Pivot - Disney Drama, Amazon Owns MGM, and Guest Kelly AuCoin

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

Kara and Scott talk about the latest drama at Disney, Amazon officially owning MGM, and some impressive download numbers for Crypto apps. Also, China produces more billionaires than any other country, but regulatory crackdowns there have led to tens of thousands of job cuts. Today's Friend of Pivot is Scott 2, aka actor Kelly AuCoin, who joins to talk about playing our Scott in WeCrashed on Apple TV. You can find Kelly on Twitter at @KellyAuCoin77. Send us your Listener Mail questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

All right. What's going on? Literally, you're still sick? Still sick. I was on my back for two different days, but I traveled in the in-between day, and I got sicker. And so I was in bed all day yesterday with a beautiful view of San Francisco. But nonetheless, I'm still sick. Are you in the Bay Area? Yeah. I'm in San Francisco. Yeah. And what's it like? If you don't live there, people describe it as a hellscape. But I've heard it's not as bad as people say.

It's not. It's bullshit. It's such crap. I've told you that. Some of it is. Yes. Certain. There's more homelessness.

There's more issues with drugs, with fentanyl. Thank you very much, Thackler family. But, you know, it's still a beautiful place. Yeah. Don't listen to the miami bros bros scene it's not true it's not true i love it here i'd move here in a second if i could really you want to go back yeah very much i've lived in los angeles san francisco new york and florida and i'd say my least i think san francisco is the most beautiful city in the

nation yeah uh but it's the only place I would say I don't miss. I really miss LA. I love New York. I love Florida. Why is that? I don't know what it was. I enjoyed it. I had a great 10 years there.

Absolutely adored going to Berkeley. Still very involved with Berkeley. I got sick of what I'll call the mono weather. I felt like it was a mono climate. It was always between 60 and 70 degrees 11 and a half months of the year. Outdoor dining is a near impossibility because the seven nights a year, it's warm enough. They're not ready for it. I'm all about the night.

San Francisco is all about the day. You go mountain biking and mountain tam and then you go out on the bay. I'm the great endorsement. I like to drink late at night. There's not many places to do that in San Francisco. Also, the political climate in San Francisco, I thought it was, just as I find people are very far right,

hard to be around, I found that the political climate in San Francisco was kind of intolerant, even though I consider myself a progressive. So I was ready to leave. Yeah. Well, you know, some of that is true, but it's so beautiful.

It is beautiful. I really like the strangeness. I like the— Yep. It's like, I don't know. I have a Tales from the City version of San Francisco in my head that never disappoints in a lot of ways from Armistead Mopin. I'm much more a centrist also, and I find it a little much, but it's changing. They were called the school board.

I'm sorry. You describe yourself as a centrist? Here I am. What, in Norway? I'm not that liberal, Scott. I'm a capitalist. I am not. I am not. I do not like- Liberals are capitalists. Yes, not all of them, for sure. I remember feeling when I was a- It's so much about your context and your environment. When I was at UCLA in the 80s, I was considered a communist because I didn't like Ronald Reagan. And all my fraternity brothers were just horrified at me. I liked Ronald Reagan. I had a poster, Good Morning in America poster.

I liked Ronald Reagan. Very likable guy, terrible policies. And then I got to San Francisco, and you felt Republican. It's just so much about the environment you're in. Yeah. I often feel Republican here. It's funny. Although I would say I'm very liberal, but not as liberal as the people here.

So that makes me centrist. In any case, we're going to have a lot to talk about, speaking of all kinds of controversies. Today, we'll talk about the troubles at Disney that keep going on, some good news for Amazon, and we'll speak to actor Kelly O'Coin about playing Scott Galloway in the WeWork drama series, We Crash. Scott, people love it. So there you enjoying it. You enjoyed it. There's even been some chatter online. I told you. But by the way, I didn't like, I think we should give you a shout out for your incredible appearance with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, because you sound like Brenda Vaccaro right now. I know. How did your day with Jon Stewart go? It was great, except I sounded even more like Brenda Vaccaro.

And he said, oh, I'm here with Brenda Vaccaro, and you're the second person who's mentioned it. So you have a lot in common with him anyway. Yeah, me and Jon Stewart. That's about where it ends. You're the only part that do guys that mention Brenda Vaccaro. You're from the same timeline. Anyway, let's talk through some stuff, some impressive news for crypto. Crypto apps had more than 100 million downloads in the last three months of 2021. Downloads grew by 400% in 2021, but downloads are dropping in 2022 after all those crypto ads in the Super Bowl. You know, more and more people, I think 18% of people have some crypto in the United States.

It's obviously going to be growing much higher to large amounts as people put their assets in. What thinks you of this? There's a lot of really exciting things about crypto. For the first time, people of color indexed at the same rate of investment as white people. So it is incorporating people into the investment ecosystem. The thing that's really exciting about the apps, which I think grew 400% year on year, is that people spend more time on these apps than they spend on their banking apps or their trading apps.

Yep. So it's really, I mean, there's a lot to like about it. I've always been, I'm a little bit of a skeptic, especially of kind of this great notion of Web3, because when you think about the apps that have the most downloads, essentially they're middleware. So Coinbase, Binance,

people don't want to deal directly with the blockchain. I think that's a bit of a misnomer. They want middle people who will prop up and give them some semblance of order, reasonably more safety. Or like a bank or something. They feel like something they're familiar with. You pay Coinbase,

which is supposed to be power to the people, or OpenSea, take similar commissions to American Express or any other exchange, sometimes more. But I think there's a lot to like about it. It'll be interesting to see. I mean, it's just been the perfect storm of everything that was supposed to happen for crypto, whether it was volatility, not being able to get currencies in and out of a country. It didn't happen. And trading in crypto has been flat. And the prices, I think Coinbase is up again.

But look, it's a new asset class. So many smart people are investing time and money in it. There'll be some enduring innovation here. Here's my thing. I feel like it's not the iPhone yet. The iPhone hasn't shown up. You know, that's when apps took off. There was something that, there was lots of phones like the iPhone, but until the iPhone showed up, it wasn't, it didn't explode. And I still feel like,

I'm always like, I should get some crypto. And then I'm like, oh, I don't want to learn it. You know what I mean? Although Kevin Roos had a very, by the way, congratulations, Kevin just had a baby. I'm going to go visit the baby this week in San Francisco. Kevin Roos works for New York Times. He's been on our show. He wrote a great primer for crypto in the Times. It's like 14,000 words. It's great. Yeah, it's great. It's just a simple, like, it's almost like a little booklet. And it's really useful. And he did a great job. So I think at some point when people start to understand it, or there's some breakthrough that hasn't happened yet, which I don't quite know what it is, that's when people will be spending more time with it. That's my feeling. Yeah, it's like I think the biggest innovation in crypto is not the blockchain or isn't smart contracts, whatever you would point to. I think the breakthrough that fueled most of this is scarcity or specifically scarcity credibility. And that is this genius methodology around saying you've got to throw numbers at a problem. And every time you solve the problem, you're minted a coin. And after that, the problem gets more complex

and it's going to keep getting more complex. And then it stops at 21 million minted coins. The credibility around that scarcity that Bitcoin has been able to establish is, I just think, the innovation of Web, whatever. Web 3 is Web 3. It's really Web 2.01. But it's given people the confidence that it is, in fact, a store of value. There's all these other coins.

I think that, you know, what is it, 83% of NFTs are minted on Ethereum. So there's some innovation there, obviously. But it's just scarcity credibility. And now, at the same time, the Fed and USD have lost so much of that scarcity credibility. I think a lot of it is leaked to Bitcoin. But I would say that the underlying innovation here is doing what luxury brands do, what a rejectionist university system does, and it's established real credible notion of scarcity.

You know, I had an interesting interview with Sam Bankman-Fried recently from FTX. I did it for an internal New York Times thing. And he was, you know, he was, he's a much more, you know, he's one of the youngest, richest people around from doing all this. And he sort of had that point of view. And he thought that as things became, he's a little less like hypester than most of them. But he felt like there needed to be more guideposts and guidelines and stuff like that where people would enter it. And it was interesting. Speaking of really rich people, China is producing more billionaires than any other country, especially when it comes to female billionaires.

That's common, especially in real estate, by the way. China's billionaire population growing three times faster than America's, and three cities with the most billionaires are all now in China. China also has 60 to 70% of the world's most successful self-made female billionaires. Big wealth in China comes mostly, as I said, from real estate, industrial products, and healthcare, while billionaires in the U.S. mostly come from tech, finance, and entertainment. But not everything's so great in China. Alibaba and Tencent are preparing for tens of thousands of job cuts as a result of China's regulatory crackdowns.

Both are looking at cuts of up to 15% of their staff. As a result, regulations targeting Internet companies. Alibaba reported its lowest revenue growth since 2014. Now, this is a stock you thought would take off stock, Scott, you know, I know, and thought it was undervalued, but it's really getting pummeled. But at the same time, they're creating all this wealth. So what thinks you? Well, there's a few different things there.

With respect to Alibaba, I thought it was about 180, and now I think it went down as low as 70. So it's got absolutely crushed. I would argue that if you compare it on a like-for-like basis to Amazon, you're basically getting Amazon at 70% to 80% off. So I'm still bullish. The Chinese stock saw a pretty big pop last week, but they're still very depressed. I think generally speaking, the interesting thing there is one, I believe that Chinese do a much better job of trying to look at us and learn. So as Americans, I think we're essentially narcissists. And a lot of that translates

to ego and confidence and exceptionalism where we're sort of like, well, why couldn't we? And that's one of the wonderful things about our culture. But just as international news in Europe is 20 minutes international and 10 minutes local, we're 20 minutes U.S. and 10 minutes international. We're just very focused on ourselves. And as a result, we like to think that we own all innovation. We like to think we're the most progressive, liberal place in the world. interesting thing there. China's minting more billionaire females than any country in the world. And to me, that is a shocking, striking, and real point of pride for them. Because I've always thought that, you know, people talk about the incredible systemic racism we have in this country. And I've always thought the key to most of it is money. That once you get income inequality, once you take black households and Latino households from an average of $23,000

to where white households are, not all, but a lot of these problems go away. Because I find if you have money, people treat you differently and the opportunities presented to you

and your children are entirely different. Okay, China. Well, that's where I'm headed with this. Thanks, Brenda. I'm just saying. Thanks, Brenda. Listen, my grandmother,

whenever my aunt, who over-talked, said things, Brenda. Listen, my grandmother, whenever my aunt who over-talked said things, she'd go, land it, Ann, land it. Go ahead, land it, Ann. Land it. Land the plane. It's the edible speaking. But that's a real point of pride. When you start minting female billionaires, it sends the right message to young women. It sends the right message to business partners. It sends the right message. I mean, they can say when we wave our finger at them and talk about whatever it is we're electioning them on, and there's some very, very real problems that we should put pressure on in China. But look, they're producing more female billionaires than us. I think that's incredibly impressive. That said, their problems are a little bit different than ours, I would say, including the wholesale, like, jailing of the people.

The genocide light. I mean, there's a lot of places we could go with that. But the other interesting thing. Don't do the Donald Trump. There are bad people in our country, too. We have done that. I didn't say that. And don't put words in my mouth like every fucking politician, Brenda.

All right. Okay. Listen, go ahead. Explain yourself. Well, and also, if you look at their wealth creation, a lot of it is what you would call how wealth was really aggregated in the 70s and 80s here. Real estate, right? Yeah. Real estate.

Industrials. Yeah. Healthcare. And then over here, we've gone full information economy, and it's all about tech now and all about moving zeros and ones. There's still a manufacturing-based economy, I would argue, and we've moved to full service slash innovation. I'll tell you what I think of them. I think this is a very entrepreneurial country. And when there's layoffs like this, there'll be lots of companies. That's another thing I think of. I think this is not a, it's not like Russia where they just deem people oligarchs

who are not entrepreneurial. These people who made this money, everyone I've met from China has been very entrepreneurial. I don't feel like they were handed, here, you get this, you get this, you do favors for who. Now, obviously, that's going on in this country. But I always feel that a lot of this stuff is self-made people who have been taking opportunities. Now, the big issue for China is that the government can move in at any point, at any point, and do whatever it wants, like it has done here. Jack Ma was flying high, and then he wasn't. Same thing with Tencent. What they have done, when I was talking about our inability or we're not as good at learning from other nations and best practices, I think China has clearly looked at the U.S.,

the ruling party, and said, we're just not going to let big tech get as big and powerful as they have in the U.S. because it's been bad for their society. And so they have gone in and they have pretty, I don't want to say kneecapped, but they have hit, it's more like the Nancy Kerrigan thing, like let's take her out of the Olympics. Let's not cripple her, but let's just make sure she only gets the silver or whatever it was that guy did. That's what the CCP has done to these companies. It's come in and it said, we don't like where Facebook, Amazon, and Apple and Google are in the U.S. We're not going to let that happen here.

I think they're absolutely watching us and deciding, taking a lot of cues. They look at educational inequality. They've gone in and shut down these tutoring companies. I mean, they've just shut them down. Yeah. Or they don't like someone getting too big and famous than the government. Well, if that person starts speaking out. Nobody in the U.S. is scared of the U.S. government and tech.

Really, they are. They are. They are. Yeah. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, let's get to our first big story. Not such a fairy tale beginning for CEO Bob Chepek. He could use a little magic, as they say, a little fairy dust. Employees are angry with his weak opposition to Florida's don't say gay bill, as we've noted. They staged brief walkouts last week. A full-day walkout is planned for today. Announcers on Disney-owned ESPN went silent for two minutes in protest of the Florida bill. And Chapik is missing one powerful ally, his predecessor Bob Iger.

Reportedly, the two aren't on speaking terms. I can say I think they don't have a good relationship from my interview, recent interview with Bob. But this piece in CNBC was terrific. I tweeted it, and it was fantastic. It was really well done. Very complex topic. And very fair to Chapik, who's doing, I don't know if it's Chapik or Chapik. Anyway, Bob, too, is how I call him.

A really interesting story, very complex. He's trying to make a lot of important changes. That said, he's put power in the hands of one guy, this guy named Kareem. I'm blanking on his last name, but he's his chief of staff. He's been with them for years. He's the first really high-profile and powerful African-American executive at Disney. And has the most powerful job, I think, in media right now. And he's supposed to be quite competent and quite good at this job. But also has a lot of power and is making big changes in a company that has been presided over by Bob Iger, who's like everybody's uncle. Everybody likes him. Elegant, smart, made two of the best deals, Marvel and Pixar, in history of media, I think. So what thinks you? And then just today,

Rachel Ziegler, the star of West Side Story, said she's not invited to the Oscars. West Side Story is distributed by 20th Century Studios, a Disney company, and she's playing Snow White in the upcoming Disney movie, A Latin Woman. Bob Iger prioritized relationships with A-listers as CEO. Bob, too, had some friction already with Scarlett Johansson. I'm just sort of astonished by the ongoing series of small-time fuck-ups and bigger ones. I get why you might want to reorganize a company along the lines that he's doing. And so did Bob Iger, I think. But this is really quite an astonishing bunch of toe-stubs. What do you think? Well, something you just said I didn't know makes me believe that he's probably not going to make it through 20, that he's probably not going to make it through 2023, maybe not even through 2022. And that is Bob Iger.

And I don't know the man, but he's got such a sterling reputation. The new CEO not having cloud cover and a full-throated endorsement from what is the closest thing to business or Hollywood royalty, which is now Bob Iger, is not a good forward-looking indicator. Some of it is self-inflicted injury on Mr. Chapek. The statement he did around don't say gay was just stupid and tone deaf. I don't think that should be a career-ending injury. What will likely be a career-ending injury is the following, and that is guys like Bob Iger, I think he's not only smart around media, I think he's very smart around the markets. And I think he realized it was a good time to ring the bell. Disney's stock on a multiple of revenues on any metric, well, it's down now, but it's still trading at an exceptionally rich price relative to other similar media companies. And I think that

Bob too's undoing will be the fact that there's just going to be a natural. I think the stock is still potentially overvalued when you look at every other media company that's similar. And it got a little ahead of its skis because everyone was so excited about a streaming company that looked like it could actually go toe-to-toe with Netflix. Disney Plus was really the first streaming platform that kind of took some air out of the room. It was just every story on streaming, if it was about success, was about Netflix until Disney Plus was really the first streaming platform that kind of took some air out of the room. It was just every story on streaming, if it was about success, was about Netflix until Disney Plus. But when you look at Disney, it's still, you know, it's a great company. It's got theme parks. It's still a media company.

But I think Bob, I think the perfect storm of bad things for Bob, whether Bob 2, whether it's not having a good relationship with Bob, one, this fuck up around don't say gay, and three, I just think some natural pressure that's going to come under through no fault of his own means that he probably, I don't think, survives 24 months. Well, you know, he's put all the eggs in the streaming basket, as Bob Iger was starting to do. One of the things that was interesting is that Bob Iger came back. Do you remember when he came back in the pandemic? Apparently, Chapik didn't want him to and was surprised by this. Although, what I've understood is Chapik, it kind of zeroed and iced him out, which I thought, don't ice him out. You suck up to that guy. He didn't like that Bob Iger did that. That's in the story, which was interesting. And Eisner did the same thing to Iger. Eisner was the thing. CEOs are great companies.

They're like African dictators. They cling to power for a lot longer than they should. Iger was quiet about a lot of the stuff around Eisner. You know what I mean? He just took it. He was a good soldier. He just plotted along. I don't know if you remember the stories back then, but a lot of people didn't think, there was a lot of speculation around whether Bob Iger was going to get the job. Was he the right guy? He was considered nice, but not the creative mind of Eisner. And then finally, he just kind of got it through attrition. But typically with CEOs that have that kind of, I mean, look what's happening with Howard Schultz. He's decided to come back for the third time. Yeah. So. That was, I don't even understand. I know both those executives pretty well. I haven't spent any time doing any reporting, but that's in the case of Starbucks. In this case, it's a very, I think there's a great piece by Matt Bellany on Puck about the difficulties of the streaming wars going on. Disney's at 130 million, something like that. Chapik has thought to get up to 240. He's promised by 2024. The business may be very difficult to do that in. It could be a very losing business. People aren't paying. It might have to drop prices. They've all chased Netflix,

and it might not have been the best race to do for them from a financial point of view. It's definitely screwing up talent relationships. I mean, this is not good. But these tiny little mistakes, not inviting Snow White to the Oscars, who was the star of a movie up for best movie, is, ow, Scarlett Johansson, really? It doesn't matter. He gets to take it all in. Don't say gay. Come on, guy. Like you're sort of like, come on. But I think the real issue is the streaming stuff. This other stuff makes for good fodder in Hollywood, which also can bring down the CEO for sure. I think one of the biggest business stories of 2022 will be layoffs at unicorns, private market companies that got way out of their skis.

What's happened to Tencent and Alibaba is about to happen across a third to two-thirds of unicorns in the US. They've been so much cheap capital, so much growth, so much overhiring. It's going to be very interesting to see how those CEOs and this kind of new generation of workers are going to react to those types of layoffs. And then I think the business story of 2023 is going to be the pressure that streaming is about to come under. There's just no way they can get an R on that I. They all rush the buffet line, and there's not enough fried cheese sticks for everyone. That's truism. As someone who's about to launch a show on CNN Plus in nine days, I'm telling you, there's just too much content out there. And there's only so many times

someone's going to take their credit card out. So you're going to see consolidation. You're going to see layoffs. Just as Web3, just as unicorns became over-invested in 2022, streaming is the next thing where everyone's going to lift up their head and go, okay, there's just too much money has gone into this.

That's a nice prediction for your show in nine days, Scott. Thank you. No one's going to buy all the seven people on CNN Plus. That's what you just said. You just said that. The bottom line is there's huge room for news and politics and the dog. Okay. I saw my pilot, though, and I liked it. Did you? I liked it.

Can I see it? It's on sale. Do you believe they're already cutting prices? Are they? There's a promotion. It's three bucks. I'm like, well, that's encouraging. We're already on sale. We haven't even opened the store and we're on sale. All right. All right. We're going to have a quick break. I'll decide if I can afford three bucks for Scott Galloway. When we come back, I actually want to watch, oh, Chris Wallace. Decentrist that you are. All we come back, I actually want to watch Chris Wallace. Decentrist that you are. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Amazon buys an iconic lion and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Kelly O'Coin. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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FTC chairman, Lena Kahn, let the deal close without a vote from her commission. She reportedly believed that a vote wouldn't get past Republican commissioners she needs. It's still not balanced correctly. It's 4-2-2, I think.

But like the Rocky movie, also an MGM property, there's still not balanced correctly. It's 2-2, I think. But like the Rocky movie, also an MGM property, there's room for a sequel. The FDA says it can challenge a deal at any time, as I said. I doubt it will. It's looking for bigger fish from Amazon around marketplaces, from what I understand. Also, Amazon's got its hands full running the place, especially with the producers of the James Bond franchise in the driver's seat a lot of the ways. There's also all kinds of executive flurrying going on there and who's going to report to who and this and that. So, what did you think about this? Did she let it pass? I was not surprised. I think this is the right move. This is not the beach to die on. And her first major action needs to be a win to show credibility and to create of AT&T and Time Warner, which was just stupid.

And so I think this is a good thing. And then if you look at the actual semantics of whether it's anti-competitive, it's effectively a content company for streaming. And the streaming environment, per our previous comments, is actually very competitive. So, A, I don't think it's monopoly abuse. I mean, you could argue that their ability to go in and overpay is a perfect example of monopoly abuse, but the market itself is very competitive. What are your thoughts, Kara? Yeah, it was interesting because at the end of our interview,

she asked me what I thought of it, the deal, out of nowhere. I did an interview with her relatively recently, and she asked me what I thought of it. I said, it's not your hell to die on. This is not the one. It's competitive. The same thing you were saying. And she just listened. She didn't say anything. She just asked what I thought. And I thought, they're going to have enough problems integrating this thing into its business. And it's not going to be a win-win for them necessarily. You know, paying too much is really not the thing you're going to win on. And it's going to spend all your firepower

on something that's small. And she doesn't have a majority. If Congress does confirm Alfred Bedoya, it's not a clear thing it's going to happen. His nomination is currently stalled. And Amazon, app and his nomination is currently stalled. And Amazon, the thing is, Amazon has acquired for 100 companies in its history and the FTC has challenged. How many do you think, Scott? Oh, two or three? Zero. Zero. There you go. So, you know, this anti, the judge dismissed the antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

with the pricing policies are anti-competitive. We'll see. I think the marketplace is where she needs to play. It's marketplace. There's a lot of people you can testify. There's a lot of people unhappy. They're not quiet. People will understand that. I just feel like that might go to DOJ. Who knows? But this is not the one. Although, who knows what she's going to do with Microsoft Activision coming up also before it. I think they think it's going through. I think Lena Kahn would be well-advised to put all of her wood behind a couple arrows, and that is probably breaking up Google, which is both the buyer, the seller, and the marketplace. Google's over at the Justice Department, but go ahead.

And then, do they cooperate on these issues or do they just divide them up perfectly? No, they divide them up, yeah. And then I think getting Facebook to divest of Instagram and WhatsApp would be a huge victory. And I think there's a lot of supporting evidence that make that a very doable, winnable place.

Although it might be backward looking because of TikTok and all the problems right now at Facebook. That's a good point. So it's a moving target for her, and she still doesn't have the majority she needs. Here's someone ready to go and loaded for bear and can't do what she wants. I would suspect Amazon and Marketplace and something with Facebook around privacy would probably be where she might be able

to make a win, but she's got to make a win. And I think that's really where she needs to play. I don't think she could do this at where she was going to go. And then it would have been an internal fight. And then you'd have seen the stories about Lena Khan's FTC going nowhere, that kind of thing. And you you understand how that goes, right? Yeah. Yeah. They need more funding. And their first one or two cases have to be wins.

Because, again, it's not who the FTC and the DOJ break up that's important. It's when the DOJ went after Microsoft, big companies thought twice before trying to acquire competitors or trying to put small companies out of business. It was the chill of the DOJ's initial win against Microsoft, even though it was overturned. And the way she creates an algebra of deterrence around these anti-competitive acquisitions or activity is for her to, she needs a win. She needs a big, iconic win. And she should be very thought, because the bottom line is she's going to go up against thousands of lawyers. Yeah. A lot of people thought she would block this. This was interesting, but I think she knew she can't win. She can't win. She can't win. But she put the letter out, right? And Amazon, of course, she got famous for her Amazon Yale Law School article she wrote. And again, I think Amazon's going to have plenty. There's plenty of competition in this area. Amazon's going to have a hard time really getting this brought in. I read the Hollywood trades a

lot, and it seems like there's a lot of unhappiness among the executives. And you know how much trouble those Hollywood executives can make. And the Broccoli family have lots of heft there. But not just that. There's other executives, and I think it's Jennifer Salke who runs their thing. There's a lot of egos involved. Salke who runs their thing. There's a lot of egos involved. But we'll see if they can do something with this film library is really why they bought it. They also have epics, whether it's going to stay on the air and how they're going to license things and what they're

going to use for the Amazon Prime. And I don't know. We'll see what happens here. It's going to be a big mess for them to make perfect in any case. And I think she just saw no win here for herself. Well, you know why Daniel Craig had gray hair in the last Bond film? Why? Because he had no time to die. He did. He did have time to die. Anyway, I'm so pleased right now to bring in our friend of Pivot. Kelly O'Coin is an actor known for his roles on Billions and The Americans. Now he takes a role of a lifetime as Scott Galloway in We Crash,

the Apple TV series that chronicles the rise and fall of WeWork. Kelly, welcome. Hey, thank you. First of all, I am a huge fan of yours and Billion's. I thought you played Scott Galloway so perfectly in this show, I don't know what to say. And I love the show, by the way, We Crash. And we have lots to talk about. But why don't I let, oh, I'm going to ask the first question.

Oh, that's a shocker. How much research did you do to play Scott Galloway? H I let – no, I'm going to ask the first question. That's a shocker. How much research did you do to play Scott Galloway? Hush up, you, Scott Galloway. I've got the nicer Scott Galloway here. Well, you know, first thing, I stalked his neighborhood until I found him and followed him very, very closely for months on end. Years in anticipation of someone writing this series. Yeah. No, I mean, you guys have seen the whole thing, I think.

It's not that it gets into, it doesn't get into his private life. It's not the Scott Galloway biopic. So for me, it was about trying. No, the spinoff is coming, I'm sure. Yeah. Chipotle and ED Clinic. I can't wait. Season four. That's right. So it was more just, you know, I wanted to study the stylings of Krof G, you know, and that was very, very entertaining research.

Yeah. There's a lot of it too, right? There's a lot of it. entertaining research. Yeah. There's a lot of it too, right? There's a lot of it. So it was, you know,

and I wanted to see you interviewing people and talking to a crowd and I also wanted to watch a ton of your YouTube show and, because that was the, pretty much that's the type of stuff I do.

Can I ask you what you thought the essence, what did you hold on to of the many parts of Scott Galloway? Well, there was this follicular thing that I felt kinship to.

Yeah. Okay. That's easy. Yeah. The essence, I don't know that I would phrase, I follicular thing that I felt kinship to. Yeah, okay. That's easy. Yeah. The essence, I don't know that I would phrase, I don't know that I think of it in those terms. But there's an energy and a curiosity and there's a droll, there's a world weariness to it, but it's not cynical. And that's one of the things that really, I mean, it may be cynical, but it's not cynical to the point of, I won't speak for you, but to the point of not giving a shit anymore. So that was the kind of energy I was approaching it with.

Apparently, Gerald Leto stayed in character for six months, which is crazy. Oddly enough, I just had breakfast with Adam Neumann, and he's perfect. He's like crazy perfect. That's amazing. Did you stay in Scott Galloway's character for six months or maybe a month? Oh, God, that's a frightening thought. Yeah, I shot those scenes about, I think, two months apart. So, yeah, I had to stay.

I wanted to stay in the Gallowayian mode for two months. Judgmental yet desperate for other people's affirmation. That's this headspace you decided to occupy for several months. Oh, that's why I felt that way. Yeah, I just somehow got into that headspace doing you physically. I loved, I had one scene with Adam Neumann, that interview scene, that's already aired. I'm sitting here and I'm listening to you

and all I can do is think three things. First, God, he's got great hair. Second, kind of feels a little like you're targeting potential investors here. And what does the third think? Aren't his feet cold? When I got on set, they were like, okay, now listen, be warned. He stays in character. He goes off script a little bit. You just like go with him. I was like, great. No, this is actually

fun. That means I can play ball too. And I think if you, maybe if you come from theater or maybe that's part of it, you know, there was a big crowd there that you get energy off the crowd of extras that are responding to you. And I had a great time with him. I think he's phenomenal. Super. He really is. In this role. I can't wait till people get to see the later episodes when we're doing the Prof G show and whatnot.

You know what's weird is Kelly's referencing this conference where I interviewed Adam Newman on stage at the J.P. Morgan Alternative Investment Conference. And I don't know if the rest of the show is this exacting. It was literally the exact words and dialogue. I mean- They call it inspired by or dramatization. It was biopic. It was the exact questions I asked. Even I thought, my God, was somebody recording us? But if the rest of the series, this is true to what actually happened, this is not a drama at all. This is really close to the actual events. So you have not seen him play you doing Prof G? You have not seen that episode?

You haven't seen the show, when I do the show. I did, I gotta be honest, it's weird to take yourself out of your body and see someone. It has to be, right? You're a much better me than me, but it was- Yeah, I thought so. I thought so. My wife seemed a little too enthralled by you as me,

I gotta say that. So anyways, but I'm at a loss for words here. He's at a loss for words. It's got to feel strange to see someone do you. And I wasn't, I mean, I was not trying to like match your voice or I wasn't trying to do the Jared Leto way of doing things. Yeah, the rich little. Yeah, I get it.

Yeah. But yeah, I wasn't yeah the rich little um yeah i get it yeah yeah but yeah i wasn't i wasn't doing the rich little but it was uh there's just an energy that was infectious so i was definitely and i think and after the casting announcement we we connected uh and and i think i was like just you know i'm not doing an impersonation it's inspired by and all that which partially i'm sure was me being like what the fuck he hates it can say, well, this was just my interpretation of you or whatever. Spied by, yeah. But I did love your first comment.

You screencapped, do you remember what your first comment was? I don't. You screencaptured the picture of me in the announcement, the casting announcement, and said, I guess Chris Hemsworth wasn't available. That's right. That's right. Which made me laugh out loud and my wife laugh out loud Hemsworth wasn't available. That's right. That's right. Which made me laugh out loud and my wife laugh out loud. Oh my God, Scott.

No, it was great. It was great because then it allows you to respond in a self-deprecating manner. Kelly, first off, let me just say, I was so excited to find out that you were the guy. I'm a fan. You get a ton of credit for, you're sort of known as Dollar Bill and Billions, but I think you're, in my opinion, you're kind of iconic or great work

as the pastor and the Americans. I can't turn Paige away from the church, Mr. Jennings. It's a sanctuary. I can't turn anyone away. That's the whole point of this place. I'd love to just get a little bit of your backstory, like where you grew up, how you got into acting, what do you find rewarding about it, what's been your favorite role? Just kind of give us the voiceover. Extended elevator pitch, I suppose.

There was a period of time when I was maybe in junior high through high school where I'd realized there was nothing more, nothing else I wanted to do. And what the fuck was going to happen if it didn't work out as I really, I didn't have a backup plan. But my father was a congressman, 18 terms. And my mom sang. My mom sang. I grew up with people who are used to being in front of people. I don't know if you're familiar with the concept that there's a performative aspect to politics. I noticed. And we were, and for better and for worse. You do need to get a story across. That's essential for any communication, but it can obviously, it can get, it can go too far. But I was used to being in front of people. And I remember, I've told this story before, but I remember singing, I was in a play called The Trial of Mother Goose in junior high, or maybe grade school. And I did something off script and

the crowd reacted, not to the script, but to what I did. They laughed. And I did something off script and the crowd reacted, not to the script, but to what I did. They laughed. And I remember just being like, what? I have no idea what I did. I just remember that it was like a seismic moment.

It's intoxicating, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I could make the crowd do something and it was from there. Two questions. What role was your big break professionally and what role have you enjoyed the most? Other than, of course, playing this one, but in the past.

Well, yes. I mean, certainly I can quit now. You're done. You've rang the bell. It's all down here from here. It was either me or Gandhi and you chose me. I did. Oh, please. That guy? What other bald men can you play with i played jeff bezos in um a little cameo is jeff bezos in super pumps which is uh another show created by the billion more importantly who plays his girlfriend it was a it was a tiny cameo yeah uh i it was i my favorite roles are still from theater uh i i'm a big Tom Stoppard fan. I don't know if anyone listening is a fan of his.

Yes, indeed. Kara Swisher is. Septimus Hodge in Arcadia is probably my favorite role. You're kidding. You played Septimus? Yeah. Oh, my God. He's so deep and sexy.

I knew it. Shall we dance? Substance and yet sexy. Shall we dance? That last line at the end. That's why this worked. That's why it worked. Say the last line.

Do the last line. It's the best line ever. Oh, God, it was ages ago. But it's when Septimina asks him to dance, and you know she's going to die in a fire that night because you've gone back. Yeah, it's crushing. I just spoiled the play for everyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Nonetheless, it doesn't spoil it. It's so beautiful. It's among the most beautiful plays. My favorite role, I love the theater. Theater's still my base. I came to New York. All of us came to New York, the theater actors, because we made a choice out of school.

Either we go to LA for the TV to focus on TV or we go to New York for theater. And we got lucky. Are you in a current play? Not yet. I haven't done a play since 2019. Since Billions. No, I was able to do about a play a year

for quite a while. I just, the pandemic kind of shut things down. Talk about playing Dollar Bill Stern on Billions, which you are just really an awful human being,

but fantastically funny. Back off, Bill. Why? Because he can end my world, burn my contacts, and keep every cent of my bonus for himself? That's supposed to make me hold my tongue?

Fuck yeah. That's why you will never buy and sell equities. No. All that's supposed to make me more brazen when I know I'm fucking right. Fuck it, Wade. It's really fun to misbehave. Yeah.

You know? I can't think of a character short of a serial killer that is more polar opposite to me. Yeah. As some of my former Twitter fans, Twitter former fans have found out that I'm slightly to the left of Dollar Bill. Oh, yeah. I'm not quite the Ayn Rand follower that he is. It's just, it's fun.

And you step in the shoes of someone who is so completely different from you. You get to act out. My wife tells me never bring, you bring an ounce of him home and you're out, buddy. But the joy is the group of people that I'm working with. It's amazing. It is amazing. And it's- I know Koppelman pretty well. I know Brian really well. Yeah. I went to the set. I think Paul Giamatti was on the set. I think we were in his office. amazing it is amazing and it's i know compliment pretty well i know you do i'm really yeah i went to the set um i think paul giamatti was on the set i think we were in his office okay um during

one of the seasons but it's how is it going with the changeover now that you've you know you have a new villain essentially running yeah um i i'm in fewer of these episodes because uh dollar bill went off and and did his um he started his his own business with Mafi because we were loyal to Bobby. But I'm having a good time. Supposedly there'll be more stuff next year, but, and I know we got renewed, so hopefully. But it's let me do a lot of other things as well. It was fun to keep my foot in the door with Billions,

but then also I did, we crashed and a show called The Girl from Plainville, which premieres in about a week. It does. And a couple other things. So it's been fun. What was the kind of pivotal moment in terms of elevating your career? What was your big moment, your big breakthrough? There were probably two. I got my first Broadway show in a little old play called Julius Caesar that Denzel Washington was starring in. And I had a nice juicy little role that led to a couple of some other great theater things. And I was doing well theater wise. I just hadn't broken into TV. So that was a big thing to elevate me a little bit and change the way people thought about me.

And then it probably was House of Cards. House of Cards and the Americans happened very close together. The Americans became a bigger role as it went along. I think they started to expand the thought. Instead of just killing him off, they thought, actually, maybe the one thing is everyone expects him to die. We can't kill him off. He's the one person we can't kill off. And I think the one-two punch of having House of Cards and the Americans,

which were so different and I was so different on them, that I think that sort of opened these other doors. So I have one more question about, because one of the scenes I thought was best is when you read the S1 from WeWork and you start writing the what the fuck column, the famous what the fuck column.

Yeah. I thought, you know, one of the things people don't realize, it is a pivotal moment in crashing WeWork with Scott's doing this. Or starting, people were going to catch on to this, but it really, it encapsulated the problem really rather severely. I thought you got that energy just right, because we talked about it on the show incessantly, the S1 at the time. It was really interesting to me. Also, I learned what an S1 was working on this piece, I think working on the audition. When I was auditioning for it, there were three Professor G shows, episodes, little sections instead of just the two we have now. And each of them were much, much longer.

I can see why dramaturgically you had to cut them down because I was bummed because it was so much fun to do all of it. But yeah, so that SC scene, it was the one little moment, little quiet thing. There were no other actors. It was just me on a coast. Where was that? It's supposed to be Nantucket, right? It should have been Nantucket. They didn't take me to Nantucket. Now I'm pissed they didn't take me to Nantucket.

It wasn't Scott. Scott could have taken you. Scott, why didn't you take me to Nantucket? You don't know this yet, Kelly, but you and I are friends. George Hahn was my first Twitter friend. You're going to be my second. I like to cut you. I can tell you're a nice man and will enjoy hanging. So congratulations, we're friends.

But okay, we're going to get to some things to test your Scott model, if you don't mind. Oh, my God. So here's the game. Oh, my God. Okay, here we go. I'll read you a line, very neutral. I do not see this in the script. Yeah, you don't.. So here's the game. I'll read you a line, very neutral. I do not see this in the script. Yeah, you don't. So too bad. Do not be offended if I get them all wrong. He's always

offended. He's pre-offended. All right. And you give it to that. Perpetually offended. This is so uncomfortable. Seriously. As someone who is almost never uncomfortable, I'm incredibly uncomfortable right now. Oh, you'll be fine. It's all about you. It's perfect. Okay, go ahead. You give it back to us as Scott Galloway, okay? I'm going to say the line. Oh, my God. You can do it, Kelly. I'm Scott Galloway. You're watching Pivot. What a thrill. What a thrill. I'm Scott Galloway. You're watching Pivot. What a thrill. What a thrill. What a thrill! What a thrill! That was good.

That was excellent. That's good. Okay. The real party is happening later in the dog's hotel room with Cialis and Chipotle. Oh my God, I'm triggered. The real party is happening back at the dog's hotel room later with Cialis and something else I don't remember now. Oh! Oh my God, I'm triggered!

Excellent. You just have to say boom, and we're done on that. Boom! Excellent. Now, what are you going to be in next? So, the real fun stuff on We Crash is coming up, I think, episode seven. So good. More billions to Come, but we don't get back to shooting that until October. And The Girl from Plainville on Hulu,

which is a really, really interesting piece. What's that about? It's about Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy, the two teens. Oh, yeah. Their text relationship and he committed suicide and the question. And she was coaxing him to, and it's about that case. Wow.

And it's much more complicated than I ever knew. The first three episodes drop on March 29th on Hulu. And you play, who do you play? I play Scott Gordon, another Scott G. There you go. The detective who sort of pieces it together. Oh, wow. Oh, that sounds great.

Anyway, for our purposes, you can watch We Crash, which both of us loved. I really loved it. Great. On Apple TV+. New episodes drop every Friday. And Scott is hosting the companion podcast for the show. Mm-hmm. And I'm interviewing Kelly on it, yeah.

It's called We Crash, The Director's Cut, available from Wondery. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much, Kelly. I mean this sincerely. It was such a rewarding moment for me. So thank you. I love that. And hearing you say that is a very rewarding moment for me as well. So I'm very glad you guys like it, really. It's another bromance for Scott. There you go. Our mandate is coming up soon. I love it.

It'll be very bromantic. That's right. Okay, Scott, we'll take one more quick break and then we'll be back for wins and fails. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply.

Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott. Wins and fails. My win is Katonji Brown Jackson. Her confirmation hearing begins. She'd be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. And what's exciting is she's passed the Senate confirmation test three times previously. So Senator Murkowski, I believe, has already approved her for her appointment.

I believe it was to the appellate court. Look, I think this is a nice moment. And so I'm excited about that. My other win is a little bit different. My win is thousands, much less millions of people show up at their border. That sometimes that brings out the best and the worst in nations. And I think it's brought out the best in Poland. They've taken over 1.8 million refugees into their borders and welcome them. And I think that's an extraordinary display of humanity and grace. And I think over the long term, it helps their economy because there's nothing like loyalty to a country and a flag than when you take them in when they're at their most vulnerable. So my win is Poland. My other Poland and Judge Jackson. My fail is there was a great article

in the Washington Post just about how far millennials are and the younger generation is falling behind in terms of household wealth. And when you look at our desire to keep boomers rich by bailing out the existing rich and not transferring opportunities and creating churn in our economy, it suppresses younger people. When you look at skyrocketing education costs, we have seen wealth of people under the age of 40 drop from 19% of GDP to 9%. If you look at household wealth, they're effectively being shut out of the housing market because you live in a scarcity economy. Once people have houses, they decide, let's make it harder for other people to get

houses. So you have a younger generation that is for the first time in history at the age of 30, not doing as well as his or her parents are at 30. And the Washington Post did a great job of summarizing it. But you have a generation that's sort of lost economically. And I think that leads to revolution. And that revolution takes different forms. But it's also being, I think, especially hard on young men who are expected to be, fairly or unfairly are judged based on their economic viability. So we have a generation that's not forming households, not forming what I think is the

elemental foundation of any society, and that is healthy, productive relationships, which in a capitalist society means someone has to be or both people need to be economically viable. So I think there's a real something. We always talk about income inequality. I think what we should be talking about as much or more is generational inequality. And that is we, through all our tax policies, all our legislative policies, through weaponization of government, we are consistently transferring money from the young to the old and not investing,

making the same investments that our parents made in us. So anyways, my lose is continued generational inequality. I think my fail was this video of the People's Convoy truckers, which has been a real bust, surrounding a Tesla and blocking him in and then thinking it was hysterical. I was sort of like, you're really just an asshole. But then someone wrote me, said there's so much rage that's been developing for decades among truckers who've had a hard life. I understood that, but on some level, I was like, I don't care. That's not how to win

hearts and minds. You may have a lot of really reasonable, angry things to talk about. So do a lot of people, including black people, including gay people. Lots of people have grievances. But surrounding a car of someone on a highway and then surrounding cell phones, what's wrong with you? Like, what is wrong? You don't have an excuse. No matter how much anger you have, there's no excuse for that. A real fail, actually, many Apple services are suffering outages today, but so are some others. They're reporting that there's some problems that it may not just be Apple. This

might be something from Russia, PayPal, AWS. I'm not saying it is, but there's a lot of spikes and outages. Apple services include iCloud, App Store, Siri, Find My, Apple Maps, music, podcasts. They're coming back online, but it'd be interesting to find out why they went down. And if it was more widespread, there's obviously going to be more attacks. It may not at all be an attack, but if it is, we really have to be vigilant. Another win is the Russian cosmonauts who boarded the International Space Station wearing Ukrainian colors. Wasn't that wonderful? That was wonderful. That was a big moment. That was how you do a protest, you fucking truckers. They put on their suits, they put

their lives at risk with their country. They just said nothing. They were classy. They made a protest. That's how you do protests. You know, that's how you do it. And they had something costly at them. It was quite something to see. I was sort of like, I couldn't believe it. That's happening all over Russia with lots of people who are doing, whether the woman in the line, there's people holding up signs, there's all kinds of protests that are brave and the way you protest in this world. And I thought it was great. I thought that was great. I like your win. I agree with you. It seems obvious now, but that probably will be one of the iconic moments that endures. And there is something about space, or at least the notion of space, that creates more of a comity of man. And I think they demonstrated that.

Some people would argue it was political, and now we politicize the space station. But there's something about this traditional notion about the humanity. You know, you can't see borders from space and all that. You're right. It was an iconic moment. But it was such no noise, just visual. And it was classy iconic moment. But they did it with such no noise, just a visual. And it was classy and risky. I'm hoping they're up there for a while.

That's all I have to say, that they don't have to come down. Anyway, we'll take a listener question in our next episode. This is a very full one. What do you want to know? Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for us or call 855-51-PIVOT. The link is also in our show notes. Okay, Scott, that's the show. My voice is almost dead, but we'll be back on Friday for more.

And hopefully I will be restored to my other power. That was a really lovely interview with Kelly. And again, we urge you to watch it, not just because Scott, there's a character of Scott in it. It's a really good show. We crashed and because Scott's in it, obviously watch it. Thank you, Kara. Anyway, Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Severio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine, Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Poland, 1.8 million refugees they've welcomed. Well done and thank you.