring in anybody. People came, you know?

And then, you know, so Tom was a mentor. Murray McGibbon, that teacher, was a mentor. You know, Mark Ferguson. These are the people along the way. I just try to, I think of that as my philosophy for art. You know, like, where I'm on a film set, if I just try to, I think of that as my philosophy for art, you know, like where I'm on a film set, if I'm director or even acting, I don't need to have the idea. I actually don't even want to have the idea. Sometimes I'm like, what is the best idea for this moment on screen? Can someone just tell us what the, you tell me all your ideas and you tell

me all your ideas. And my job as director or actor or writer or whatever is to funnel all of that noise and say, you know what? I've looked at all this, and these are the three best ideas, and this is what's going to happen. And then you just roll the dice and hope for the best. So that's kind of – and that's how we started the company, too. The company became this ensemble company. So tell me more about that. Because it seems like, I mean, it seems like 9-11 lit this fire in you to sort of explore the intersection between performing arts and citizenship. Yeah, exactly. You're absolutely right. We weren't as eloquent as that at 22.

But, you know, we would just say, yeah, that's exactly what was happening. What was happening is we started realizing that theater's actual function is not to get us more jobs. Theater's actual function is to leave a lasting mark on our society, like the Greeks did, like the Persians did, like Shakespeare did, that will tell us how to live life better. That's what the Greek plays are. And Tom and I understood that at a very young age. The 2000s were a year of like ironic theater. There's a lot of irony in theater, a lot of like cynicism. Just sort of generally. Yeah, generally. I just think people were scared of not dealing, wanting to deal with things.

Do you know what I mean? I think they were scared. They're just so scared. And I understand that. You know, it was a scary time. We were in a, I mean, not as scary as moments now maybe, but, you know, we were in a war that we didn't know anything about. We were scared of another terrorist attack. There's so many things that were happening. And during that time period, Tom and I just, our way to help society

was to make this theater company called Waterwell. And the mission statement is essentially, we're gonna do socially conscious, civic-minded theater that's accessible to all. And that's enlightening, engaging, empathetic, and really entertaining. And we started writing in shows. We didn't know anyone in New York. We knew nobody in New York. So we couldn't buy the rights to anything, so we wrote plays. And we didn't know how to direct, so we directed the plays. And we knew other actors, so we acted in the plays.

And then they're like, you need to become a nonprofit. We became a nonprofit. And then we found out again, you know, we didn't have any lawyers or anything like that. We just found out, oh, it's the IRS's job to help us get this thing. Not the IRS's job to help us not get this thing. And that's a little difference in thinking. So it's like, well, just turn it in and tell us what's wrong with it. So we turned in a draft of our non, you know, 501c3 and it came back like denied. And here are the 45 things wrong with it. And so we're like, they're so silly.

They just told us what's wrong with it. So we literally copied and pasted verbatim what they wrote and we put it in the application. We became a nonprofit four weeks later. It was the easiest, not the easiest, but you know, and, and then we became a nonprofit and every step of the way, you have to raise money. Okay. Well, we'll ask people for money. We have to write a grant. How do you do that? We'll write a grant. We'll get it wrong. And we got it wrong. And every step of the way, whatever the obstacle that was in front of us, we just took head on, tried the best that we can, being as fair and ethical and moral and quick as we can, and using our wits about us. And then we did it.

And then the fifth show was a show called The Persians, a comedy about war with five songs. And we adapted this Aeschylus play, and we made it into this vaudevillian, rat-packy, you know, hour-and-30-minute show. We did it at this, you know, amazing, small 40-seat theater called Honor St. Mark's. And people loved it. And this was our fifth show or sixth show. And, again, we did, like, six shows in, like, three years.

Like, we wrote them all, which is fast. And it became a hit. And then some general manager, another, you know, mentor, not a mentor, but another, like, you know, iconic figure came that I acted in a play that he general managed like maybe six months prior. And he saw the play and he's like, you guys, I think you should move this to a bigger theater. And then he found us a theater called the Old Perry Street Theater. And he said, if you raise $20,000, I bet you I can help you move this play to this theater. And then we're like, impossible, $20,000. He goes, ask around. In 12 hours, we called everyone we knew and said, hey, and now again, I have a doctor brother, you know,

so they got a little bit of cash now. And so I said to them, I said, we might move that. We want to move this show to an off-Broadway theater. In 12 hours, we had like $10,000. So we called up that guy, Jamie Chazelle, and we said, let's do it. We're going to do this thing. We did it to that theater. The New York Times came, they gave us a rave review. And then, you know, we extended a bunch and sold out tickets. And we had Thursday night, Persian night. And it was like, we made it when we were like smart, starting this little business. And all this to say that, you know, another crazy thing, William Morris showed up one night, unbeknownst to any of us, I was 25 and they signed me as an actor. And in that meeting,

I kind of vaguely, that first meeting, again, I was 25, had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea what they wanted to represent me. And I genuinely, and I said to this guy named Derek Zaskey, I said, well, that's fine and all, but if you want to represent me, you have to also represent my company too. And he kind of like, I think he like, I bet he doesn't even remember. He kind of like probably looked, he looked at me confused, like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? Do you know what I mean? And he's like, okay, yeah, sure, whatever. But then that was the confidence that I needed to be like, now we're repped by William Morris or whatever, which wasn't probably true, but that gave me the oomph. And then we used and abused them. We called them up. Hey, I want to know how, you know, this is done. Teach me how, you know, commercial off-Broadway is done. Or teach me, how can I talk to this agent? And along that way, you know,

I was getting these acting jobs. And then within like six months of being with William Morris, I booked this like really high profile pilot at the time that was directed by Spike Lee, that was produced by Barry Levinson and written by the incredible Tom Fontana. And that I was like 26 and I was in this like major big deal pilot. And then I think that, and then it's just like, you know.

Yeah, it starts cascading. Yeah, it's just kind of going from there. I mean, as I sort of like sit here and listen to you tell this, it seems so matter of fact. Like, and this is just what happens. And was there a time at all where you said to yourself, I'm not worthy. I'm not ready. I'm not good enough. This isn't good enough. Because it doesn't, the way you tell it, that's not coming through, which is astonishingly unusual.

Yeah. No, God, no. I am totally totally constantly in fear and in doubt of every decision I make. And yet you still make them and say like, I'm doing it. I'm just going to do this. I'm, you know, it's so funny. I'm even getting emotional just thinking about it, but I, you know, I'm so fascinated with fear. I have so much of it. I'm so scared of the minutia of it all, of failure, of this interview, of, you know, looking at, I'm scared of life. And I just, but I don't know what else to do. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't know how to conquer fear until I just do it.

And then I just know that like, you know, becoming, I make the nonprofit story feel like whatever. I'm telling you at that time when we were writing the application at three in the morning, Tom and I, 22 years old, you know, probably like four, we had the like, we used to buy 40s, you know, and just like write this nonprofit application. It was all fear. It still is.

It still is. I mean, the company is 15 years old. We're about to do this major legacy project, huge legacy project. And we're so scared. We're so scared. And I just don't know how to conquer fear though. I don't know how to deal with fear unless I just, you know, one of the people that along the way

is a guy named Ali Farinakian. Ali Farinakian who owns the People's Improv Theater and Simple Studios and was a writer for Saturday Night Live and an amazing improv comedian and original UCB member, you know, this guy, we used to work with Del Close, who was this like improv god who wrote this book called Truth and Comedy. And the fear, just follow the fear. His method is follow the fear. Follow it. Just follow that fear until the very end. And so I do. I follow the fear. And I push it. And I push it to the very end.

And say to myself, am I going to die? Am I going to hurt somebody? Is this going to alter the way that I live? And usually the answer to those three questions are no. You know what I mean? And then you just, i don't know and then and then and then you get you you know it's funny i think in the acting community it's so tricky in the acting community they see me as this like actor do you know what i mean

that's like been on broadway nominated was in the humans like all these like accolades that are on that thing. But the people that really know me close, know me as like the water well guy first, and then acting is like this other thing. And they were like, how do you do the, how do you like become a great, how are you being able to get so many accolades as an actor? It's because Because I've let it all go. I've let all the BS of all of the noisy, fearful actor bullshit. I'm sorry. I'm just not interested in it. And it doesn't scare me. And I will fall flat. I fall flat every, I tell this to my students. I tell, oh, I fall flat every day. And I just push through that thing and just say, okay, you fell flat. It's not going to kill anything. I feel like I'm going all over the place. But it's all these experiences. It goes back to do, just doing the thing. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.

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And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. You've mentioned your students a number of times. So, you know, we've talked about the fact that you're an actor and a producer and a writer. the way you become an educator so part of this thing that you do with water well is is you know is you yes you you create all those different things but at

the same time you have a very strong educational element to the mission yeah i mean the mission the mission is always access right it's always giving people access to, you know, socially conscious, civic-minded work. And one of my first day jobs was teaching at the People's, at the Professional Performing Arts School on 48th Street. And years goes by and Waterwell has, you know, been excelling in the theater community before the economy crashed. And we were just, you know, tumbling through the economy crash. And all of a sudden it's like our foundation grants are going, you know, you know, and at year nine, we were like, you know, or whatever year seven or eight, we were at like a hundred thousand dollar operating budget, you know, but all of a sudden

everything is fiddling away and theaters are not changing their prices. And then, you know, they asked us to, you know, apply to be a vendor for the Professional Performing Arts School. And we did. And we won that bid. And that bid helped us to realize that our mission can start them younger. And so what we do is at the Professional Performing Arts School, the Waterwell Drama Program, what we do is we teach them not only from grade 6 through 12 how to become great actors, how to become theater makers, and teach them with vocal classes and movement classes. And again, we're in the curriculum. It's a public school. We're in

the curriculum. But we also teach them citizenship. We teach them, the class that I teach is called the artist as citizen. It's teaching them what it means to make great art and using that art to come back to your communities, local, big, small, church, synagogue, doesn't matter. And, and, and facilitate some of that art into that world, you know, and show them a direct line to success through that. Not all these kids are going to be actors. Not all of them are going to be in the field. But I can show them that, you know, for example, right, you know, one of the things that we've done at our school is we work with Global Glimpse. And they're basically a bunch of our students go to a third world country

and they create art with people there. It's cool. And now imagine, put your empathize with that student. They go to a third world country. They work with some local talent there and they create a piece of theater or a moment that they feel good that they've done something really rather massive you know even locally even if it's one person

that built a shitload of confidence inside this young 16 17 18 year old kid that confidence translates to going into the audition room with a little bit more bite you know a little bit more what's that skipping their step or whatever that's that phrase is room with a little bit more, what's that, skipping their step or whatever that phrase is, a little bit more confidence there. That confidence gets them that job. That job leads to a couple other jobs because the directors like that confidence too. Then all of a sudden that confidence

leads to their relationship confidence. And then all of a sudden, you're now that one person that you've influenced in wherever, Nicaragua or Haiti or wherever they go has now infiltrated a spectrum of thousands of people that have just, and that's, you know, what we do at the school, you know, through art training, through like, get your vocal technique up, wear all blacks. Here is what Moyer did, here is theater history. And on top of all that, we've been producing theater for so long, can imagine a performing arts school that was only doing one production a year. And we now do, last year we did 11 shows. Every student at our school performs every year on stage. That also builds confidence. That shows parents, whether they become actors or not, that shows them there's an ability for them to follow the fear and do. That shows them I can speak out loud. That shows them not only what it means as a group of individuals coming together to make a piece. You remember those high school

or middle school plays? Everyone remembers those. You don't remember the play. You just remember the time, the process of the fun, the cast party. You remember the experience of creating something as a local community and making something for people to watch. And then that builds on top of, and then all of a sudden imagine becoming into politics or imagine if these kids start their own theater company. And what happens if they're the next public theater? We don't know. Then all of a sudden you're influencing the scope gets wider and wider and wider. And all the long way, you know, we're not doing, you know,

we're not doing like small little plays. You know, we're not doing like, we're not just doing Twelfth Night. We're also doing Brecht at, you know, we're doing, this year, this year we do Ubu Ra, you know, Alfred Jarry's play about, you know, a dictator. That no, it's an absurdist play.

We're about a dictator because there's so many dictators on earth right now, you know. We just did an all-female Julius Caesar. We just were, and the seniors, oh, sorry. The seniors, one of the coolest things that we have is called the New Works Lab. Because we have such a leg in the professional arts world. We, the senior year, hire a professional playwright and a professional director. They come to the school, and they do a world premiere at the school.

And now all of a sudden, these kids get a chance to work on a new play about things that they want to talk about, which are not what we think. Do you know what I mean? They want to talk about homelessness. They want to talk about immigration. They want to talk about some stuff. So now all of a sudden you have this playwright that's like, let's talk about this stuff. And then this year, I say this because the play that we're doing this year is written by this lovely Latina playwright by the name of Charisse Castro-Smith. And she wrote a play that's just about now and it's coming from there and it's going to be awesome. You know, that's kind of the work that we do there. And that's now built into a bunch of other schools. We're also at the new school and trying to like spread this, you know,

this is kind of like artist citizen, you know, track to the world. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting because just watching you as you're talking about this, your physical energy becomes so much more animated than when you talk about other things. Yeah. Than when you talk about, like, you know, you as an actor. When you talk about this, there's something that animates you differently. Yeah. I just, I just, I can see, oh, there's so many things I want to say. That's why I'm stumbling.

We have to teach. It's just about the education. You know, your questions, what are your questions? Who are your mentors? Like, we have to give more leadership. And I'm not that leader for these kids. You know, Heather Lanza is the leader. You know, Irene Lazardous is one of our leaders. I mean, like our teachers, W.T. McRae, you know, Greg Parenti,

you know, they're the ones on the ground. Ryan Garbaugh, they're the ones that are like doing the work for these people. And we're giving them foundation to do that, that will help change society for the better. Whether it means, and it's also probably because acting seems so singular in a weird way. It seems so about like, quote unquote, me. And I just don't know if that's the end all be all of my life. I just don't know if that's what I want to, I don't know if that's, listen, I love acting. I love, love doing, and as much as I can, I try to advocate for, you know, Iranian voices or Middle Eastern voices, you know, and telling stories that are like, you know? And so I try to do my part in it, but I am just an actor. I am just a cog in that wheel.

And I know what my place is in that world. And so there is less of a energy. Now I'm very lucky because I've been validated as an actor and that has given me the confidence and I've been validated. I don't know how else to say. that's made me feel confident about these other things that I, and then that, that I can, that has made me like feel better about like, oh no, let's go to another school or, or, or, Hey, let's do this, you know, the accidental wolf, or let's do, you know, work

with veterans, you know, all these things to just like constantly push, push, push, push, push. And then, and again, like I said to you, I don't give, I don't really care too much. So when I go on set or I'm on, you know, when we're doing like the humans or whatever, I try to just be as honest as I could possibly be and do my job and just leave, you know, and let it all out there in the best, most, you know, human way as I can, advocating for my characters. So at the same time, there is this side of you and you have, like you said, you have, there's tremendous energy and emphasis put into all the different programming and things that you're doing with Waterwell, with kids, with schools and education and citizenship meets art. And then there's you as the actor who's also been involved in, we haven't really even gone there. You've been involved in big productions. You've

been involved in big movies. You've worked side by side with like Bill Murray and Robin Williams and all these other icons of the business in so many different ways. So you've seen it at nearly every level. And these are all lessons that you can bring to students, to people entering. And at the same time, you've seen the good and also you've seen a lot of struggle. I mean, what happened with Robin? You were pretty friendly with Robin. I was very close with Robin, yeah. I mean, I talked to Robin in the May before he passed away. And I talked to him because I was about to go do Barry Levinson movie called Rock the Casbah. And I was the second lead of this huge Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Zoe Deschanel, like epic thing in Morocco, speaking three languages, you know, and two of which I didn't

speak. And, and so I called, you know, I don't know how that all happened. Anyway, through Robin's assistant or something, I tried to like, I, I called Robin and I eventually talked to him. And he sounded down at the time, but I asked him like, hey man, what's Bill Murray like? What's Barry Levinson like? You know, I'm about to walk into really scary waters as a young performer and all that. And he just was his honest self.

He was, yeah, another mentor along the way. Someone that I really, really loved and admired for many reasons. We were the two leads of this play on Broadway called The Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a play about two soldiers guarding 2003 Baghdad, the Baghdad Zoo, where they kill a Bengal tiger because it chopped the hand of one of the soldiers off based on a true story. And here we are in 2011 doing this Iraq war play where the tiger played by Robin Williams is one of the leads. And I play the Iraqi translator. And it's a play about spirituality and myths and war torn and art. And Robin and I became real tight. And we had a lot of ups and downs too because I was nominated for the Tony Award and he wasn't, which was tricky. It hurt him, I think, if I'm being honest.

He doesn't matter anything at me. I think he was the third person to call me when I got nominated that morning. He was so gracious. He was such a good person. He was such a great advocate for humanity. He believed in the arts. He did the play because he was a huge USO guy. And we had these strong narratives about PTSD and all this through the eyes of these soldiers. And he never let up about helping people. After the show would be done, everyone and their brother wanted to meet. There would always be like 300, 400 people outside the door trying to get an autograph with Robin Williams, obviously.

But if you were on the list, you can go backstage and come on the stage and like talk to the cast members. And every once in a blue moon and every night there'd be, you know, 150. And it's the same. It's the same happens for Hamilton right now. You know, you go on the stage, you know, it was in the same space, same theater. Maybe five times? Five times I would see this person that had ready cliched, ignorant Aryan speaking here,

but being like, this guy with a blue mohawk and 50 piercings and just seems a little out of place. And curious Aryan would go up and be like, hey, are you looking for someone? He's like, yeah, I'm a friend of Robin's. Oh, Robin will be out in a second. Dude, can I just meet him in there? I was like, oh, how do you know Robin? Because, you know, you don't want to also, like, give everyone access to Robin before he's ready. And he goes, oh, Robin, Robin is my sponsor.

And I'd be like, oh, wow. He goes, yeah, Robin took me off the streets and sponsored me. And he got me a ticket to come out and see him in the show. I'm going to weep now. Five times that happened? Ten times? I don't even know. All the time. And working with Robin, I saw a human being. I saw so many little stories like that. Another story is I'm a big Letterman fan. And Letterman asked Robin to come on. And I asked, can I, you know, go with you or whatever? And so the answer was yes.

And then we did the thing. And but the day before, he was like, I'm going to talk about this about the show. I'm going to talk about this about the show. I'm going to talk about this about the show. And really like getting like really in the heart of like why this play is so great and and then he would apologize after it was all done said and done about how he the producers came up to him and they really wanted him to like be like old fashioned robin and like really like robbing it up quote unquote unquote. So he didn't get a chance, but he's so loyal to Dave that he didn't feel like saying no to that. And then, so he like robbins it up,

like we all know and like that energy. And then he come apologize to me, feeling like he let the play down because he didn't take it seriously. Like it was a, whatever, at the time of Charlie Rose interview that we just done. That's a lot of empathy there. That's a lot of levels of understanding to come to me.

It's also wearing a lot of masks. I mean, you wonder whether, you know, like when you're living two separate worlds where there's such radically different public facing mask. And then there's a very different internal life, whether that plays into some of the suffering that goes into someone like him or so many other people that in some way have those two different, you know, like there's the public persona, which is profoundly different than the private one. And there's so many, not to even go there, but there's so many stories of just people taking it and turning it into something awful.

But there's also these stories of, I mean, I didn't tell any of these stories. I didn't tell either of these stories until after he died. But the other story I just keep on wanting to talk about is because it was so human, is that we were like the two quote-unquote leads of the show, and we had dressing rooms right next to each other. And so I can't tell you how many times, maybe a dozen times at intermission, he'd come into my dressing room, close the door behind him and ask me how I thought the show was going. I'd be like, great. He's like, I'm trying some new

things. I'm like, I know it's amazing. It's awesome. He's like, it's not throwing you off. I'm like, no. He's like, let me know if, and I was like, oh no, God, it's great. It's all great. Robin, you are great. And then, because he was so insecure about his own work. And sometimes, if I'm just being honest, sometimes I'm, I was 30, 31 years old in my first Broadway debut, playing in a Rocky translator, representing a community in a very like, you know, specific way. Sometimes I want to be like, Robin, why are you telling me how good I'm doing? I'm being honest, talk about doubt and fear. But then it dawned on me, he's just like me. He's got the same fears, you know, he's got the same stuff, noise, messiness of like how, you know, it's how hard it is to be a human being, you know?

And he understood it really wholeheartedly. Yeah. I mean, it seems like that's one of the higher the profile you become. Sometimes the more amplified all everything becomes to fears and successes and all that stuff. And I think we're seeing that a lot sort of in the increasingly public lives and personas of so many different people and the inescapable reality that you're telling the story of your life in a very public way, especially if you want to establish yourself in some field where it's based on you, your reputation, your personal brand, that you've got to be public facing and forward facing and all these different channels, which means at the same time, you have channels to project outwardly.

Yeah. And, but A, like very often it's a complete illusion or delusion of what's really on the side. And people have equal channels to project back at you through the anonymity of a screen, which can be, we're not equipped to handle that on any level that makes most of us okay. And I think we're still really struggling to sort of navigate that and figure out like, where is the sweet spot where, you know, we can breathe again, where we can be okay. And maybe being massively forward-facing isn't, you know, like the all the time right answer. And I think

we're, I kind of feel like the pendulum is swinging back to a certain extent in certain ways on this. I think you might be right about that. I think it's a good thing. I think so good too. You, one of the things that you've done recently actually was last year, which I thought was really fascinating. It's this like, seems to be this really interesting offshoot of this, again, this maniacal search for docks. And for a week, at least the west side and a lot of downtown Manhattan is taken over by like our service people. And you kind of, you and I guess Tom, your partner through Waterwell, got involved in supporting this community in a really interesting and different way. Yeah, yeah.

This is all something that we, you know, we, we, we've always been, you know, when we were in the, the Iran-Iraq war, I mean, we still are in the war with Afghanistan technically, but when we were in the, the, the crux of the 2000s, when we were in the, that war, even back then, way before then, all of our shows were free for veterans and we got grants for that. Not that we were getting that many veterans, but we would get, you know, even five, six a night. That would be plenty for us because why not? And along that, you know, interesting journey, Tom, in all of his brilliance, stumbled upon in a long-winded, I'm going to shorten the story, but stumbled upon something called the blueprint specials that in the 19, in 1944, the U.S. War Department hired a young private named Frank Lesser.

You know what I mean? That's also... So, yeah, in 1944, the U.S. War Department hired a young private to write four musicals to be performed by, directed by, produced by soldiers, active soldiers, on their off time. So as a way to cope with shell shock. That's what they were saying. So just break that down for a second. The U.S. War Department thought that doing musicals after killing Nazis was the way to deal with shell shock, which is a really profound statement because it shows that there was a deep understanding that these soldiers needed it and deep understanding that art was the way to solve it. This young private wrote these four musicals. They were never performed. Three years later, he writes Guys and Dolls. And he becomes the biggest and the most important influential musical person alive. 72 years later, we find these.

They were lost forever. We find the musicals. We find the blueprint specials, which are exactly that, blueprints on how to make a musical. And along that way, we find these things, we put them, produce them, and put them on the Intrepid, which is a warship, you know, a decommissioned warship on 46th Street. We put them on the Intrepid with a cast of 60, half of which were veterans, and the other half were Broadway stars doing a world premiere Frank Lesser musical, which so many levels of insanity there on the musical theater side, on the veteran side.

And we did the food who fulfilled what the war department wanted, which is we gave an outlet for many of our veterans that were in the show, did Afghanistan, did Iraq, did Haiti, that Korea, like they were all involved. Many of which had had, we're still dealing with PTSD. So we use the art that was commissioned by them to help their shell shock at the time now called PTSD. Yeah. What was that experience like for them?

Did you talk to all the time? Well, Hey, I'm still friendly with so many of them. It was incredible. They, they gave them the confidence and, and you know, one of the cool things about the show, we only performed it six times. It was a big, big musical. And all the actors, when all the actors came out in their regular clothes and the veterans came out in their military and, you know, seeing

their faces just for, you know, getting a standing ovation and like all that stuff was so impactful and so powerful for them, for me, selfishly, you know, for the audiences, for all of us. And this was, you know, January of 2017, a very tricky time in middle, you know, of New York City before the inauguration where everyone had a different. And we had people in the cast, you know, veterans communities that we were working with that probably were on the opposite sides of the spectrum. But one of the things that we one of the reasons why we did this thing is to bridge the gap. It's to bridge the gap between red, blue, black, white, veteran, civilian. Like, we're all in this messy world together, you know, and that's all the things that,

you know, all of the work that Waterwell does. You know, we didn't talk about the Axanonidental Wolf, but The Accidental Wolf is a massive, it's this TV series that I wrote and directed starring all of these Broadway stars. It's a global thriller. Where I start shooting on season two on Sunday. Oh my gosh, I just got scared. But all this to say, I was very, you know, my wife, my amazing, strong, you know, beautiful, incredible wife that you know so well, who does so much, so much for our communities.

And so deeply, locally, you know, on our, you know, everywhere, you know. I would watch her as I was doing Bengal Tiger or going to Morocco, raise our two little lovely ladies and seeing how effing hard it is not only to be a mother, how effing hard it is to be a mother that's trying to change the world with yoga and mindfulness, as a mother trying to change the world in a male-dominated society with the norms that are put upon them. And then if you look at all four of those things, all those obstacles that a young mother might have, those were no different than what my Iranian mother was going through when she moved into this country.

And then all of a sudden I was like, I want to be a part, I want to empathize with this story. Not that I'm going to be an expert in it. I'm not an expert in it. So I got Kelly O'Hara for those who might or might not know the, the, one of the two biggest stars of Broadway alive, three stars, five stars, whatever, you know, she's a big deal here. And, and, and she and I had done a play together and I'd never seen her do a musical ever. I just saw her in King Lear as a Regan. And I went up to her and I said, if I write you something, will you do it? And she goes, yes. And then here I have two girls and she's got a little boy and a little girl. And then I wanted to help, you know, and I would say to Kelly, like,

hey, Kelly, I want to tell this story about a woman that's, and it's a thriller too, that gets a phone call. And I don't want to say too much for those that want to watch it, but gets a phone call from across the globe of someone asking for help. And here she is, a young mother, and she wants to help. But society is saying, stop. Stop helping. On both sides, her rich upper crest society is telling her, just, you know, volunteer your time and just, you'll be fine. Stop. And on the other side, it's about Sierra Leone as well. The Sierra Leonians coming to them is like, baby, we don't want your help. We don't want your white privilege help. And so I tell both those stories. So part of that is empathizing with both sides of it. And I don't know shit about being a mother. So I talk to Chrissy, I talked to my mother, I talked to Kelly and I

take all of that data and I say, let's put this all, let's put it all in there. Messy, beautiful, gorgeous, wrong, right. All of that in there. Or the Sierra Leonean community. What do I know about Sierra Leone? Nothing. So I met with Sierra Leonean actors and rappers and intellectuals and historians. And I just, I say, tell me everything. And I just take all that information. I put it in there. And I even sometimes say, okay, cool. I'm also making a thriller. So here's where I need this to end. Do you know what I mean? Like, here's where I need this idea to end. Can we get there in a safe way? And sometimes I say, yeah, this, this, and that. Maybe if you do this, oh, cool.

And sometimes it's like, that's not believable. And then you cut it. Simple. You know, it's a deep, deep, you know, empathetic struggle that we're all going on as artists on The Accidental Wolf. And then now I made this short form thriller that has Kelly O'Hara, Laurie Metcalf,

you know, Dennis O'Hare, the entire cast of The Human, 35 Tony nominations in the cast and crew. Like, it's a huge, massive thing. And it's, but I've made it short-form. And it's a thriller. And I made it short-form, A, because I think that's all that's necessary for these chapters, as we call them.

The first season is out, and it's two hours long. But every chapter is, one's five minutes. What's 25 minutes? One's 17. And then so we did this thing, and we shot it exactly like the art wanted it to be. And then they're like, well, how do people put this out there? So the producer, Damon Olya, who's a partner at Waterwell Films, is also a really smart businessman. So he, instead of, he takes, he downloads all of his contacts' brains and says, here is a model

that we can do it ourselves. Even though we met with HBO and all these people, and they all love the show, but they're like, we don't even know how to begin to do, we love the show, but we don't even know, we don't even have the facility to do that, another obstacle. So we made our own platform. You know, that's, you're like, how does it go? We go to the end of the road,

and then there's like a roadblock, and it's like, well, this needs to now be released. So we made our own immersive website that asks you questions after a chapter is done. You can call phone numbers. If you want to text, we can text you. And then you can see where she's at, exactly where she's at, what she's doing. And it's like you've become the sleuth with her. And we only did that out of necessity that we wanted to just put it out there, you know.

And he used his bit, you know. So Damon's another mentor. You know, all these pieces together to kind of make this cool. And then you can watch the show at TheExcelWolf.com for all you lovely mothers. Which is awesome, by the way. Yeah, check it out. We're really proud of it. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of like a good place for us to come full circle also because it like

we're circling back to this same, everything is a manifestation of this same sort of relentless blend of curiosity, willingness to act, willingness to stumble, willingness to say, I know nothing, who can help me? And willingness to say, if it's okay, so it's never been done before, or I've never done it, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't do it. And it doesn't mean I can't figure it out along the way. And just an openness to taking the steps and seeing what happens over and over and over and over and over and over

and over and over and over again, until it just, you know, like something happens or it doesn't, and then you figure it out and you sort of say, okay, so what I figured out and how can I do it differently? All the, I mean, I feel like you must be, did you write a book before you wrote your book? Yeah, no, it Yeah, same thing.

People have asked me a number of times, like, well, you made a really big change. You were a lawyer and then you went to become an entrepreneur. And I'm thinking about that and I'm like, yes. Yes, I did leave behind this high-powered career and to make $12 an hour as a personal trainer and learn entirely new industry. And that was 20 years ago. I have done something similar over and over and over and over again since then. And I think eventually it becomes a process where you realize that, yes, you can completely screw up. You can get smacked back so many times. And every time you figure out how to navigate your way through,

you're like, all right, so yeah, it hurts, but I'm going to be okay. So I'm going to keep trying something different and trying, I'm going to go left instead of right here. And eventually, those things start to give you a sense of, I'll figure it out. It may not be fun and I may get banged up along the way, but eventually I'm going to, I just have this sense that I'm going to get where I want to be and where I need to be and I'll figure it out.

Jim Henson was like that, you know, or Charlie Chaplin was like that, you know, all these artists, Charlie Chaplin made a lot of short films and there were a lot of them are bad. It's okay. But it's the same thing we say i i look at like you know oh we've discovered this you know like unknown notebook from picasso or from this famous artist from the first three years of their lives and now it's up on auction and and i'm and you laugh because if you you know that was for so many of these artists who didn't hit their stride of really producing extraordinary work until 10, 15 years later, it's simply like somebody wants to own a keepsake that had the name of that particular artist on it in the very early days.

But the actual product was terrible. Right? Because that's where we all start. We have to start with Netflix. We have to do some crap. Yeah. There's 17 bad films in all of us. Exactly.

So let's kind of come full circle here also. So as we're hanging out having this conversation, the name of this is Good Life Project. So I always wind up with the same question, which is if I offer the phrase out to live a good life, what comes up for you? Yeah. Well, I've thought about this.

And, you know, it's all these little nuggets, you know, but a lot of it for me, I think, you know, there's two main things in life that I think matter. And that's love and work. That's basically all comes down to that. And inside of love is empathy. Inside of love is kindness and caring and respect and responsibility and citizenship. And inside of work is doing, acting, failing, trying, trying again, failing again, failing again. I think those are the two things that just constantly push forward for me, love and work.

And Tom Ridgely, the first mentor I mentioned, is the one that says that to me. He goes, that's all that matters, love and work. And everything, and love is a big pocket and work is a big pocket. And those two things really push me forward. And the only other thing I want to say, just like another mentor,

also coworker, not coworker, like a colleague of mine, a contemporary, that's the word I'm looking for, is Terrell McCraney. He wrote Moonlight. But he's this fabulous, incredible, phenomenal playwright. And he's also a MacArthur genius. Grew up in the ghetto of Miami as a black gay kid.

Imagine. And he came and talked at my artist's citizen class. And he studied, he was an apprentice of August Wilson, one of our great playwrights. And August Wilson told him, and now he told my students, which I learned and now I'm telling you, is that all great art slash life slash creativity slash whatever runs on three cylinders, the interpersonal, the global, and the spiritual. That's we do shakespeare over and over again because he's constantly dealing with those three things he's just not he's unrelenting on it you know

romeo and juliet global montague's capulets romeo and jul. Obviously, the two of them falling in love, they want to be together. And the spiritual, they die, you know, on graves with the friar making a mistake. You know, like all of these things. And so immediately as a creator, I latch onto those three things. But then if you take one step back, that's really life too. What are my relationships like with my wife, my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, you, children? Who Islam, it could be any of these things. It also could be the spirituality of nature, it could be the spirituality of nurture, of art, of creativity, of whatever that might mean to you. Constantly trying to be like putting out a good energy out there, what energies, whatever that might mean to you. That's so important that we all have to like

latch on to one version or another of it. And the global, how are we doing the interpersonal and taking that spiritual, putting them together and bettering our communities locally, big, wide, small, you know, I think those three things and love and work are like my, you know, are just my go-tos for, you know, how to live a good life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening.

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