The Daily Beast Podcast - ‘Modern Family’ Producer: Dave Chapelle Is ‘Thin-Skinned One’

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

In this bonus episode of The New Abnormal podcast, co-host Andy Levy talks to Modern Family producer Danny Zucker, who weighs in on the Dave Chapelle SNL monologue that used the same anti-semitic tropes as Kanye West. They also discuss the time that he harassed Donald Trump on Twitter, why he wants to “rage” at Dems, and why the writer’s made Luke’s character “weirdly libertarian.” Plus! A touching story about how the show made a conservative dad less of a bigot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some great guest co-hosts, as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Hello, and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal,

and we thank you so much for being here. Joining me now for the Sunday bonus episode of The New Abnormal is a man who's been a comedy writer for over 30 years now and most recently won five Emmys, if I counted right, as part of the producing team of the ridiculously popular sitcom Modern Family. It's Danny Zucker. Danny? Oh, my God. Hello.

Hello. Thank you for being here. Okay, so before we get to your showbiz career, I do want to talk about, and politics with you because we are a political podcast. You are not super active on Twitter these days, I assume, because you are smart. But there was a time when you were Donald Trump's public enemy number one on there, wasn't there? Yes, there was. I mean, this goes back to a time where everybody hated Donald Trump, not just people who could read.

It was kind of amazing. I was like 2014, I believe. And I didn't make a big deal about it. I was never somebody who, like, tweeted at celebrities or did something because I, I prior to Donald Trump, I got into trouble with Chris Brown and I got flamed. It was one of the first of my real speechaber had. I said, I'm never doing that again. And basically Chris Brown.

I don't know what that's like. That's right. You know what that's like exactly. That's right. I forgot that bonded you, me and Jenny Johnson. Yes. No, there was an earthquake in Virginia and he had tweeted, please pray for Virginia. And I responded with, oh, God, what did you do to her?

I remember that. And then all of team. His team came after me and it was like, oh, I'm not going to do that again. So, but I figured, like, at the time, the only, there are few people who you could be safely tweet out and Donald Trump was one of them because everybody kind of hated him and he was a joke. So he had tweeted, Celebrity Apprentice number one show of the night. And then I just simply tweeted back the easily checkable fact and chart that he was, in fact, last in his time slot. And that launched a month's long Twitter war with hundreds of tweets.

And it was just like he would set me up, lead with his chin. would knock him down. And I was vaunted for this, really. You were. But I will say, almost anybody can beat the guy in a battle of wits. And I think I was the comedy writer he came after, but I think anybody or this salt would have done just to get this guy down. Then he blocked me. You know, he just goes like he does. Oh, I forgot that he blocked you. That's right. Yeah. I had completely forgotten about the whole thing with you and Trump. And then I was doing my 45 seconds of research that I do before these interviews. And I came across it. And I was like, man, that was like several lifetimes ago. Well, it was, but you know what happened with it was,

so like you said, that was about 2014. And back then, what was interesting was like, you could scroll through the comments back and forth. And you would have to scroll a long time to find someone who was supporting him. And it was not a political thing. Because he wasn't a Republican in that point. He was just a buffoon. And he is a buffoon, but he wasn't characterizing that. But then once he got the nomination, somehow it went viral again. And when it went viral again, and even more so, this is now in 2016 or in 2017, suddenly my timeline was filled with like a lot of hate. Yeah.

A lot of your gay, like while you are. Yeah. Exactly. That kind of threatening behavior as I continued to, because I just escalated at that point and, you know, knew he was, I knew he had blocked me, but I knew that, like, I would get a lot of fleets that would go viral. And so as he's somebody who checked his Twitter constantly and mentions, you know, if I could get like, you know, 20,000 mentions, I knew that was clogging up his timeline. So it was a very fun thing for me. Yeah, it is so weird how that

wasn't that long ago. It was only eight years ago, but it just really does feel like it was a century ago. It's unbelievable. Well, it really, yeah, it absolutely does. I mean, I often think, like, you know, when I looked at that period of time, like, if you had gone into, like, let's say, like, in 2015, like, you went into a coma and, like, you came out of it in the middle of the pandemic in 2020. And then I had to explain to you everything. The pandemic would seem almost secondary to the, wait, Donald Trump?

Yeah. People on the right, like, I was, I could talk to at various points, like, who hated him? voted for him. It became so tribal. It was, it's really, it was a really strange moment, like a, like a stupid Ray hit the country. Yeah. But I was reading that you have since made up with Trump and that you are supporting him for 2024. Is that true? Well, I think for me, I'm always about giving somebody a chance. And he just seems so presidential lately. Did you happen to catch his announcement that he's running? It was unbelievably boring. It was so dull. And very bad for him. And very bad for him. And very bad for him.

Because, you know, I think it's no secret. He has trouble with things like reading. Yes. But I don't think he wants this. I mean, I know he didn't want it before. I think he's just, he's like this algorithm on automatic pilot. And I think in the back of his head, what he's thinking is, I have to do this now because it will help me when I'm indicted, make it seem more like it's a political hit.

The idea that he's spending so much time going after DeSantis, it's this. He knows he could lose again. Right. He's created a world for himself where the only people who support him are the people he hates the most. He has no respect for them. You watch him at his rallies. He always, oh, that guy's here. You put on a little weight.

He's always attacking them. And it's not like any of them are coming to Mar-a-Lago. I've said this a number of times during his presidency. If I had said, look, I know Donald Trump and I, you know, we got into a fight, but I have to admit, the guy is doing a really good job. In that moment, I could have become Secretary of State. Yeah, absolutely. He wants to be part of Hollywood and New York society more than anything in the world. And because those are things he never could really, like, he had it briefly and blew it.

You know, it's like that's all he wants. Yeah, and it just feels now like it's like he's coming back for a new season, but the writers don't have the passion and he as the actor is just not into it. And look, you've had a, you know, long and fruitful, career writing for series television. What advice can you give him? Does he need to go to Paris, introduce a new roommate? Like, what can he do? I think you should get Melania pregnant. I think you're always like, we did this in modern family. You know, when you're running out of ideas, throw some babies at it. That's a real kidding. It felt like the saddest reboot watching him at Maruoco.

It's like, we don't need. I'm not going to trash any horrible reboots because I'm trying friends on all of them. But we know the ones that didn't need to come back. And we're sort of like, oh, we didn't need to see Muhammad Ali come back for that last fight. We didn't need to speak. There's certain things we don't need to say. Yeah, no, absolutely. By the way, we're going to deep fake in some names of some reboots in your voice. That would be great.

Please, please. Yeah, no, it would be great. I need more enemies. So moving away from Trump, I've been trying to ask this question to most of my Sunday guests who have tended to be what I like to call Hollywood types. Yeah. What do you think of when you hear the phrase cancel culture? It infuriates me.

I have to be honest with you. Here's the thing about cancel culture. I hear about cancel culture all the time. I hear about people being canceled on Twitter, on Twitter for four years. Right. Who's getting canceled exactly? What is getting canceled? Like, what does that mean exactly?

And especially in the world of comedy, it really pisses me off. Because I think this. I think that for as long as people have been doing stand-up comedy, there have been people who have protested and wanted them off the air. It's happened forever. And I do think the only difference right now is that people are whining about it so much. Comedians are whining about it a lot. And it doesn't strike.

Like if canceled culture were a thing and if the Jews controlled Holly, let's put those two things together, really. Why is Mel Gibson still making movies? I wish I controlled Hollywood. But why is that? Why would that be happening? It, like, who exactly is getting canceled? Because I've been thinking about this a lot, the Chappelle monologue that was just on Saturday Live.

And I actually love Dave Chappelle. Do you think, I sound like him at the beginning of the beginning of the monologue. I like Jews. He's like, I'm my best friend. I like Chappelle. Right. Is a genius. And I like that monologue, most of it.

But the thing is, I know how he feels, by the way. I don't think it's right. But the way that he is feeling about, like, saying something about the Jews, I don't want to cancel Dave Chappelle. But if I can't criticize a false premise in his monologue, I'm like, I'm allowed to do that. I feel like there's so much more risk in criticizing him than him doing his act. Like, he's not going to get canceled. He's going to get to go on and do this all. The one thing you could say about Jews, it's as a group.

And it doesn't go the whole way. is that like kind of have a sense of humor like we are constantly bed brooks in the 60s wrote springtime for Hitler you know it's like it's not like a thing people can make jokes about us we're like famously doing that I would suggest that people who are like Chappelle or I feel this way about Bill Maher too they're the thin skin ones yeah absolutely like Bill Ma complains about like political correctness of college I would contend that Maybe colleges don't want him because most of his act is just vitriol at millennials and Gen Zing. It's all get off my lawn.

These kids with this and they're all thin skin and they're all and they're all like so sensitive. And you just can hear them complaining. Like every generation rolls its eyes at the next or the previous. It's like it's always happens. Of course. I don't want to see somebody on a TV show or at a comedy club. or in my business who is cornering women, who is like being predatory. When I run a show or when I've been on a show, or like worked on a show, the only difference is,

is like when I'm on a staff, I can make all these jokes because no one else's job is depending on, like, they don't have to laugh at what I'm saying because I'm just an employee there. But when I'm running a show or I'm in charge, there's just a duty not to be a fucking bully. Like, you have to understand that there's that shifting dynamic. Like women comedy writers that I've worked with who have had long careers, they're the best comedy writers in a way because they've had to like deal with all of the obstacles I've had to deal with to get to a career plus dealing with superiors like egos and the subtle thing. So like I don't think that's a bad thing to like cut out. You know, I just don't. I remember Camel, Bill Marr got,

you know, was used the N word on his show in the real time, you know, in a way. And there was an uproar and like about it. But Kamala Najani said the best thing. It's like, well, let's see. You run the world. You get paid more. You don't get shot by cops. Not saying one word feels like a small price to pay for that. That is literally something I used to say. I had no idea. Kamal said it. It's such an easy thing. I know. Good deal. Like you'll take that deal. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's fine. I would take that every time. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about your quote-unquote career. Yes. It's a weird use of quotes, I've been just saying. I'm weirdly offensive. I don't really know how quotes work. You are like Trump in that way. Exactly. He quotes, he puts quotes around the honest fucking thing. Like he will put quotes around witch hunt, which means what he doesn't understand, first of all is a fake witch hunt and put it in there. So it's a fake witch hunt. It's not a winchunt. But forget that. Then you put quotes around.

witch hunt. It's like, it's not a witch. It means it's the opposite. Anyway. Right. It's a fake. Wait, what? It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a you got your start. You're working on the Arsenio Hall show? That was the first writing job I ever got. Wow. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I mean, I got lucky. I mean, I, I didn't do my first, like, I got out of school. I wound up getting a production assistant with Howard Stern. He was going to do, like, the late night show on Fox that was going to follow Joan Rivers. And we shot five episodes. And, you know, it was like a couple months of pre-production. And I got to meet all those guys. And they were just at K-Rock at that point. So they just, they left WNBC and gone to K-Rock. And so I got to be PA there. And it was really

great. And I, you know, Bob and Booey, Gary is like one of my closest friends. But there's a producer on there who had a show out here in Los Angeles that was launching. And I, he offered me a PA job there. So I came across. And it was a disastrously terrible show. It was trying to be the Daily Show. And it was called The Wilton North Report. As they were getting the show ready, and a lot of good people on that show, by the way, writers starting out, who were just a couple years older than me. It was Conan O'Brien, Greg Daniels. Oh, wow. Jesus.

A lot of great people. It was just an epic disaster. But the funniest thing about it was, while they were getting it ready for this time slot, they said, well, there was a talk show that had replaced Joe Rivers. They had that slot open. And they put on a young comic who had just been on in coming to America and Arsenio Hall. And they're putting him on. and he's really a placeholder until we get on there. And it wasn't the Arsenio Hall show yet.

But by the time our show premiered, he was starting to actually build an audience. And then they took him off and we died. Months and months later, they started to launch the Arsenio Hall show, and one of the producers gave me a PA job. The show became, like, after 13 weeks, like this giant, like hit, writers were on 13-week contracts.

It's not unusual to purge your staff. He got rid of about half the writers on like a Friday. and that weekend I just was writing jokes, you know, and this is on a typewriter reading the paper. Because it's like 1990, I think. And like a Monday, he did one of my jokes. And like on Tuesday, he did two of my jokes. And on Thursday, I'd written a good portion of the monologue on Friday. I got hired as a writer.

And that was my first writing job. I got lucky to be in that place. But I'd be writing jokes since I was like seven. So it was like, it was a good, it was a good deal. Yeah. No, like I was wondering how a young Jewish kid got a, job writing for that show. And then I was like, wait, is Kanye right? It was. I ran it. I was my sole train awards were my idea. Now, is it true? The dog pound was your idea? I wanted to be

the kitty litter. And so they were going to go like, meow, meow. And I think he was right. Yeah. I think history bore him out on that one. Yes, they did. They did. It was, yeah. So after Arsenio, you bounced around for a bit. You wrote an episode of this show. You did some Roseanne, whatever. Well, no, it was interesting because there was another writer on the City Hall show was about, like, I was pretty young. So he's about like eight, 10 years older than I was. It was a party there. I mean, it was like so much fun. And like, we were all going to go to Vegas and he's like, I'm not going to go to Vegas because I'm helping a friend, you know, who's writing a pilot. And like, he actually pulled me aside. He said, like,

you're really good. And like, like, you don't want to get stuck in necessarily in variety unless that's what you want to do. Like you say you should take the time to write, you know, longer form, like spec out some half hour. And that guy, his friend, his friend was Larry David. The pilot he was helping him out with was Seinfeld. And then he's Larry Charles, who went on to like a huge career. Yeah, of course. And it was like, he was very like evocular to me.

And it really made an impact on me. And I specced out a bunch of scripts and wound up getting my first staff job on Evening Shade with Bert Reynolds. And then show went down and that led to a season on Roseanne. And then by and then I started with the ball rolling and, you know, just shoot me. and a bunch of shows that, like, I'm not proud of. But yeah, and that's like, and that built. And I had a bunch of pilots that weren't going and had a bunch of deals.

And then we had that writer's strike about 15 years ago. And in my early 40s, I kind of went like without working. And I managed to like speck out some more material. It was a little bit more dramatic. And I wound up working a year on a drama. And I thought, okay, well, this would be my new path. You know, I'm like 43. And I like working on dramas.

And they always need a funny guy. And that seemed fun. And then I get a call or an email from like Steve Levittan who had done just shoot me. And I worked on a bunch of things. And he said, Chris Lloyd and I have this pilot. I think you'd be kind of perfect for it. And it was kind of funny because Chris and Steve did not hire me on this show they did. And I was a little bit pissed at them.

The show called Back to You with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton. And I helped on the pilot. And they wound up hiring somebody else. And I was like, I've helped Steve for so long. I didn't get this job. So I was really petulant. And I had another job lined up when I went to have a meeting with him and see this little pilot he was doing with Chris Lloyd. And I couldn't wait to watch it and then say, yeah, I have this other job, though. I'm going to pass. I get about like 10 minutes into the pilot for modern family. It was the best comedy pilot I've ever seen. I had nothing

to do with it, so I feel like I can say it. But pilots are hard things to do. And they're always a little shaky and hopefully you find something good at it and then the characters become form. There was just magic that happened in that pilot with casting and writing and it felt like these characters had worked together for a long time. And it was the first one. And so I was like, you have to hire me on the show. So it was like this gift to me. Like in 44, you know, I was like 45. I was like, wow, I got a career that I always sort of dreamed of with that show. And not that I hadn't been on great shows, but there was something very special about it. And I knew it was special because I was already a middle-aged writer. You know, I knew what was out there. So I really

did appreciate it. So, all right, so let's talk about modern family. It wasn't a blatantly political show or anything like that, but obviously it was it was multicultural. There was a gay family. Did you get pushback at all from, shall we call them, conservative groups? We actually didn't. Our show actually did better. often in red states, which was a strange phenomenon, because again, this is before the absolute polarization that was happening. Right. It's about 2008, 2009, 2010.

But we were very conscious. And the point of Mitch and Cam adopting this baby was we were going to write this show. Yes, they were gay. And yes, we were going to have jokes about that aspect. But the driving force, particularly in the first four seasons, really, were new parents. They were our new parents. You know, when we were breaking stories for that, we were really more interested in what are the issues of like new parents? You know, new parents around their own families who have already raised kids or kids are older who are judging them, getting them into preschools, keeping up with the Joneses.

Is our kid not developing enough? All that kind of stuff was there. And then when you add the added aspect of like what it's like to be a same-sex couple at parent and child, that becomes interesting too. What are those things? And so I think that helped a lot. Honestly, this happened to me on numerous occasions. I know it happened to the actors quite a bit, but very moving. Because we're just writing a show in a room making you laugh.

We don't have a sense of the impact. But I'd go to speak at a college. I remember speaking at a college once. And this kid came up to me. He was like, you know, 19. Gay marriage is still not a thing yet. And it's still like on the cusp of big change happening. But he came up to me and he was like almost shaking and nervous.

He was like, you know, I have to tell you. I was like, well, breathe. And he's like, what happened? He's like, and he was a Southern kid. He was from Alabama. And he said that over Thanksgiving, I went home. And my dad, just real, you know, conservative, you know, not the guy you wanted to come out to. Came up to me and said, there's a show on, we've been watching your mom and I've been watching.

And we love it, whole modern family. I've seen it. He's like, I'll watch some with you. And they watched it together on Thanksgiving. And what he said to me was it was like, this was his dad's way of telling him it's okay. Wow. He's like if you're going to do it.

And I heard stories like that, honestly, countless stories like that. And, you know, I've talked to both Jesse, who played Mitch and Eric played Cam, and they heard it all the time. And I think a lot of the writers have heard stuff like that. And it's like, oh, shit. Comedy gets into trouble when it's trying to be important. Right. It's like, it's like, shows that are like, I'm being important right now. go fuck yourselves. I feel that way about Santa comedy too. Go just be comics

and like it will be important. Right. You don't need a very special episode. Exactly. Hated that shit. So yeah. So it was that was nice. That's fantastic. Yeah. To sort of get back into I guess politics for a second. Yeah, please. I love it. Briefly

as a detour. We just went through this election cycle and there was a lot of Republican fear mongering about gay people, about trans people and, you know, the bullshit family values stuff raising, rearing its head again. And it felt like there were a lot of centrist Democrats and a lot of media folks, but I repeat myself, sort of warning progressives, hey, you shouldn't talk too much about these issues. They're losers for you. And it seems like it turned out that wasn't the case.

And that sort of gets maybe to what you're talking about there. It does. I obviously disgusted with the Republican Party. But I have a great deal of rage for the Democrats because of these very issues. The thing that is driving me crazy, I want to just shake Democrats and say the premise of how you are bringing up subjects in the world or things like that is you don't want to give Republicans an opportunity to politicize you. You don't want to give Republicans an opportunity to attack you. And I just want to say to them, there is nothing you can do that they won't attack you on. We're not living in that world anymore.

It's like I have this with Merrick Garland going so glacially slow. You don't want it to be perceived politically. There is no point in time when it won't be perceived politically. If he's guilty and you have the evidence, if you could indict a person who wasn't the former president 10 times over for what's happened, and you're not doing it to a former president. then we don't have equal justice over the law. Yep. And he is not going to get any credit for crossing an additional T or dotting an additional I.

We have it. Let's move forward. And you know, some people talk about reaching across the aisle and doing this. There's, I think that there are Republicans. It isn't political suicide for them who hate Trump, who will come on board. I think, though, that there's a certain amount of the electorate that is lost to. us and are gone. I recently heard David Corrin speak. And he said, you know, like, and it was, it was interesting about it because I felt the same way. They've made it religion, you know,

and I'm not going to convince them otherwise. And so just stop trying New York Times. I don't even know the think piece on the new clan. Like I don't mean, like, I know what makes them tick. They're not a silent majority. They're a loud minority. I know exactly what they feel. They're not like quite. Jews will not replace us. It's not like, oh, let me parse that out. know what it means. Right. There's all kinds of things like the New York Times. This is really going off the rail. So I'll just say this quickly and then I want to get back to modern family. But like the New York Times just had an article the other day about hormone replacement therapy and stuff like that. And they literally in the article, they're like doctors say that

HRT can help a lot of people. And they go on and they say, but some Republicans say, that's like, why are you equating those two groups, furiating? I remember CNN doing this with creationism. They'd have a creationist on. Right. With a scientist or somebody who had an anti-climate change opinion. The both sides is like the false equivalency, it drives me bananas. And they think that they're being so even-handed. But it isn't even-handed because you're elevating what would be even-handed. You're actually elevating an insane, objectively wrong opinion.

And you elevate that and you are diminishing a factual thing. So that's not even-handed to diminish. That's not being even handed at all. By the way, I think that the press does this. Biden is not my favorite candidate. Right. But like, you can't be talking about like his verbal clubs in this environment. Like there's things we can talk about that are being done wrong.

But like, I think the reason that the press and the polling got these midterms so wrong was because horse race is a better story. Of course. That's what they're doing. You know, I found it incredibly aggravating. Yeah. No. Well said. And I agree with you 100.

I'm going back to modern family for a second, because I have to ask you about this. I need to talk to you about Luke. Okay. So Luke was the young son of Claire and Phil. And as the show went on and the actor and the character both got older, he seemed to develop some interesting political leanings, like this sort of hilariously weird libertarian-ish stuff. Am I remembering that correctly? You are completely remembering it correctly.

It was funny because we had a couple writers who were really good writers on the show who were by no means conservative, but I think they both had a libertarian aspect to them. One of them is less so now, but they were very good at finding those sort of funny moments in it. And we just thought that was like for a character like Luke who was like often very stupid, but really did have these weird, not weird, but like an opinion that was like, oh, that's an actual opinion we could do page. And but like, why is he saying that? So we found that we did find that. We did find that. very funny. Like we,

anytime he would like jump in, we had him go too far a couple times in scripts or first drafts, and we were like, nah, let's take that back. But yeah, that was a, that was a really fun thing to do because,

you know, also it's, you know, these kids, they get older and it's like, who's going to grow into a role or where are we going to get this stuff? And, you know, what would happen.

And with Nolan, who played, Nolan who played Luke was, he sprouted up all at once. So suddenly, when you're playing a little kid, really young, who's kind of his comic engine is that he is a little slow, not the smart, not the, not the brightest kid.

When that kid starts to become like 5, 5, 5, 6, 5, 7, you start to be like, oh, I'm worried for him now. So we fell into a trope in that middle, at the beginning of one of those seasons where, are we writing him too dumb? Is this like actually, you know, and so it did emerge from that need to sort of develop him a little bit. No, I just remember thinking it was great. And I think I might have even texted you about it at the time. You did. Because I was, this was back in my libertarian days. No, I know. I swear, I was channeling you at various points. When I would pitch him because I knew a handful. I'm trying more libertarians, but because I was so rabid at that point, I don't think

most of them told me. But at least you and I could have those discussions. Very funny. you go, I want to talk about these five Emmys. It's five, I'm correct? It's five, and I'm uncomfortable talking about them. Well, you should be, and here's why. You should be, you should be uncomfortable about it because they're group Emmys. And I'm not even sure they really count. I feel like in reality, you and I have the same number of Emmys. No, I don't think that's true. Because I'm looking at them right now. I'm looking at my three right here. I have two back at the house. I think you're not being objective. I think you're failing to be

objective about this. Danny Zooker on all of them. Hmm. It's weird. They're personalized to me. Yes, it was a group effort. TV is for sure a group effort. And you're right.

I would have liked a solo, but, you know, whatever. This is actually a really funny story. I wrote an episode for Modern Family called Leap Day. And, you know, in it, we had Cam's birthday fell on Leap Day. So he was like, he kept talking about how he was turning 10. 10 when he was turning 40. And there were a whole bunch of things in that episode that were, like, were, you know, it was an episode that sort of came together in a really funny way.

It was one of our, it's one of my favorite episodes I did on the show. Anyway, the Emmy nominations come out, you know, for writing. And I'm going through deadline or something like that. And I'm checking it out. And I get there. And I see Leap Day for writing. And I'm like, yes. And then I go down.

And it was Robert Carlock 30 Rock. And they did a Leap Day episode. which I did not see. And I was like, that's mean. That was mean to do to me. That's amazing. And they did a great episode, by the way. It was like, I'm not saying, you know,

Oh, sure, of course. I'm not saying mine was better. I mean, a lot of people are, many people are saying mine was better. But we're hearing that more and more. More and more. I hear from everybody, yeah. Before I let you go, Danny,

are you working on anything now that you can talk about? I wound up helping out. on consulting on a show that had been on a couple of my friends from who were writers on Veepe, who I've known for many years, Gabby Allen and Jen Critton and the actor on Beep, Clea DeVall. They created this animated show for Fox and I'd never worked on animation before. So they did a show called House Broken that was on Fox. It ran like I think they did 10 episodes of the first season and I came on in this new season and did it. The premise is it's a bunch of pets and group therapy in the suburbs and it's got great cast. It's like Lisa Kudjouj,

Drew plays the main hudel and she's fantastic. And then it's like, Will Forteys on it, Jason Mansuchas, Nat Faxon, Sharon Horgan. There's just so many. It's like a lot of Tony Hale. It's got like the greatest cast and it was super fun. And the episode I wrote Will is coming out. I don't have to look for it, but like in December. They're doing a, they're premiering us with Christmas.

And I wrote the Christmas episode, they were two sort of holiday episodes. and mine will be the one that will premiere. So I'm excited for that. Very cool. Danny, thanks so much for joining us. This was an absolute blast. I love talking to you. Yeah, I hope I was, you know, as good as I don't know who you've had on.

Oh, that's interesting that you don't know who I've had on. No, I do. I haven't texted you. Did I not text you? I don't recall. You son of a bitch. Well, it was a blast talking to you. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the

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