Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler - Minisode: Crazy (About Your) Ex Girlfriend with Jenny Mollen and Jason Biggs

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Jenny Mollen and Jason Biggs are back for another round of Couples Counseling with Chelsea.  They cover a moment in time when Jenny was obsessed with Jason’s ex-girlfriend, who gets to tell your story, and being competitive with your spouse.       * Need some advice from Chelsea? Email us at [e-mail] * Executive Producer Catherine Law Edited & Engineered by Brad Dickert * * * * * The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the Podcast author, or individuals participating in the Podcast, and do not represent the opinions of iHeartMedia or its employees.  This Podcast should not be used as medical advice, mental health advice, mental health counseling or therapy, or as imparting any health care recommendations at all.  Individuals are advised to seek independent medical, counseling advice and/or therapy from a competent health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issues, health inquiry or matter, including matters discussed on this Podcast. Guests and listeners should not rely on matters discussed in the Podcast and shall not act or shall refrain from acting based on information contained in the Podcast without first seeking independent medical advice.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at BelAirDirect.com. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to a new segment of Dear Chelsea called Couples Counseling with Chelsea, where we do couples counseling on all sorts of variations of friends, lovers, families. I'm here with my friends, Jenny Mullen and Jason Biggs, and we

are going to do some couples counseling. Welcome to my office. Okay, guys, on our last session together, I think we've made a lot of progress on our last session. I feel healed. I want to address the ex-girlfriend factor. And I would like to recap that because that I think required a lot of patience and acceptance, I think, from Jason, because he could have really been like, this woman is unstable. You know what I mean? This woman's crazy or any of the things you could attribute to somebody who would be that interested in his ex-girlfriend. Yes. So we were on a vacation. We talked about this on your podcast when we went on a vacation together, French Polynesia scuba diving trip. And you brought Jason's ex-girlfriend's caftan and you wore it. I think I even wore it

at one point. I think you had it on too. Someone urinated on it. I'm not sure what happened to that caftan. Someone got urinated on and something got urinated on on that trip. Now let's talk about jason how did that when you found out jenny was obsessed with your ex-girlfriend how did that make you feel like did you think whoa whoa this might be problematic or you already were so head over heels with her that you thought this is adorable it's not not the latter not the latter kills me chelsea but there was a sense of i think it actually was sort of somewhere in the middle insofar as definitely struck me as weird and uncomfortable. Can you just kind of recap when it came about briefly?

Oh my God, it's so blurry. I can just give you a broad stroke on it. Okay. Yeah, I mean, the thing that I'll get into is that it wasn't just once. And so my feelings changed over time. When I thought, when we was like, okay, this needs to be done.

I don't like it. And then it happened again. that's where it like okay it's no longer adorable i get that you're a story seeker i get that you're anything goes jenny you're wild and crazy you're funny you're hilarious impulsive all the things that i do find attractive about her to an extent and this went too far the things he used to find attractive about me are now the things he hates about me now that's par for the course that's what happens in every relationship it's not entirely true baby i still love you for those things there just needs to be when I felt like I wasn't being heard it was like okay this was cute

this is funny it's what it's crazy yes but like okay now we we move on right now we're done and then when I learned that not just once but not just twice but that multiple times it wasn't done then I then it then you dip into territory where it's like oh you're deceiving me but let me like give people who don't know like let me just give you quickly okay so basically jason had dated somebody prior to me that wasn't over him when we got together and this person was doing things making webisodes about jason breaking up with her engaging with the family the sister would cry to me about missing her my sister there was all this shit and i was like this is fucking fascinating to me like who is this girl you're making me love her like i want to know everything and it was all

these weird fucking facts it was like you know i'm not gonna like expose things whatever right now because a couple's therapy i've agreed to not really talk about her but like it'd be like things that just were incongruous to like what i did know you know it's like she traveled and was like a sherpa for a while and then she did this you know it was like she went to law school like all these random things she was married she wasn't and so it became like the most the dosekis man she was like the most interesting person in the world i'm like this is fucking crazy and she's still in love with jason and now she was like commenting on my imdb so for me i was like oh my god i'm with this famous guy i'm invisible i'm 28 years old i feel so cute and like i'm fucking invisible

everywhere i go because people are like can you hold my baby while i take a picture with jason biggs and i have one fan in the world and it's the joseki sky so i'm like fuck i want to make myself like perfect for her i want to know everything about her i want to curate my online profile so that she's obsessed as obsessed with me and stays obsessed with me but like when Jason and I kept dating and she sort of moved on I was like wait we need her back like I need my fan back so that's when I the table flipped and I started stalking her does that make sense to anybody no it doesn't but it the stalking went on for some period right of time yeah and then it became problematic for Jason because you were lying to him about didn't you arrange to meet her and see

Like, I was hiking Runyon Canyon with her behind Jason's back. I was re-gifting her things of hers that I'd find around the house, like, as a way to, like, lure her into, like, a real-life friendship. I might have set her up on a date with my acting coach and then gone on the date with them. A lot of things happened. Right. But you know how it ended. No. I think you should tell us how it ended.

So, like, it was, I mean, because she was my Moby Dick and I was Ahab. And guess where it ended? Main Street in Nantucket. Like, this shit writes itself. Like, how can I not as a writer? like i am in fucking main i'm on main street in nantucket on those cobblestone streets i'm ahab she is fucking moby and we are face to face it is like made for and what happened then memoir like sitting in my lap a giant grapefruit and this was this was after how many

how much time of spending with her like over the years this was over the course of i would say eight years but this was you had but it had ended it had ended but it was just such a fight the coup de grace it was just fucking phenomenal it had ended but you hadn't stopped writing about her she was still a subject for your books and stories did she understand she was a subject of your books or she didn't make the connection i told her okay this isn't real i just like it's such great fodder and like it's so fucking funny and random and to be honest the reason i leaned so hard into it is because of the reaction i was getting online my twitter personality or like persona became that of like this crazy wife who's obsessed with her husband's

ex-girlfriend unfortunately all of jason's ex-girlfriends thought i was talking about them so now i've burnt a lot of bridges on accident i was friends with we were friends with many of them and now they don't speak to us because they all thought i was talking about them which i she would tweet about it wasn't just like her memoirs she would there was regular tweets about like oh jason's actually you know like when you write a joke it's like it's not necessarily real you're just fucking it can be it could be based on something it could be based on something a friend did it's just a fucking joke it's not real but unfortunately for me a lot of people took it at face value so do you feel well first of all what happened on main street in nantucket what

was the interaction? She didn't speak to me. Oh, she didn't. She spoke to Jason. My son ran straight into her. Arms, into her arms and said, mommy. Did you say hello? Did you try? I spoke to her sister. I smiled. I must think you are so unstable. The parents were there. It was so bad. It was so bad. It was so bad. And now my sister and her sister are like really good friends and they go to the same school and it's a whole thing. Oh, right. Yes, yes, yes. I heard that. there's no shortcut for saving time but saving money is simple just combine your car and home insurance with bel-air direct and save get a quote at bel-air direct.com when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent

my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart And these are the survivor files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve

the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts. See you between the pages. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to

a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. If you know me, you know I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. You have something in your guts. You go with it.

And Shawn Johnson recalled the moment she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one. He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood. He hadn't been on a plane before without his family. It was so pure. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So now, what have you learned from that lesson, if anything? Have you? Was it a lesson?

No, so I wrote her like a crazy, because I— It's almost like you could never, ever even—not that you would have an affair, but like, oh, it's so scary. Oh my God. Well, I would find that girl and I would need to sleep with her and make her love me more than Jason because I'm not competitive. That's what would happen. But no, I've written her several amends letters. And I'm just like, listen, I am so sorry. Like the woman that, the girl that I was is not the woman I became. I'm so sorry. I did like, I let myself just get so seduced by the story of it. And I just didn't want to stop because I was addicted to the plot. You know, I wanted more. It's so interesting because I'm hearing this. I'm listening to this. And I'm thinking about my own personal experience with exes, you know, from like a young age to my reaction to exes as to when I'm older. And like now in my present day moment, like I don't want to know anything about exes. I don't care.

I'm not interested. I don't even want to. The less information, the better. I don't want to be thinking about them. But I do remember like dating someone when I was in my 20s. And when he went to England for a week, I went through everything in his apartment. every photo album every piece of paper just to find his past that he had before he met me so there was no reason for me to have any sense of feelings of invidiousness or you know any of that

but i i remember he came home from that trip to england and i was in a rage that he had even had a past that he had met a girl before we dated like what was he thinking dating someone who was pretty before he met me you know like so irrational and so unreasonable and his reaction to my behavior made me realize I could never do that oh I remember this I know I know exactly my British boyfriend when I was like young young yeah yeah but I remember being like you know just the the overwhelming need for more information like I need more I need more I'm gonna look and find everything and it's like and it's so irrational right like it's so irrational that I was like oh once I saw his reaction I was like I can't do that if I want him to stay with me well it's the

yeah and it's the need it's the no yours wasn't stranger mine wasn't jealousy it was like I want there is a need I feel like there's some overlap perhaps I don't know there's that thing you're describing which feels like that sort of youthful naivete in thinking that everything needs to be about you and how could particularly when it comes to romance and love like how could you possibly if there's any sort of indication that you ever had anything else going on, like it takes away from what I have with you. I loved that Jason had other things before me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to know all of them. Yeah, that was probably a turn on for you and your sick brain. My sick brain. But I feel like you're not able to see that there can be different things that can coexist at the same time.

He can be in love with you, but he could also have loved someone else in the past. He could be in love with you, but he could also go to England for weeks at a time. He could, it's those- But now you're giving Chelsea therapy. OK, so what I'll say about that, though, it's the idea that the story becomes one or the other person, like it belongs to one person or the other. Forget about, oh, is my ex. It becomes like it's her story now.

And then it's less about pirated his life and his story. And that's where and we still get into this to this day, not about her necessarily, but more about like whose story is this? you know what i mean like even the you know her getting stuff done you know a couple weeks ago it was like i had some feelings about it stuff done what was that the surgery my boobs lifted her boobs and stuff stuff i had feelings about it not about whether or not she should do it necessarily but just in terms of like whether i should share it about her sharing it about how it affects our kid just there's right there's i had other stuff and it was we got into it because jenny's like this is my story this is my story i'm choosing to do this it's my body my story

fuck you all the thing and i get that i totally understand the impulse for it to be like get your fucking opinion out of my face here this is what i'm doing and it's my instagram and i'm choosing my body my choice right but but and so we had a whole therapy session about this where you know it was interesting because the therapist asked jenny how it went and then very quickly after said, and Jason, how do you feel about this? And I was like, thank you for asking. I actually do have some feelings. And Jenny was like, what the fuck? Like, this is my thing. And so that's where we will butt heads sometimes. And it's like, no, we can have feelings. I can do something that I feel is mine, you know, but I have to remember that Jenny can have a reaction to it. She can

have feelings about it. And that doesn't take away from my feelings about it. We just need to be respectful and understand that we can each have feelings about it. Even something that is ostensibly very personal and very like this is my shit fuck you for having a feeling about it and that's where we get in trouble that's where the competitiveness happens more than any other place but i would say i would say just to pat us on the back we are the best in terms of jason's sobriety that's the one place like i've never been like i have feelings about this i want to talk about this like i'm not for being so codependent i'm in no way enmeshed in his sobriety whether he's sober or not sober or when he was getting sober that was really that has been

jason's journey entirely that's very true that is true that is true that's interesting that you bring that up because i agree with that like you never have been like that no i was never like were you drinking or should you drink should you not i i don't know why i can't tell you why but for whatever reason you didn't seem to care about whether or not like if he was gonna deal with the problem yeah yeah he was gonna deal with it and if he was gonna drink you were kind of fine with that too I was like this is your journey it's not my journey no you should absolutely pat yourself on the back that is totally well I don't know I don't think I should pat myself on the back because honestly like it wasn't like I tried to do that it's just right for whatever reason we

don't that's not been a struggle for us that that particular I also think the fact that you weren't aware of it like you it was told me I mean right but even that like in other words you weren't invested in me getting sober to begin with because my alcoholism my non-sobriety staying sober totally but you're not even a little bit i mean i think you are to in a healthy place about it like you should be i think you should be i'd be upset if you weren't i don't like worry about you the way that i feel like a lot of people who are with a sober person maybe like are concerned you know i don't i don't see people pouring drinks and be like oh god is he gonna have a you know somebody can offer him a drink i don't yeah i don't know why but yeah right no i hear you okay well on that

note i think this concludes our session i mean i think you guys should do you have some parting words for couples out there or people that are looking for long-term relationships what would you say if you had to give a piece of advice to people that were embarking on marriage what would your one piece of advice be for each of you don't do it i would say honestly to be able to listen you know to really listen and not hear what that person's saying as about you or a criticism view when somebody's talking they're talking about themselves they're not talking about you and that it is so hard to keep your ego and yourself out of it but to be but i think like the biggest gift you can give somebody is to just listen to them and not personalize it even when they're

telling you you're a piece of shit it's still about them it's still about them still always about them. That's good advice. That's good advice. And that's an unactualized person who's usually doing that. Yes. And they're telling you, I feel like shit. I feel hopeless, helpless, and out of control. And scared or insecure or unsure of the relationship. Exactly. Self-esteem. Okay. Yes. Well, I think in celebration of this time together, you guys should either do anal tonight or do it this afternoon. How about right now? I don't think this is an appropriate place for that. Why? There's no pillows. Right. It will make you feel like you're at home.

I know. This could be fun for you. I'll fuck it. Thank you guys for being here. Thanks for sharing. Thank you, Chelsea. Okay, so you can check out Jenny Mullen's sub stack,

The Best Friend Experience, and her new side hustle, The Shirts Off My Back, where you can buy fabulous vintage clothes. And you can also check out Jenny and Jason co-hosting Dinner and a Movie on TBS.

Okay, so upcoming shows that I have, you guys, I will be all over Maine, Charlotte, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina. I'm coming to Texas. I'm coming to St. Louis and Kansas City. And then I will be in Las Vegas

performing at the Chelsea Theater inside the Cosmopolitan Hotel. My first three dates in Vegas are September 1st, Labor Day weekend, and then November 2nd and November 30th. I'm coming to Brooklyn, New York at the King's Theater on November 8th. And I have tickets on sale

throughout the end of the year in December. So if you're in a city like Philadelphia or Bethlehem or San Diego or New Orleans or Omaha, check ChelseaHandler.com for tickets. Okay. I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. Every week I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our hometown is

not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land. We need cities on a shining hill. This is Our Town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.