KFC Radio - Behind The Blog: Francis Ellis

Episode Date: May 21, 2018

KFC & Francis head to a place where Francis feels right at home, the stage of Stand Up NY, to talk about his place at Barstool, and how he got there. To watch the companion video, got to kfcradio.com/francisYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/kfcr

Hey, KFC Radio listeners, you can find every episode of KFC Radio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Alright, welcome to another edition of Behind the Blog. Today's feature is the one and only Francis Ellis. Thank you for having me, Kevin. Absolutely, brother. So we are here at Stand Up New York. It's on the Upper West Side, 78th and Amsterdam. It's a tiny, it's a comedy club with a lot of character we said it in an affectionate way it's

it's got a little grunge to it yeah um and you said that you you would call this place out of all the places you performed you would call this place home yeah well you know it's probably the place right now where i perform the most um so but at the same time i guess my home club i i also perform a lot at gotham and i run a show there so it's i don't know it's between those two uh but i love this place they're very good to me and there's a reason i chose here for us to to shoot this yeah one of those spots where you walk in and you're just comfortable. You know, you walk in, you know the owner, you grab a drink, you make yourself at home.

Right. They're really good to me here. There's been a lot of beer has been spilled in here. You know, the floor is like a muddled shade of black. And, you know, lots of people have bombed here. I've had ovations here. So it's usually you know what you're going to get, and it's a pretty fair crowd.

It's a cool spot, and it's an interesting life that you lead and one that is different from everybody else at Barstool. And you give me hope, in a way, for yourselves. You give me hope because, you know, I'm a Barstool. Um, and you give me hope in a way, you give me hope because, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a Barstool lifer. And at this point, you know, my, my success is tied into the company success. And so I've got a vested interest in everybody who comes to the door at this point. And, you know, there's, there's a ton of new talented people for sure and we're constantly growing but to watch you come in do something entirely different from everybody else that's been at barstool and watch you go through the ringer

watch you go through some ups and some downs some doubts some big moments some some bad moments and come out the other side is all just very encouraging for the world of barstool because it's like it's not cookie cutter it's not the same stuff and there were times where it's like i don't know is this going to work out maybe not and then to see that you are thriving it just gives me hope that like yo this barstool thing finding new people and working them in it's gonna work yeah i i think there were definitely moments where I did not think I was going to make it in terms of, I thought I had to quit. I think there were moments that we thought that about you too.

Yeah. Because I was just so bummed out and beaten down and I couldn't handle, you know, the sort of making fun of people for the drawing to light small things that like, you know, the sort of making fun of people for the drawing to light small things that like, you know, in, in fallibilities and sort of mistakes and making massive stories out of those. And I wasn't aware yet that those stories fade almost instantly. Yep. Um, I thought it was in a moment. Yeah. I thought it was going to plague me for the rest of my career. I thought it was in the moment. Yeah. I thought it was going to plague me for the rest of my career. I thought I would be known as the creep who DM the model or the guy who faked cancer. Oh, we'll get into those.

I really thought like, um, it's over. This is out on the internet and I've only been here a month and, and I tried and now I'm going to have to go back to doing something else. Well, but it's, it's just barstool is just,

everything is hyper. Everything is zoomed in, magnified and, and, and made that much bigger, but it's, it's, it goes that much quicker too.

You know, there'll be, there'll be someone else who fucks up. There'll be someone else. You'll, you'll do something else that overshadows that. And it's just onto the next. So for better or worse, it can, worse, that can work to your benefit.

It can work against you, but it's going to be quick no matter what. Yeah, and I think one of the benefits I had coming in was that I actually had been a fan of Barstool for years. And not like the most ardent stoolie, but I would check in with the site every day um for for years and years so i came in knowing at least thinking that i knew what the type of humor was how to write in the tone of barstool thinking i could i had thought for a long time that i could contribute to the company but it's one thing to think you can work there and put the content out it's another thing entirely to to weather the storm survive of working within the office you get thrown into a dryer and you come out and you either like sit down puke and go home crying or you somehow find your way to stand up and just say

i'm i'm not faced by that i think what it you what is, is you sit down, you puke, you cry, but you don't go home. You come back. You go for more. I feel like everybody has a moment at Barstool where you hit that crossroads. Some people go home. I mean, a lot of people, they'll stick around, but metaphorically, they almost go home. You know what I mean? You might still be here and get the paycheck, but you hit one of those those roadblocks and you either got to power through it or you check out. And

I think that you have powered through. Yeah. I mean, I appreciate that. I, I remember when I came in, a lot of people accused me of having the thinnest skin ever. And I think I definitely did. But another way to say that is that you're just like a sensitive feeling human being and that's where i mean that's oddly like a rarity at barstool or was it well i'm not anymore yeah i mean that's the sad part i i've sacrificed empathy and vulnerability and what i used to consider positive qualities for uh for this job and now i've got this hardened shell and i really am not moved much anymore and it affects me both in my like private life in my family life i know people can't get get through to me and i find myself like distant and aloof and just kind of i'd rather exist removed from feeling and emotion because I learned that

those were negative problems. I know things that we targeted. I mean, I would love to get to a point where you don't need to do that. Yeah. But that is why we are like a cut above a serious a very large cut above from the rest of the

internet and it comes at a steep price but I will say that at least there is the return you know it's not like we're doing this for nothing you are a part we are all a part of a major major thing going on I think when you look back on it we're all going to be have been a part of something like super special and i think like anything else you know sports and professional

athletic careers and uh hollywood careers and shit like that it comes at a steep steep price yeah yeah you're absolutely right um you look at some people like dan i think he's very guarded with his private life and that's one strategy and then another is kind of you took the road of being completely open and it's like the two extremes you can't really live in the middle and if you are a completely open book i find that people chaps is very open to you know he broadcasts his family on his instagram and he blogs about his wife having diarrhea and all these things and like you know it's like you you have one or the other but if you exist in the middle where you you want to pick and choose what can and can be known that's when it really eats you and i find nate

struggles with that a lot you know because there are certain things like he wants out there and others he doesn't and i'm at the point now where i'm pretty much light speed open book yeah like yeah come at me this is it you know you know it's like anything else like that those things are only going to get to you if you let them get to you and and it's really about you know like it's kind of the eight mile papa doc be rabid sort of thing where it's like yeah i mean i can admit to all these things because i now it's one thing to say you have thick skin and it's another thing to actually have it right because thick skin is not to me like you know when people are like i don't even read the comments

yes you do right yes you do we all do we all see our feedback we'll all go on our reddit page we all read our mentions and we all want people to like us yeah and when they say things and they don't like you it hurts yeah but the thick skin comes into play of whether you let that stop you from doing what you do right whether you actually let that truly affect you like you said you sit down you cry and you go home you know like i said i you know i sit down i puke i cry i internalize it i i actually sometimes will listen to it maybe they're right maybe i could do this maybe i could do that but then i'm not you can't let that stop you right otherwise it's all for nothing yeah i mean i find that the feedback for me is like gambling in that you dive into the reddit or the comments after something you've put out for me especially like the variety hour where we put so much work into it and you're so inside the

material that you honestly don't know if it's funny anymore i just i have no idea how people are going to react that's a great point yeah and some of it was good and some of it was bad. And like I found that the bad feedback hurt way more than the good feedback felt good. Oh, yeah. So like in gambling, I always found when I won money, it never felt as good as losing money felt bad. Which is one of the reasons I stopped doing it. I just felt sick when I lost money. And when I won money, I was like like relieved not like ecstatic yep i that that comparison is so spot on uh that's why i don't even gamble at all it's just like the juice is not worth the squeeze right

um and and it is funny with the feedback is like you know you you try to tell yourself these guys don't know what they're talking about when it's negative and when it's positive you're like oh yeah fuck yeah i am that good right if you're going to be honest about it you shouldn't take any of it into account um well i mean kevin to your credit i don't think anyone has persisted and remained stoic in the face of greater adversity at this company than you and i hope i try i think i appreciate i, it's just a remarkable feat of like steadiness and consistency that you continue to come to work and put out the work you do. I think it's compartmentalizing is what it is. And I think that I probably do it to a drastically unhealthy extent.

And I think I always kind of did that with with, you know, and I was I was an accountant and I was i could do that job over here and do the blogging over here and um you know when when the early days of blogging when it really was more of a character it was like all right this is what i really think this is who i really am but over here i'm gonna say some crazy shit and then those worlds start to blend and the lines start to get blurred and then you know i i was an open book and i let my family in and for the longest time uh i was okay with that because there was nothing family in and for the longest time uh i was okay with that because there was nothing to hide and there was nothing that i wasn't proud of and then obviously i have my slip-ups and i and i fuck everything up and now there is something now it's like well i can't i can't put the toothpaste back in the family is out there and i've fucked

this all up but i gotta keep i gotta keep going i mean i can't then you know if i if i don't keep going if i don't try to persist if i puke cry and go home now then it's really all for nothing right you know and then it's like i fucked everything up and i have nothing to show for it right and in this case like i you know i can hopefully try to work on my personal life but at least i'm gonna have hopefully have the the professional success to justify it in a way maybe not the right word but to be like well at least like i said i think everything comes at a steep cost and in this case like a normal family life i tried to be normal and i don't think you can be normal i think

i think that i always said i'm gonna you know get married at the right regular time i'm gonna have kids when i'm supposed to have i'm gonna live in the burbs and do that life. And I'm not going to let this job like stop me from doing that. And, um, I probably should have taken that into account a little more. You know, I probably should have just admitted, not that you can't do it. That would be a cop out. That'd be an excuse, but that, you know, let's just address that this life that we are now in is not regular. So don't try to just force regularity upon it. No, I, I, it's, it's gotten hard for me to maintain, to return to a semblance of normalcy. You know, my brain is now constantly thinking of like blogs and things and, and video ideas and jokes. And I have a hard time on, on dates or even in conversations, just like staying present. And, uh, it, it comes off as arrogance, like detached arrogance. And I think

it rubs a lot of people the wrong way is that they think when, when they start telling me their story, if I check out, it's because I only want to talk about myself and i'm not interested in them and i hate that i hate that about me i hate that i am doing that but the reality is if i'm not talking about myself i want to be thinking about ways to keep improving if i don't know if that makes any sense like someone a friend of mine told me about this last night we had like a heart to heart a friend mine was like, I've noticed that over the last year and a half, you've become, you check out of conversations if they're not about you. Interesting. And I was just like, fuck, like, I hate that about, yeah, you don't want, you don't want to,

I mean, what it sounds like to me, what you're saying is that it's not coming from a place of, you're not sitting there in your head being like, oh, I don't care. No, it's only about me. Right. But it's just about trying to, like, juggle, like psychologically, like like you have this craft and this passion that you now put on a big stage and it's not out of like a you're a nobody i don't care about you but it is out of like you know your your mind and your heart are racing a million miles a minute for this thing that you are so passionate about and it is hard to to turn it off yeah i mean what ends up happening is like if i'm in a conversation with somebody um and they say something that all of a sudden triggers my mind towards a joke, right? They mentioned something that sends me down this rabbit hole. To me, jokes are like fish. Like on the line, you only have a certain amount of time

before my brain loses the hold of them. So what I would ideally do is I would just say hang on a second i would take out my phone i would jot down the premise and then we could move on because then i've got it and i won't forget it again but that's impolite right and i don't like taking my phone out and interrupting someone's train of thought so what ends up happening is i let them keep talking but all i'm thinking is like don't lose this don't idea. Don't, don't lose this idea about your dick. Like keep thinking about it, keep thinking about it. And I miss everything they say. And that's rude. That's even more rude. Right. Right. So I've had relationships recently where like, this has come up and, and once I've taught the girl, Hey,

my jokes, like when I think of jokes, I have to write them down. Then they're they're OK with it. Yeah. But it does. It's a weird phenomenon. I mean, even just having these conversations, I get worried about when when I'm being honest, that even this is coming across as like these two fucking like privileged white guys who are talking about how it's so hard for them to like tell their jokes on the internet. You know, but but it is it's just about like to to like tell their jokes on the internet you know but it but it is it's just about like to me like i said acknowledging it it's not that normal so let's not try to act that way right i mean listen we all personally should work on being you know uh interested in others and not do that but it is like um you know again like a sports analogy it's like if you're going to be a professional athlete like like from 20 to 35, you're on the road, you're training, you're not going to be you're going to miss some events.

You're going to, you know, if you're in the NBA, you play on Christmas Day every single year. It's, you know, if you're going to do this right and you are and you're in your and you've and you've seen what it takes to do it right. Because, like you said, there was moments where you're on the edge like this is not working so i got to go the extra mile to make it work it comes at a cost that that can be like unfortunate um yeah what's what's a real hard balance and and the word you used arrogance is is is important i think particularly for yourself um you know you come you you come from the background of money and harvard and that automatically is going to make people be like all right wait a minute fuck this guy like you're i feel like the initial is like fuck this guy you have to show me otherwise yeah most other people

get a fair shot i think you're coming in at a at a like a negative first you know yeah but the flip side is that then i know the positive reactions now are things that I've earned. And I feel like all the more valuable. I just feel more validated by the fact that I won the trust of an audience that probably doesn't connect with me that well on a surface level. So, and not to like, I think this is an interesting opportunity to clear up some like myths that have absolutely come out about me. My family growing up like we were well off, but we were not.

I wouldn't put us in like the uber rich category. We were my dad started a software company in Maine when I was four. We moved from New Jersey, which is where both my parents are from. And my dad started this software company in Maine. Maine is not exactly a tech hub. Yeah. Not in the city. It's like fishermen hunters and like backwater people. And so, um, it was really not doing well for, for many years. And my dad tells me, me stories now about how he would come into my sister's bedroom and my bedroom at night while we were sleeping and look at us and wonder how he was ever going to put us through college. And, you know, it only started succeeding, I guess, around the time that I was in really in high school.

But even then, like it's his own company, he wasn't taking a lot of money out of it and we we had a family my parents are both very cultured sophisticated people my mom was in the first class of women at princeton got her phd at yale was a professor of french at yale for years but it's not like she came from a super rich family either family of five grew up in a in a house small house in new jersey um they just were hard-working smart people my dad was a recruited lacrosse player he went to amherst college um and then my mom went and worked on wall street and like they they met later in life when they were 33 34 were married very quickly had my sister had me. And then we moved to Maine. And yeah, I went to private school from first to eighth grade in Maine.

But it was a private school that cost like $8,000 a year. Private school, you know, plenty of people go to private school. Yeah. You have to be uber rich to go to private school. And then I went to public school for high school. And I was a recruited lacrosse player. And that was the reason I got into Harvard. It was not my dad gave a 250 million dollar donation and they named the library after him.

So, of course, he was going to get in. It was because I was a good student and a good lacrosse player. Twirl that spoon. Yeah. And then my dad, my dad's company started doing well after college and but let me ask you this i mean you also put out your pictures from your childhood you're hanging out with harrison ford and sure but i mean that's gonna give the vibe of affluence and absolutely i i totally understand that but like let's trace that right so my mom was at princeton and she was randomly placed to be a roommate with a woman

named lisa hallaby who uh after college lisa hallaby this beautiful white american woman joined the peace corps and was stationed in jordan where on a trip she somehow met the king who was married at the time he divorces his second wife marries lisa halby renames her queen nor holy shit then renames her yeah nor which knew of nor al hussein which means light of hussein light of his life and they were married for 25 years and i mean it's a it's a massive coincidence right where like my mom was roommates in college with this woman who like blew up and through that we had that cool connection to the royal family of jordan but those were not regular there was not a cast of players like that in our lives right we grew up in rural maine you know

on the water and like which was nice but like ma again isn't that expensive difference between sophistication and wealth you know right you can be well read and well spoken and live like a certain type of lifestyle that doesn't necessarily mean money yeah and and don't get me wrong like we were very fortunate growing up like i never wanted for really anything having said that again people know of my family's wealth now that happened two years ago we my dad sold his company in a big sale basically right around when you're starting right around when i started barstool two years ago and people found the article and then made all these assumptions that like we had grown up with that type of wealth not the case at all right i mean again i would i would say we were

comfortable i didn't but i i had jobs every summer i was i was refereeing soccer games i was working at this kayak rental place on the beach and like you know i was i had a pretty normal childhood i would say i i think that it maybe not isn't even the money it's it's um the i guess it's a lifestyle like even you know the the coincidence for sure but it just when you hear even just lacrosse and harvard and and um you know my mom's a phd and and teaches french and like there's by no means anything wrong with anything i'm just saying that there's going to be a lot of people especially in the barstool world with this by the common man type of vibe that is like yeah well like my dad is fucking working in construction and my mom sure and it's just it's just i totally get that but

what i the reason i like bring this up is like when i was at harvard uh there were kids on my lacrosse team who had grown up in greenwich, right? Whose fathers drove Ferrari silver spoon. Yeah. And whose parents, whose grandparents had come from banking and had, you know, there was a $400 million nest egg. And it was like,

that to me was the type of privilege that I set as the bar for like, holy shit. Right. I've never seen wealth like this. These kids grew up, never want to worrying about anything. Right. Right. And I didn't know, I didn't think that there was a fucking chance in hell that I would go to

Harvard or anything of that nature until my junior year of high school, because I didn't think I would get in academically. And I didn't have a clue if I was a decent lacrosse player, cause I'm from Maine. Right. there were no scouts there were no fucking college scouts at any of my high school games right just kind of up playing in the woods yeah and it just turned out that i was like big and fast which once i got invited to this one camp these options opened up and i remember calling my parents that night and being like, you'll never guess who I talked to today.

They were like, who like D three coaches, whatever. And I was like, no, the fucking Harvard coach seemed interested. And they were like, holy shit.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, it was just like, it's all a tough spot to come from because it does sound like, you know, that conversation was probably a cool one where you're like,

you're surprised and your family's shocked and you're proud and but then you just have this image of like the spoiled rich kid yeah that's not really who i am but you can't also then like you can do it now and i'm happy we're doing this because you have you know a controlled spot to kind of tell your story but you try to do that on the blog and on the internet and on radio and you just come across as an asshole no one's gonna buy it it. It's very tough. And I, I certainly know it now going through my personal stuff.

It's like once the internet has made up their mind, yeah, made up their mind. Yeah. And there's really no turning it. Right. And you hope that maybe one day all the details are out or all your story gets out in this setting and,

and they, you know, shift it, but it's almost better to just accept it, roll with it. And as I've heard you do recently like make it into a joke yeah i mean like you realize you're never gonna win that battle you're never gonna teach people don't realize that like you did i do like a lot of other people

will sit there and fight it and bang their head against the wall and it's like it is not going to work you're not gonna change you can't beat the internet. Nope. And Roy Wood is a great comedian correspondent on the daily show. Um, he's fantastic comic, very experienced. I was talking to him, uh, in the green room of a show before a show,

not too long ago and talking about internet trolls and how I was really frustrated. And I was responding to them and he goes, listen to me. Responding to the people on the internet is like punching the ocean. That's a great way to describe it. It is the most useless. It won't make you feel any better. And then he said, he gave another analogy.

He said, it's like chasing pigeons in the park. You can run after these pigeons and they will scatter. And you will think that what you are doing is effective and that you've won because they've run away and scurried into their dark corners. However, all that anyone else sees from afar is a crazy person chasing pigeons in the park. That's a great point. That's a great way to say it.

It's really true. I find myself, I think I do get a little bit of, I know I'm not going to win, but I think if I respond every now and then, I get a little peace of mind where it's just like, I said my piece. Yeah. And I know that I, and you try to do it in a calm and rational manner, but I think you can get a little bit of, something positive can come out of it. Again, I think that we're kind of writing the script basically because we're like the only ones doing this, um, as to how to handle it.

Like, like I said, don't tell me you don't read the comments you do. Yeah. And don't tell me it doesn't affect you. It does. But how does it affect you and how do you respond to it? I think it's okay to,

to address things or to try to clear things up or to say it now. Um, but yeah, you're right. That's a great, it's a great imagery of like, look at that asshole chasing pigeons over there. Cause that's all you look like. I mean, one thing that gave me peace of mind was I sort of convinced myself that a lot of the vitriol and, and hate and horrible things that are said sometimes, not all the time, but

sometimes in the comment section or wherever else that the people saying them don't mean it that they're not inherently bad people and that you know it's sort of like that bible passage of like forgive them they know not what they do um i don't believe that people are that bad i think they're just kind of venting or they are responding as a hope of getting a rise out of somebody because they know and then there's the mob mentality or it's just like you know you're saying it because this guy said it and right you know sometimes you realize that you're probably talking to like a 16 year old kid exactly just fucking around on his computer he's not he's not like he's not a fucking anarchist yeah you know what i mean like he's

not trying to burn our world down. Some of them are, but most of them are not. He's just goofing around. I found myself, there was a couple times where I've had a tweet written out ready to respond to someone. And then I'm like, they're probably just joking. I'm going to joke back. And then all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, how do I i who i've made a career and a lifestyle off of joking on the internet how am i missing the joke how am i not realizing that they probably don't

really care or they're being sarcastic like as long as you can just try to take a step back and it's hard because it's become our career it's become our lives like i said you sacrifice a lot a lot for it but just remember this whole thing is about jokes yeah so everything should be a joke i agree i i totally agree and i think we are blanketed and and sort of comforted by knowing that we exist in a world of humor where everything should be taken with a satire however um when people start to think that you're being serious about stuff and and taking what you're saying as a reflection of who you are, I don't understand that. Yeah, I know. It's like, how can you really miss?

How can you be so calibrated incorrectly? Right. How are you misjudging this entire situation? One time, I'm not going to remember. I can't remember what I was going to say. Was it the time that you faked cancer? No. Well, sure.

I mean, let's talk about that. Because, you know, I admit, I made a mistake. I made a huge mistake in all of that, which was that I should never have told you on the radio that day, during that week, what had just happened. Should have just been separate. Kept it quiet. I shouldn't have said anything because i didn't know yet definitively whether or not i had cancer i

knew that they had found i was under the impression i'd been told they had found cancerous tumors in my throat right but that does not medically mean that you have cancer. Right. And I think to make that leap and to brand myself as a cancer patient in the middle of the week of Barstool Idol was a horrible mistake. Even if I had had it right. Even if I had 100 percent had had it, if I was preparing for a chemo treatment that was not a level of exposure and that and storyline that i was prepared for at that point and that and it goes back to how we opened up like you know i went the route of just telling everybody my life and what was going on um i think you still need to draw a line somewhere i don't even know what my line is because i thought i was never going to really talk about my kids but then i just ended up posting cute pictures and videos and all of a sudden podfathers comes about and

now even they were in the mix um but yeah i think like you know you got to find your line somewhere right and i i definitely think that keeping keeping the cancer probably would have been a good line to draw until i'd really figured out what was going on and i remember i called my parents on well i should call my mom from the inside the doctor's office because i didn't understand what the doctor was telling me yeah and i put them on the phone together and he explained to her what the deal was right and then i spoke to her on the ride home back to the office rather i came straight from the doctor's office back to the office and i said uh how bad is this and she said because my dad has had two runs with prostate cancer and and she said you know just take it we're going to take it one day at a time we need more info don't freak out we'll come down in new york we're coming down

we'll we'll see you and uh we'll figure this out um and that was when the the doctor was sending the the biopsies for more tests and we were going to do blood tests and all this stuff to figure out if it had metastasized and i should have taken we didn't even have the chance to send out an email to the family right the extended family yet to be like francis found out this news right we had i had the chance to tell my sister and my mom and my dad i didn't tell any of my friends and then i went straight into the radio room yeah and 99 of the people that i'm close to found out from barcelona that i had cancer based on a joking conversation i'd had with you on the radio. Yeah. And that is a horrible way to deliver that news.

It's not your fault at all. It's a hundred percent my fault. I personal information of that Cal of that level and magnitude should not be shared until you either know exactly what the deal is and certainly have the chance to sit the people who matter down and say, here's what's on deliver it it's about to come out i wanted you guys to know first right so then my mom after i said it on the radio my mom then hurried out this email to like our extended family being like i just wanted everyone to know not pissed just like surprised that i had brought it to light but one of the reasons i did was that i was so shaken by the the conversation with the doctor you know you hear cancer you hear cancerous tumor

and i remember like i had gotten a voicemail from the doctor two days before saying you need to come into the office immediately and when you get that never, never want to, you know, it's bad. Right. So like I was preparing for myself for the worst. And then when I met with the doctor, he said the words that I did not want to hear. And rather than like process it and have perspective, I just went straight to you,

told you what had happened. And I was so shaken from it. Well, yeah, I mean, listen listen you're getting bad news and you're currently in the middle of american idol right i was on day three he's ever done and yeah that's so bad and you're processing over here it's like i you try to compartmentalize like i said but there's no compartmentalizing that yeah and and i have to say you know um if i'm being totally honest i was like i did think i bet barstool

will be interested in this yeah yeah no i mean it it was and i don't want to say that's why you got it and by no means you were for sure the most talented and funny person there but like you know we're in the business of content and yeah interest and intrigue and discussion and like it was a storyline it was a storyline and it was it was something i thought boy that's why i think some people were like right he used it to get the job you know the things that like at least seemed inconsistent or people you can make anything look that way you think like i don't know you know it's possible i agree we'll do anything these days and so it just you know again unfortunate coincidences i think well yeah i mean it's taken me a long time like

i used to get so pissed off and upset when people would say that i faked cancer to get a job at barstool my immediate response was like i didn't need to fake cancer to get a job at barstool i was good enough yeah but the reality is i should not have said anything right right because if that is true if i would have gotten the job then i should have just gotten the job the right way right and and you wouldn't so i own the mistake that i made there and i'm still to this day embarrassed about it having said that i did think in my mind that i had cancer right from a doctor's mouth right i mean so there's no faking yeah that was the part to me that was right it's like there's a difference between it ended up not being cancer versus faking yeah versus i should not have

leveraged a cancer diagnosis right and that's where a lot of people that's where a lot of the outrage in the beginning yeah and that's fair and yeah because even if it was even if you were truly like you said if it was 100 you still shouldn't have brought it up right um but it was not ever anything you did intentionally yeah you know right it's just a lot it was a lot you know for me and i was young i mean i was young i was three days in to Barstool I've learned a lot since then you feel like you age in dog years two years oh it absolutely is I feel like I've been working here for a decade you always see the pictures of you know Obama coming in and Obama coming out it's like the Barstool pictures are are going to be similar to that because the it is time is not real when you step into those offices it's a bizarre and

then of course like a week later one week later uh well so so no then i got i won barcelona two weeks later i got the call saying we found out that we had mixed up the test results and i went nuts the office was nuts nate ran to his computer blocked it spun the story defined the narrative and then um another week after that i had the whole dm daniel harrington walks through the door and within again not helping your you know i'm rich i'm affluent i'm i'm good looking i'm successful and now i'm gonna talk to the pretty girls, DM the models. Coming from, you know, by the common man, for the common man, you are now doing all these things that are totally opposite of what

every blogger before you had been. It was such a wild run in the first three weeks at Barstool for me, which is why I really thought I was not gonna make it i thought that level of hyper um and like uh attention to me was what it was how it was gonna be was that that would persist for the entire time right because it seemed like every week something else was coming out about me that was the story of the week so you're like if it's gonna be every single week here there's no fucking chance i wasn't sleeping like dave's making fun of me my parents are like calling me being like hey what's going on are you okay you're all over bar stool you're all anyone's talking about and i was like i was like i don't think i can do this you

know i wouldn't blame you because i don't think anyone could survive that. What I think you learn, and I think a lot of people who are coming into the mix learn, are keep your head down. I'm sure you want to try to go on a date with Daniel Harrington. It ain't worth that. So you try to stay out of stool scenes. You try to stop getting called into the radio. You just tell your jokes, write your blogs,

and try to stay off of the dave portnoy radar is really what exactly and what people the other thing was stool scenes started the same week that i came in right and that was a a backstage access to barstool that nobody had had before and we're you know i'm a little bit more prepared to tell those stories or present myself in such a way but you are now the spotlight you're the new kid camera on you don't know what not to say or what to say right not to do so that again you you now that we told this whole story here your entire existence here to start was a series of unfortunate coincidences really timing and and perception and misconceptions all coincidentally stack the

deck against you but in a way also i own your yeah yeah i mean i own the responsibility the the the part that i played in in perpetuating and causing some of those events and i don't blame it on really i could have i could have avoided all of that so in in a way, I mean, I'm very glad it was over and it settled down. And then I think over the course of the next year, my work was what defined people's perception of me. But I just, man, it was hard. It was really brutal and miserable for me in the first month at Barstool. But where you are at now

shows the level of talent you have and the level of like the thick skin that you have and the mental capacity, the emotional capacity to deal with it. And whether or not we're mentally and emotionally in a perfect spot right now, think uh what you the variety show your stand-up success and and the way you have like won over some people who judged you the way that you have just grown is a testament to uh your ability to handle it all so thank you and and that's where i think you're going to

continue to thrive here and like i said that gives me hope that you're going to continue to thrive here. And like I said, that gives me hope that, you know, this whole company will continue. Because if we can find another Francis, even, you know, if American Idol every year was like that, we're fucking golden. But even if you find another Francis, you know, every couple of years or so that frequently we will. And let's and let's not forget that Donnie also came out of Barstool Idol. So he's obviously sensational, and I think that whole project was a success. And so now there's the stand-up career, the variety show, and life after figuring out Barstool, where we can dive into not the backstory and the unfortunate coincidences of Francis, but the content and the work of Francis. And that will be part two of Behind the Blog with Francis Ellis.