The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Caleb Hearon

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

Writer, actor and comedian Caleb Hearon joins Andy Richter to talk about the Chicago comedy scene, moving to LA in a pandemic, internet comments and more.

Hello, everyone. It is time again for the three questions with Andy Richter. I am, as always, Andy Richter. And I am talking today to the very, very funny, talented, he's a newcomer on the scene but you've i'm sure you've seen some of his hilarious work uh caleb heron how are you and it's heron right uh heron yeah heron okay heron uh they there shouldn't be an a in there if it's heron yeah i agree with you and however you say it's fine with me i I don't care. All right. All right, Caleb. Let's get into it.

Now, you and I have some similars. You were both Midwestern. We both were IO people. Yeah. Yeah. And now you're working on the Big Mouth spinoff, right? Yeah. you're working on like the, the big mouth, uh, spinoff, right? Yeah, we did. Um, we did season one of that last fall and then we're gearing up for, uh, for season two of it now, but the first season will come out this spring and I think people are really going to like it. Have you,

have you been in a writer's room or has it all been from home? Uh, it has all been from home. I'm, I moved, I was living in Chicago. Um, I lived in Chicago for three years after college. And I got that job offer after I'd already decided to move to LA during the pandemic, which I don't still really understand why I did that. Yeah. And then we did the room all on Zoom. It was my first writer's room and it was all on Zoom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weird.

Was it easy to find an apartment like pandemic wise? Like, I don't know. I feel like. No. Oh, really? I guess because nobody's moving yeah and we didn't want to um we didn't want to make a trip out because most people who move from chicago to la at least currently or the last couple years the way that i know it is that people come out for like um a week about a month before they want to actually move out and they'll

find a place sign for it do all that stuff go back get all their shit well we before they want to actually move out and they'll find a place signed for it, do all that stuff, go back and all their shit. Well, we didn't want to make multiple trips because it was the height of COVID. So we signed for a place over FaceTime and it was really difficult to get someone to do that. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow.

And, and, and it's probably haunted or something. There was probably, you know, it was haunted. We lived there. Yeah.

We moved, we moved, we moved to a two bedroom apartment in North Hollywood. Cause I didn't have a job. So I was like, if I get that writer's job I interviewed for, that'd be dope. But I didn't have a job, so I was like driving for Uber Eats was the plan. And then got that job. And then in December, after we lived there for like six months, we moved to a new place that we liked better.

Oh, nice. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, I mean, that is one thing about LA is there's lots of like flexible housing, much more so than a lot of other places, you know? Yeah. Month to month leases and sublets and all kinds of stuff. It's very, it's very different. You benefit from the transient, sad, depressing nature of this town.

There's lots of options because there's lots of people disappearing all the time uh now you're from missouri right yes i am uh rural yeah very yeah what's the name of the town i'm from a town called i'm from northwest uh north uh northwest missouri uh the town i grew up most in we moved a lot it's called chillicothe Uh-huh. And it is now a lot of people don't know this, but it's the home of sliced bread. No one ever fucking put a knife to bread before. Is that really saying that? What happened was people. People.

Hey, I'm so tired of eating an entire loaf at one sitting. Andy, Andy, Andy. Look, people were. They might have been. They might have been making a loaf of bread and cutting it with a knife. But they weren't systematically buying it sliced by a machine at the store until my town came along. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's great. There's like murals of bread around town.

It's hilarious. I mean, it really is the corniest, like most Midwestern. Yeah, yeah. It's just goofy. it's hilarious i mean it really is the corniest like most midwestern yeah it's just goofy that's that's hilarious it's a a gluten intolerance nightmare town it's everywhere taunting people you're gluten free don't go now uh you is it just two of you it was two siblings you had you and i had uh yeah i grew up with my brother um and then kind of had uh two sisters uh my mom was with a um engaged to a guy for a while who we lived with who had two older daughters that they we became very close but we're not blood related oh i see and do you keep up with them still or keep up with them yeah so

our parents when our parents broke up, we were kind of like, we like each other. So we still talk all the time and I consider them my sisters, but it's, yeah, it's a, it's a complicated story.

That's great. Yeah. That's great. So what kind of kid were you? I mean, and it was just, your dad was not in the picture. Yeah.

Is that true? Is that? My dad, not around so much. I mean, my dad, I think when I think that my dad not around so much i mean my dad i think when i think about my dad i go after lots of therapy i i feel you know not much anger towards him i just think he probably shouldn't have been a parent like i think that probably is the the t on that um but yeah he wasn't i mean i had to go see him on weekends but i hated it and i don't

know that he liked it very much either um but he he lived in kind of the same area all the time. Like we moved and he moved, but we were always kind of around. So I would see him like most weekends. Oh, okay. But mostly with my mom who raised me. Okay. And I mean, I imagine that was tough, you know, in a small town. I mean, is there a support structure? Is there family to help? Yeah. Both sides of my family are very, I would say, dysfunctional on both sides to a maximum degree. Both sides of my family are extremely fucked up in different ways.

But I got really lucky. I played sports growing up. And a lot of the guys who are my coaches would take me to and from practice. And, you know, I look back and I'm like, oh, you know, they definitely spent extra time with me because I was the kid who didn't really have a dad around. I was like, these guys just love my energy. You know what I mean? And then you look back and you realize it was all pity. Yeah. You look back and it's like, oh, no, they felt like a responsibility to the community.

That's disgusting. You are. You are what took a village, basically. Exactly. The village was really like, this one's the one we got to rally around. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, everyone, I had a lot of great coaches and teachers and stuff growing up. And also my brother, my brother's older than me. And he was a real like, my brother was just a perennial messennial mess like constantly getting in trouble doing shit he knew he shouldn't be doing

and you know all the teachers hated him because he was like a problem kid so i every year would like go into class and be like and i'm i'm not like my brother please like you know begging for people to like me um so yeah it was a strange time was he that kid like was he the kid because i know in our town there were like a couple of different and it was all boys obviously you know there were a couple of boys that you would invoke their name and it was like he's bad where are you from andy yorkville illinois yorkville illinois thank you so much how far is that from chicago it's about 60 miles west but you know when they in in as when i was growing up it might as well have been 200 miles you know like just in terms of the white fear of the city yeah and and actually do it you know it would be

bears games cubs games and maybe a museum thrown in every couple of three years. But beyond that, the city was terrifying. It didn't even matter that it was less than an hour away or an hour away. It's crazy how much those things like I grew up like an hour and a half north of Kansas City, which is not a huge city, not dangerous, really. And it's crazy how much growing up adults saying things like, you know, they would talk about, especially obviously very racist. Like they would talk about neighborhoods where obviously a lot of black people or people who were not white lived. And they would say things like, oh, well, if you ever if you ever find yourself lost down there, like lock your car doors, like roll your windows up. And then you you

grow up you i lived in kensi for a little bit i worked in neighborhoods like that and then you go oh you guys are fucking insane this is like it's just a boogeyman it's all stuff you invented yeah yeah uh i my ex-wife uh is what most of her family is in kansas. And we went to I think it was a wedding that we went to there. And we asked like for it was a particular barbecue restaurant and somebody directed us. And I think it was my ex-wife's aunt or someone said that neighborhood is rough. Be careful. Like, oh, no, you just like me. It was like, oh, you mean it's a quiet African-American neighborhood?

Like, yes, that's exactly what it was. Like there was no palpable threat whatsoever. It was just, it was just the fear of people, you know? It's such a, I think in, I mean, college was obviously such a huge awakening for me on so many things, but one of them was, I remember very vividly a college professor, I think it was a poli-sci class, instructing us to read this, what is it called, like a study, this research, that statistically the people in the United States who are the most afraid of crime are the people who are least likely to be affected by it. Yeah, yeah.

the most afraid of crime are the people who are least likely to be affected by it yeah yeah the the anxiety index about um crime that exists in rural white communities where it hardly ever happens because everything's so spread out and um the kind of crimes that happen there are more individual like drug use and things domestic violence um but it's insane the way that people work themselves into a frenzy over like i mean even when i said i was moving to chicago like you know a bunch of like my friends dads being like be careful up there and it's like what are you you're never like why are you so afraid of it you're never gonna even go i know it's made up i know anyway well uh so you had your brother at least a kind of like do you think he was like a negative example though like do you think that like in many ways that it affected you to sort of be more

of a good boy because he was a bad boy or is that just a natural difference? Um, I think that we have different dads. So I think there's a genetic thing, um, going on to some extent. Um, his dad is a very particular type of person and he has a lot of the same

traits as him. My dad is, um, you know, uh, antisocial, um, has a lot of mental health issues as him my dad is um you know uh antisocial um has a lot of mental health issues but is also very intelligent like i think there's there are things about each of our dads that we really latch on to um mental health issues are different but present on both sides but i think yeah 100 the my brother being like a massive monumental sort of constant fuck up definitely encouraged me to stay in the closet longer.

Definitely encouraged me to get good grades, be involved in everything in school, try to get all the teachers to like me. I mean, I just wanted my mom was raising the two of us by herself and working three jobs and putting herself through school. And so my mom is a literal superhero. And I just saw, she just didn't even have the bandwidth to deal with his shit. So then I, you know, as a kid was definitely like,

I cannot do anything wrong. Like I can't add to this. And I think there are parts of that that I'm very grateful for because I think I turned out to be the kind of person that I would like to be. I mean, I'm changing all the time, like everybody, but I'm pretty happy with my life.

But I think also there are things that look back on and go, oh, the fear of failure, the fear of people not liking you, of not feeling like you can make a single mistake because then you're ruining people's lives. It's a very interesting double-edged sword. Yeah. Well, and because I do think too too what often happens is kids that sort of live under a kind of benign neglect you know like like everybody's just too busy you know i mean like sorry hon but you you're gonna have to figure it out for yourself like that that's can be very hurtful in some ways but it can also like there's like tremendous amount of self-sufficiency that happens with kids like that. Like where you learn to take care of yourself and you learn how to get shit done because there's no one else to do it for you.

And I think that that's – I don't know. It galvanizes you in a certain way and probably – Yeah, I think it's a pretty present uh joke on the internet this is not a an original thing to say but there is this like kind of widespread joke about um so like an adult telling a kid you have such an old soul and saying thank you it's from my trauma but it's like yeah it's like i've always been um more comfortable talking to adults when i was a kid i've always felt a little bit older than the people who are my actual age and it's because yeah it's my mom was doing my mom did a great job and paid a ton of attention more comfortable talking to adults when I was a kid. I've always felt a little bit older than the people who are my actual age.

And it's because, yeah, it's my mom was doing, my mom did a great job and paid a ton of attention to me, but I just did have to do a lot of shit on my own. I was, I was kind of without two parents in the household. It was like,

yeah, there was a lot of, a lot of things I had to do. You have to learn to cook early, get yourself to school, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

When I was young, I mean, not to go into too much detail, but like my mom started leaning on me for counsel at like 13 or 14. Yeah. And she's like, you always gave such good advice. You were so – well, she said things like, I stopped arguing with you when you were about 11 because you always won. And then I started asking you your opinion on stuff which is like at the time i felt really proud like you know my mom looks to me and i'm real grown up and i make

good choices and not realizing like you shouldn't do this mom this is like this is too much this is not you know this is an inversion of a paradigm, you know stuff that you shouldn't know. You know about like, like I knew, I knew that we had money issues at a very young age and like shit that like, that's stressful. That's, it creates a kind of stress you can't really handle as a kid. I, as a child, learned, I got my sixth sense about a bill collector's calling. Yeah. They would say, you know, they'd ask if Glenda was there and I'd be standing right next to her. And I'd say, no, I'm sorry. She's not.

This is her son. And, you know, and then I'd hang up. My mom go bill collector. I say, yeah. Yeah. Which is like, I mean, I got kids and I just can't. I mean, I don't blame my mom in some ways because it's just it's it's like you're in life. But there's just I just don't think I would allow my kids to sort of, you know, fend off the bill collectors.

Right, right. Or no, no. That, you know, about credit scores and shit, you know. you know um so well did you as a as a gay kid like when did you kind of start to really feel like you know you knew that this was going on with you god i i think i i definitely remember like third and fourth grade there was some very like you know everything was started to get so gendered around then that's when like the the girls went for cheerleading the boys went for football the you know everything started to home ec and shop home ec and yeah everything started to split up around then and i i remember feeling like um i don't really like there there were little things around then too like at thanksgiving all of the guys would like be you know watching like not even

the guys in my family are not even huge like sports guys but just because they would be watching like i don't know a fucking car show on tv or the football game or whatever right and i was absolutely in the kitchen trying to be like what are the women talking about you know yeah and so there was this thing for a while where at first i was like i you you feel different but you don't know what it is you don't really know what is. You don't really know what gay is. You don't really know anything about sex. I hope. I certainly didn't.

And then you're like, oh, it's different. It's different. But then when you do learn what gay is, for a while, because of church and because of how much I loved women and being around women,

I was like, oh, I'm not gay. I just have to fight through this because if i was gay i wouldn't love being around women so much like i have all this i have all this reverence for women it must be right sexual right right um and so yeah and then uh you know middle school was very much about like praying about it and trying to be normal and wanting to you know um not go through that just because it felt like such a hassle. And also I didn't, you know,

I didn't think my family would be weird about it. Honestly, I always felt like my family would probably be pretty cool with me coming out. Yeah. Um, I was very lucky in that way, but I,

the big fear for me was that I wouldn't, I've always had, um, guy friends. I've always had like male friends that are important to me. And I felt like, um, just because of the kind of jokes and stuff we would make that if i was actually gay that i wouldn't have guy friends anymore yeah yeah so

that was my big thing it wasn't so much about the family as like i want to continue to have the kinds of friendships i have and uh make the kind of jokes and things that i make um which by the way my i've never made more homophobic jokes than when i came out like uh and still currently i make more homophobic jokes now than I did when I was in the closet. Right. Right. But yeah,

just, just, you know, wanting to have wanting to be able to maintain your friendships and not have anything that separates you from your friends. You want to be just like your friends. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I, and there is, well, especially out there, we talked to, we were talking about it a little bit before we started recording because we were talking, because my son is gay and he and his boyfriend had been together since they were 16. And we were talking about how, how that's not, that's not the norm, really.

Oh, God. Are you kidding? Yeah, God. Are you kidding? Yeah, yeah. And that, you know, because my son came out when he was 11. And I've even, you know, I mean, I've had people that were guests on this show who are gay, who were like, you know, hearing about how easy it was for your son to come out is a little stressful for some. And I'm sorry. I mean, I guess I could have been an asshole about it. But I, you know, you should have been. Yeah. And you saw a son, by the way, son, I'm in show business. I can't

have a queer around here. No, I, I, it doesn't stress me out really. I mean, I think that I find a very, I mean, I don't know, sincerity, sincerity about most things makes me a little uncomfortable sometimes but I think I think the people who get sincerely jealous of young queer kids and actually have to process like oh I'm so intensely deeply jealous of that I mean

I it's very funny to me that I had the experience that I did of being so scared of coming out and so badly wanting to be normal and now there are kids like seven-year-old drag queens and I'm like what the fuck has happened i'm happy for them and i don't harbor much actual jealousy about it it's just very funny to me yeah and it's very quick it's happened very fast you know like when you consider that ellen degeneres coming out as gay on a sitcom was a world ender. And that was five minutes ago,

you know, like, and, and now she, you know, well, I mean, things have changed,

but you know, she was America's sweetheart for a while there. And, you know, well, and she, she had a, you know,

it's so, it's so funny the way that people, the, the, the shit with her, you know, quote unquote cancellation and people trying to erase all the things that she did yeah um it doesn't have to be that way we can have many

things be true at once she is a fucking pioneer we yeah every single queer person owes ellen degeneres a massive amount of gratitude and also ellen degeneres has to reckon with the fact that she presided over a workplace that was racist and fucked up and not cool. Like, there are a lot of things that can be true at once, but the queer community owes Ellen DeGeneres a lot. Absolutely. And it also just, I mean, the fact is, most heroes and pioneers and, you know, norm breakers, they're a little fucked up. Like I don't know whether it's the burden of being that or just like – a lot of really special heroic people are – they're too much. They're too much to be one – like know, like in real life to be a real person.

And it's one thing for them to be a symbol and to, you know, do amazing things. But that caught, that costs a lot of like psychic energy. And it has a cost that weighs on people that probably makes them a little fucked up, you know?

And so it's like, yeah, that makes sense. You know, you know, well, and, and also you can't,

no one can, this is in no way excusing. I don't, I don't really actually know the full, the full breadth of what went on at Ellen or what people were upset about. I trust that. Oh, I do.

Oh, I do. No, I don't really, but I know, I know a fair amount, but well, I also,

I, what I do know is that people can flake a lot of things. Like people, when people are trying so hard to go after somebody they you know i saw people sharing at some point like ellen's a monster she makes people chew gum before they go in her office because she doesn't like bad breath and i'm like ultimately if you make you know two hundred thousand dollars a year uh working as a producer on a tv show and someone asks you to chew a piece of gum just put the fucking gum in your mouth and

yeah it's like who I don't, but they conflate that kind of thing. That's so petty and stupid with actually important and big things like presiding over a workplace that is problematic. And, and it all becomes this big jumbled mess of like very unclear, very unfocused criticisms on somebody who is probably more nuanced and complicated than we're allowing for.

And then it just lets, so then everybody just ends up on the side they were going to end up on anyway, the left wing, super leftist type people are going to be like, you know, this bitch should never work again. And then super right wing people are going to,

you know, this bitch should never work again, but it's fucked up that people care that she was racist. It's like, yeah. Well, I mean, the racism is,

you know, racist, sexist, you know, like the the culture, you know, like the sort of. Culture of sexual harassment there was pretty bad, apparently, but also, too, it's like the fact that she's kind of you know i think like that people were really surprised because she had this sort of image of being you know about fun and love and caring and and kindness and she's kind of a a distant person you know and like is like has a distance to her and there's an a she's a stand-up comedian get to know a a few stand-ups. They're all fucking weirdos. They're all like who can only exist on stage. I mean, I have known so many stand-ups throughout my life who – and it's a very specific brand of stand-up comedian who I see them once.

And it's my friend that I know and love and that we have fun together. And then I'll see him a week later, and it's that person I kind of know a little bit. And then I'll see him a week later. And it's that person I kind of know a little bit. Yeah. And it's the exact same person, just depending on their weird, fucked up moods, you know? And I say this as someone with weird, fucked up moods. I also think a lot about, like, how much you can live up to, like, I don't even, you know, I don't like talking about myself as somebody who has a public persona. But there are strangers on the internet who feel like they know me.

Yeah. And they will message me a lot of times and be like, I'm in LA. Can we please hang out? I want to be your friend. And I, it really, it used to, I used to want to respond and be like, yeah, that'd be so fun. Cause I want to meet new people. And I think that'd be a fun thing to do. Just go out with some stranger.

But I don't do it. Cause I'm like, I'll never live up to whatever you think for good or for bad one way or another when you have a parasocial relationship with somebody um and obviously ellen is on a much different bigger wilder scale but anytime you have a parasocial relationship with somebody that you only know through media or the internet or their stage persona or whatever you're not you do not you do not have a realistic understanding of what it is like to spend time with that human being no at all you can't and also and i mean and there's a whole series of thought about when you're a public person and contacting people you know like fans that want to get in touch with you there is there's a whole school of thought that's like never respond to

anything like that's your safest bet yeah that's you know they'll because somebody can send you something and that and it if you if you don't respond they can think well you know it got lost in the shuffle yeah they didn't see it yeah um whereas if you do respond and there's some because there's crazy people you know that that don't exist in a in a regular world and i you know and to bring it back to ellen we don't have any idea about the level of serious threats that were made to her and and her partner in porsche i worked with porsche on arrested development and um we were doing a night shoot it's three o'clock in the morning and I just kept there was this like really handsome guy in a suit who's dressed like an agent

and I was like who is that guy and why is he around and then he was standing next to her and I saw that he was uh armed and I was like oh shit that's Porsche's security. And he's not there for no reason. You don't have a bodyguard with you just for fun. Right. Just because you think somebody, there's a reason that guy has to be with her around the clock. And when you see that, it's like, oh, okay, yeah. Who can say how fucking weird that would make you? How scared that's when you see that it's like oh okay yeah who can say how fucking weird that would make you how scared that would make you how distant that would make you you know and how yeah

just how detached from reality like i you know i have uh in the last like uh my career has been very different in the last year and a half than it was when I was in Chicago doing shows for five people. And I've met a lot of famous people and it is very new to me. And the thing I've been so surprised by is just how out of touch a lot of famous people are. Oh, they're so rich. They're so rich. They're so famous. They don't know anything. And they're I feel like I feel like it's a party trick to talk about my life to them because I'm, you know, from just what we're talking about stuff about being from the

Midwest, having a normal life. And, you know, I've rich and famous people are very, um, taken by normalcy. Yeah. It's very interesting. It has been very, uh, surprising to me because I generally meet, uh, you know, a rich or famous person and I go, oh, okay. I like something that you made or whatever. It's nice to meet. But it is this very insane thing to have a conversation with someone and then be in the middle of it and realize, oh, this person hasn't bought their own groceries

in 20 years. Because they can't. Yeah, exactly. They can't. Exactly, yes. Yes. Can't you tell my love are growing now were you funny and like were you the funny guy were you like you know i i mean i think i i was always goofing off and and laughing with my friends we thought we were all funny um but i wanted to be a lawyer that was my big thing i wanted to be a

lawyer very badly um what kind of lawyer did you have a particular kind oh i wanted to be a lawyer that was my big thing i wanted to be a lawyer very badly um what kind of lawyer did you have a particular kind oh i wanted to be a constitutional i would you know i looked i looked up to like thurgood marshall i was like i want to be like a i want to be like a like a big american hero guy jurist yeah who does who does the right thing and you know um yeah i want to be a lawyer really. So I was very serious about school and activities and being involved. But I was, when I look back, I'm like, oh, it was all a performance. You wanted to be in student council because you liked talking at the meetings and having everyone's attention. It's like, that wasn't about loving the process of student government. Yeah. But I bet you 90% of the, you know, that's 90 percent of it for most people.

I bet Thurgood Marshall really loved hearing himself talk. You know what I mean? Like it's show business for everybody. You know, like at a certain point, there's those kind of job. It's like being a minister. That's show business. It's just like it's a very particular kind of show business. Like you're I'm going to do shows.

They just happen to be on sunday mornings and they're about being nice to each other yeah you you have a very dramaturgical view of the world yeah the world is a stage we're all performing yeah exactly exactly um so so you went to college close by you stayed into n state. I went to, I really wanted to go, the story of my life really, if I had to boil it down is next, I'm going to move to New York. That's the quote I would use to sum up my life. In high school, I really wanted to go to New York. I wanted to go and be, I wasn't out yet. I didn't come out until after my freshman year of college, but I wanted to go and live in New York and thought I would come out there. And I applied to some schools there in

Philly and really wanted to go to like a city on the East coast and didn't, my family does not have money. So I got a good scholarship to go to Missouri state, a leadership scholarship, whatever that means. And I went, I saw, I was like, okay, I'm going to stay. And I also, I didn't quite have the, I think I was like half a point under the, God, this is so fucking lame of me. But I had like, I didn't technically qualify for the Honors College at Missouri State. And there was no petition process. So I wrote a letter to the director of the Honors College being like, I am serious. I am serious about my education. And I deserve to be in the honors college. And here's why. And they let me into the honors college. So I was like, okay, they loved my letter. I can,

I got the scholarship. So I'm going to go there. And I went to Missouri state, um, studied sociopolitical communication. I was doing like pre-law stuff and I loved it. I really had such a blast. Yeah.

I loved it there. I joined a fraternity, which is hilarious. I was in a fraternity all four years. Oh, wow. Yeah. Cause I was like, I want to go to, you know, you gotta, this is, this is how people get into law school. You got to know people, you got to make connections. And I kind of, I rushed a little bit as a joke at first. I was like, wouldn't it be funny if I, and then I met these guys who were like actually pretty cool. And I actually had a good time with them. And then I decided to join and it was a decent experience.

There was a lot of shit throughout that particular, like the last year and a half of college, I pretty much was like, I'm not coming to meetings. You're not going to find me and let's just ride this out. Like I'm done with this, but that was what everyone did. You know what I mean?

I did. I did that. I mean, I transferred, I went to university of Illinois for the first two years. and then I went to Columbia College in Chicago for film school. And I, my freshman year, a bunch of guys, I was friends with the guys in my dorm, and we all rushed the same fraternity. So when we came back our sophomore year, that's we did our you know pledge week and all that stuff so it was sort of i only really had one year and i never lived in the house but i shortly after i

became an active member i realized this is not for me anyway i'm going to and i'm moving on so i stopped i did the same thing i stopped coming to meeting i just would show up for parties and there would be like because there was a definitely a divide between the guys that were fun and the guys that were kind of dicks yeah and oh and one of the dick guys would come up to me be like you're behind in your fees you shouldn't be here at the party and I was like well I guess you could throw me out you know if you want to do that want to do that or you could just let me have a couple more cups of old style from the keg you know i mean you know let me let me suck up another 26 cents of beer um but yeah but it was it and and when you're young too i think coming from a small town you think how am i going

to have a social life i don't know how to do that oh here's this place that seems to be all about like you know where you can have a past absolutely passive social life yeah and i didn't do theater in high school or anything i never performed i was never in choir or uh plays or any of that stuff so my social life in high school was around like student organizations and the fraternity and sorority life is those are extremely strong and like vibrant student organizations and so meetings and committees and parties and all kinds of you know so the soft my sophomore and junior year um i was very involved i was like the pledge educator i lived in the house they did all this stuff um and yeah i just tried to make it my thing like there were definitely guys that were like you know you know breaking hotel doors off at They did all this stuff. And yeah, I just tried to make it my thing.

Like there were definitely guys that were like, you know, you know, breaking hotel doors off at formal and sorting out or all off of it and doing shit like that. And then I would show up at meeting and be like, guys, we really need to get our grades up. It's embarrassing, you know, and there were definitely a bunch of guys in the chapter who were like this fucking loser. But I'm like, yeah, it takes a balance, I guess, you know, you have to have the guys that throw the great parties and you have to have the guy who yells at everybody about community service hours yeah who makes sure the heat stays on yeah so yeah that was that i i but was it hard to be out in

in a in a fraternity no i got very lucky the guys yeah i there were a couple guys who i know had a problem with it and probably uh still have a problem with it they weren't my friends we just happened to be in the same organization um almost nobody cared. Even a lot of the guys, I will say too, if there's a rewarding lesson or feeling that I take away from all of it, I think fraternities and sororities should probably be banned. I think they're bad organizations. I think they encourage a lot of bad behavior, particularly fraternities. But my experience was that I came in with a bunch of guys who were just fucking shitheads. They were like, they would say bad and dumb shit. They would say homophobic things.

They were just fucked up 18-year-old guys who were trying so hard to impress people and pretend that they didn't care. and pretend that they didn't care. And I watched a lot of those guys over four years grow into like very cool, good dudes who didn't say faggot anymore and didn't, you know, did have an understanding of like what it means to be a feminist

or a decent human being or there was a lot of growth. And then of course, there was also a lot of regression. But honestly, most of the guys who came in shitheads and left shitheads either got kicked out, flunked, or for some other reason, didn't, didn't make it like more than a year. You know what I mean? Right. Right. So it was interesting. I love a lot of those guys still. And the ones I don't,

didn't talk to them, don't talk to now, but I basically in my actual social life fell in, of course, with a bunch of the theater kids and improv kids and yeah yeah started doing improv like my sophomore year because um i got massively depressed and was like i don't want to be a fucking lawyer what am i doing um oh really oh yeah i mean it was because i went into college i went in like it's so i just such a cornball i went in and i did like every leadership program. I did every organization. I was like the chair of this and that and the other thing. I like won awards for like, it was like, I was so intent on being a success. I wanted to prove to my parents and my family and my friends and everyone that I was like, I was successful and I was smart and I was

doing good. But I didn't even stop and think, what do I want out of this? Why am I doing this? And then it runs out. You run out of programs to do. You run out of things to try for. It's not exciting anymore. And then you're like, oh, what do I actually want to do? Well, I don't want to be a lawyer. I don't really care actually about being the parliamentarian for the whatever club. Yeah. So I started doing improv with some of my friends and I fucking loved it.

And then I started doing standup and characters and stuff and kind of decided that I was going to move to New York again, was like, now I'll go. Because I lived in New York for two summers in college. I did some little internships in New York and spent a ton of time at UCB. And then right before we graduated, a bunch of my buddies from the improv team were like hey we're

moving to chicago and i was like why um and they were like oh there's a really good comedy scene there and i was like i've never heard about it and they were like well you'll have to trust well and chill a coffee nobody's time yeah yeah i was like i was like prove it but these are all guys who read like comedy books and watched you know documentaries about comedian they're like comedy yeah scholars students yeah yes and I was not that. So I was like, I'll take your word for it. I don't have anyone to live with in New York anyway. Went to Chicago, best decision I ever made.

Yeah, Chicago is a great place to go learn comedy because that's what you're doing it for. You're not doing it, you know, it's just, and you can catch yourself. I mean, I would catch myself like, what am I doing? Like, why am I? Why did I? Because I went to film school and then I worked in film production.

And at a certain point, I had to quit film production to do shows, to be able to commit to rehearsal schedules and things for shows. Because in film production, you get a job on a, you know, on a target commercial. It's two it's by for two weeks. I'll see you guys in two weeks because I'm working on this target commercial. So I had to make that decision. And it was like, what am I, how, and I, you know, my mom too, at the time it's like, um, okay. So you're going to wait tables at lunch so you have times at night to do your shows and they don't pay you and like yeah i they don't pay you but

you pay them to take the classes and what's kind of and i just and i don't know i just kind of felt like i just felt like well this is fun i fun. I'm existing. I'm surviving. I know I'm getting better at this. I see other people get jobs. You know, I've seen like, you know, like there was a guy, a guy, Ken Campbell, he was an improv guy and he hosted, I think they were turtle races at some bar in Chicago that they may still do them. But he was kind of a bmoc in the chicago uh improv scene and he got a job on herman's head which was an early fox sitcom had to be 91 92 and that was like for a ton of us

i think was like all right this you know here we go somebody can get a job doing this you know because other than that it was just get lucky to maybe be in a Montgomery ward commercial there locally. But yeah, it's, it's you just, there's no reason there's, you're just learning comedy to learn comedy.

You're not waiting for agents to show up. You just, you know, it's the best comedy scene in the country, I think. And I love, I love New York and i love i love new york and la i love uh i've loved every place i've ever lived uh which is not i think you know

when a lot of people talk about uh new york la chicago there's at least uh one or two that they despise i don't feel that way yeah i think every place is special but chicago is the best most talented uh comedy scene in the country. And there's because there's a bunch of people that, yeah, I didn't know what a fucking manager was. I didn't know what an agent was. I didn't know you needed a lawyer once you started doing TV jobs. I didn't I didn't know any of that. I just went to Chicago because I knew I wanted to make comedy.

My friends were going there and I read like, you know, three sentences about IO and was like, oh, I see the people that have done this here. That seems like a good track record. They obviously have a good thing going. So I moved there to start taking classes and it was kind of like, yeah, for the first year or two, depending on who you are, some people do longer or less. You just do a bunch of free improv shows for nobody. And if you're lucky, what you get out of it is you figure out what you think is funny. Right. And then you can maybe turn that into something else you can turn into characters or stand up or sketch or something marketable that is an improv that you can actually use to get a job or or create a fan base or make a show um and then you keep doing improv for fun because

it keeps you sharp but chicago is the place you go to get good at comedy and other places are where you go to get jobs in comedy yeah yeah can't you tell my loves are growing now you you started to kind of come to i mean the way that i first saw you was doing character videos online. Sure. And was that a conscious decision? Like, this is something that might get me noticed? Or was it just kind of you were doing it anyway, and it just seemed, you know? So basically, I was in Chicago, and IO, um, which I understand that they didn't

used to do it this way. So I know that IO used to do their SNL auditions very differently. It used to be a group improv, but in the last, I don't know, however many years since I was there and certainly a little bit before it's a character showcase and, and, you know, Sharna picks 15 people, um, after the end of a month's long, like very arduous process. And she puts 15 people up for Warren and the head writers when they come to town. So I had been practicing for that for like a year and doing characters on little shows and getting my set together and kind of just for fuck around sake. Like I, I, your first year, the trajectory of that showcase in Chicago is that like 600 people do the first round 50 or 60 do the second round. And then the third round is the

final 15 to get in front of the actual people and then they invite some of you to drinks they fly some of you out whatever well i was doing it your first year no one ever gets to the second round really so i was just kind of fucking around and was like i'm gonna do what i think is funny and i've been doing a bunch of shows and the previous year uh my first year in chicago during showcase i was interning there so i would make sure that i was interning in the box office on the nights where showcase sets were happening and then i would sneak off and go watch like every single showcase that year to see like what people do too much of what people don't do enough of whatever, like just kind of researching it. And then whatever I did the first round, got the second round.

This is my second year in Chicago. And I was like, oh, great. I did. Yeah, that's incredible. I can't believe I got the second round. There's no way I'm going to get the third. We're home free on this. It doesn't have to be good. And then I did get the third round, which was insane. I was like, oh, fuck, this wasn't supposed to happen. Now I got to do this shit in front of actual people. It's a huge show. It sells out in like 10 seconds.

Lauren and everybody comes. So I did the showcase. And then Lauren and Colin and everybody invited me to drinks or I guess the producers, whoever. I went to drinks with them at their fancy hotel. And then I talked to them there. We chatted about life or whatever. And then they asked me to fly to New York and do the screen test.

During all those talks, Steve Higgins was like, do you make internet content? And I was like, no. And I was kind of annoyed. I was like, do you make internet content? And I was like, no. And I was kind of annoyed. I was like, why are we talking about that? And he was like, well, that's how everyone does it now. And I was like, well, it's not a problem for me because you're going to hire me. And then it doesn't matter what everyone does because I have the job, you know? And I was, you know, at this point in Chicago making zero money on comedy, I have no internet following because I'm not trying to have one and I'm doing like free shows for nobody, you know? And so I was like, whatever, it doesn't

matter. I'm going to get the job and that's going to be my thing. And then I screen test, do all the stuff, spend the time in New York, come back to Chicago, don't get it. An agent who I got during that process calls me and is like, hey, you didn't get it. I cried for 10 minutes, went and did a show, didn't really think about it again. I mean, it was sad, but it was like, whatever, that's how it goes. But then I was, you know, afterwards I was kind of like, I'm fucking annoyed by that. I did a really good set. I was like, I want to be on the show. And I was like, well, Steve said that I should make videos. So I was like, I'm going to fucking make, I'm going to, I'm going to make videos and I'm going to make them, I want them to do well.

And at first it was kind of like, I want SNL to see this next year when they come to town, they'll come back to Chicago, they'll see me again. And I'll do the videos like Steve said. And then, you know, and so I started doing the videos and I don't know, a couple months into making these dumb little videos on Twitter, they, uh, one of them really went off. Like it got like, I don't know, 7 million views or something. Oh, wow. And I got like 70,000 followers overnight. I think I had like three or 4,000 at the time. And I got a fuck ton of followers, a bunch of, you know, people started reaching out to me about TV shows and stuff. And like, do we want you to, do you have an idea for this or whatever? And it was really bizarre. And then I followed it up with this series of videos that also got a lot of attention

where I did a continued narrative thread of a bunch of videos where I was talking to a coworker about gossip and I ended every one of them on a cliffhanger because I had wanted to do long form content on a website like Twitter, where I felt like that was difficult, where people didn't really hang around for stuff. Right. That would be interesting if I could make that work. So I did that and it got some attention. And then, you know, I got managers from it.

I started writing for a TV show. And then somewhere along the way, I was like, oh, I don't want to do SNL. And I really only wanted to do it then because it was a way to make money and get out of Chicago, which is there's no other in Chicago. It's like you either got to get SNL or blow up on the Internet. And those are your options out. Like that's. Yeah. That's no other in Chicago. It's like, you either got to get SNL or blow up on the internet and those are your options out. Like that's, that's how you get that's it's either that or you make the jump to New York or LA and you try to do industry showcases or something, but it's, it feels like those are the only ways. And so I started making videos kind of out of, um, not spite, but just like, well, I need to kill time before SNL comes to town again. Yeah.

And that's kind of how it went. And I just rambled so much. Did you love that ramble? Oh, no. No, it was, it was, well, first of all, it was very informative. And for me, it was funny because you said, you know, the way that ImprovOlympic does SNL tryouts now,

which is just hilarious to me, because like, I didn't even, I didn't know that there was a like an institutional seasonal thing because that did not happen when I was really OK. Joey Soloway and their sister Faith did the Real Life Brady Bunch, and that was a big hit for the Annoyance Theater there. And then they did a show that was all women called The Miss Vagina Pageant, and it was like a beauty pageant thing. Yeah. It was like a beauty pageant thing. And there was like some – we had a – like they were doing a show, and I was at the theater that night, and it was – they're doing – it may have even been at the end of a Brady Bunch, and they did a special – like a special edition of Miss Vagina pageant. But Lorne Michaels, it was somebody from SNL was coming and then they reset their seats

and then Lorne Michaels and Quincy Jones stroll in to the Annoyance Theater, which was like a converted, like it had been a drag club. It was like, it was a dump and it stunk and it was like plastic folding chairs.

And Lorne Michaels and Quincy Jones came in and that was it. it was like plastic folding chairs and lauren michaels and quincy jones came in and that was the that was it that was like the only sort of snl-y kind of thing that even happened then you know it's it's all very formal now it's this thing where like they they sell out the show they reserve a row for us and now snl snl people roll in um the head writers and steven and a bunch of producers. 30 seconds before the show starts. 30 seconds before they stroll in, they sit down. As soon as they sit down, the show starts. Yeah.

And then afterwards, the next day, you either get a call that you're going to drink or you don't. I think like six people on the lineup got invited to drinks. And then you go have drinks and there's no agenda. It's like, I literally, when I was talking to Lauren, I spent probably five minutes talking about the chandeliers. I spent probably five minutes talking about the chandeliers in the hotel because it was the Ritz downtown and I'd never been in a place with that many chandeliers. Like it was honestly overkill. And I was like pointing out my favorite ones and asking him about his favorite ones. And then the, the it's like speed dating. So the girl comes by and says, Hey, you guys need to move on to the next group. And Lauren, I had only talked about

chandeliers. So Lauren goes, five more minutes with this guy. And so then we had to actually talk about something that wasn't the chandeliers. It's this very insane process. And then arbitrarily you get invited or not invited to screen test. And then some people fly again, some don't, some stay for multiple, you know, it's, it has become something that is very, I think, systematic for them. But on the talent side of it, you're like, I don't know what the fuck is happening. Do I have a job or not? You know? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I don't know how else you do it. I mean, there's no sort of like fair way when you you got a tv show and you know you're gonna maybe you know if you're gonna pick any people you're gonna pick maybe two and there's 60 wanting it it's gonna be brutal you know it's gonna be ugly at some point you know you have all these different slots to fill and you don't know who's staying and leaving and and you know it i i think it's a it's a very difficult job. I, um, my friends who work on the show are some of the funniest people in the fucking world and I love them and they make great stuff on there. And I think it's not a, it's not a job that I,

uh, want or need, uh, at this point in my life, but I, I'm, I, I have no ill will towards it. It was a great process and it helped me get, um, my agents. And I wouldn't have done started doing videos unless I'd had that conversation with Steve Higgins. So I'm like, it was only positive for me. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well now what did trigger the move to LA? Was there any one particular thing or was it just kind of like when you saw that all the attention you're getting and you know, and then, you know, because you do, you get, it does matter you're getting and you know and then you know because you do you get it does matter it's you know it's there's things you're like i know like for selling a book like if you have if you have 200 000 people that follow you on something you could probably sell

a book just because you have 200 000 people you know you're the idea doesn't matter it's all just about you know how you can get your shit in front of people and if you have a,000 people, you know, you're the idea doesn't matter. It's all just about, you know, how you can get your shit in front of people. And if you have a built-in audience, people are like, oh yeah. Hey, why, you know, come get, let us, let us use you for something. Yeah. It matters exponentially. It's really insane. I mean, you fight against it. I think because you want to be like, I think I had ideas about, I still don't want to do, I mean, you fight against it, I think, because you want to be like, I think I had ideas about... I still don't want to do it. I mean, I haven't done a video in months.

I don't love doing internet videos. I do them when I think I have a fun idea that's easy to put out. But you fight against it, I think, because you're like, oh, I want to do... I don't... That's not what I want to do. I only want to do what I want to do. But then, yeah, I was doing the same material in August of 2019 to, like I said, five people who didn't pay for the show. Two of them are also on the show at midnight in an attic in Chicago. The same material I was doing then is what I was doing six months later when I had a hundred thousand Twitter followers,

but now my shows are selling out and it's like, yeah, it's just the internet stuff matters. But I guess the, the move to LA, when I moved to Chicago, I told myself five years, go to Chicago for five years, do improv, do whatever you want, have fun. And if you don't have a reason to move to New York or LA to do comedy for money or for something else, you should quit and go to grad school or go do something else. You should go do another thing that you're good at because there are other things you're good at and you don't need to do comedy. And it's not to say that you shouldn't do it for longer than five years or anything. I just felt like for me, I was going to do five years and that was, it was going to be it. So I was in Chicago for three years and before the pandemic hit, I quit my day job. I was having meetings about writing for TV shows. Um, everything was on LA time, but I was in Chicago. So it was, uh, scheduling meetings

and things was kind of annoying. Um, not impossible, but annoying. And I didn't really think the pandemic would last for that much longer. So I was like, you know, I'm just going to go because I had already made up my mind to go anyway. So I moved and I love LA. I mean, I miss Chicago, but I love LA as a city. And I kind of really got to know, like if I had moved here during normal times, I would have lived out of a suitcase for six months and been doing shows every night and running around. I hung pictures on my wall. I drove around. I got to know the city a little better. And it was like, it's had good sides, but it was definitely a weird choice. I think during the pandemic.

Well, is there, is there anything that's like surprised you the most about from kind of, you know, toiling in obscurity to now kind of being known, you know, and being asked on, you know, middle of the road podcasts like this one, you know, getting that change in your life? Yeah, the question is, how has your life changed from being on my podcast? Yes. No, but you know what I know? I mean, like, what's like, is anything really changed? Is there any surprises from you know from 2 000 followers to 100 000 followers i don't i mean yeah there are things that are different i hate thinking about it really genuinely i mean

i love the attention i want attention constantly it's obviously why i do uh comedy obviously obviously come on now but i hate thinking about myself as like i don't know someone who um has i i don't know i don't even know how to put words to it but i think um yeah there are a lot of little realizations along the way people are incredibly mean but also incredibly kind people think they know you and feel like your best friend they never had a conversation with them in your life um people want you to die because you have opinions on the internet that they don't agree with, half of which are genuinely jokes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it also, a lot of body image stuff. I really didn't think about my body that much beforehand. I always kind of liked what I looked like. I like who I am. I think I'm attractive and funny and interesting. And I never really thought about it, but then millions of people or even hundreds of thousands of people look at you and say things to you about

the way you look. And you're doing constant self-tapes and you're constantly looking at yourself and thinking about your look and thinking about what you have to offer to an industry that is, um, incredibly homogenous. Um, and, and it just is,

it's a very weird thing to be so conscious of, um, your body and other people's perceptions of you. So constantly, um, and it doesn't, fuckers are mean, they're mean.

And they're, they are fucking mean they're hardly ever mean in the fun way either because I will say I get some replies that are like they're mean as fuck but they're funny and that's rare they're usually just brutal like they're usually just like like I don't know why it's so

much more brutal to be like if there's a joke wrapped up in it like you're so fat you look like X or it seems like you're going to that I can at least respect because there were some structure attempts but when people just dm being are like you're the fattest person i've ever seen you should die the straightforwardness of that i'm like you meant it you really meant it um but yeah it's just yeah like it's happening to constantly think about i think even more than image i think constantly thinking about other people's perceptions of you, casting directors, agents, managers, fans, other comics. Is this going to last? Am I going to have another job after this one? All of that stuff is very new. I used to

just make comedy with my friends for fun. And I am still doing that to an extent, but it's, yeah, it's just, it's, it's different problems. Yeah. It's, it is weird. You get used to it. You know, I mean, when I started, after I left the Conan show and, you know, was doing different shows and, you know, my mom would say, so when this thing you're doing, how long does that last? A couple of months. And then what? I don't know. And that, you know, that fried or wiring or wiring it's just how can you do that and and honestly after having done worked

for 10 years straight on the on the tbs show which you know in some ways like it was fantastic but in some ways it's kind of limiting you know i mean i am kind of off on conan island uh you know there's like i'll see you know mediocre comedies where i virtually know everyone in the fucking thing and i'm like what there was no security guard role for me you know i couldn't i couldn't have done a day or two on this fucker right um and but you know i i had i mean the beautiful things about it is i worked on a show that means something to people i worked with people that i love and i was home at night for dinner for 10 years while my kids were you know from the ages of they were 5 and 10 and now they're 15 and 20 and and that was that's really all valuable valuable stuff but now the tbs show winds down

don't know i have no idea what's going to happen with hbo max so i'm back to i'm freelance again and it's fucking scary like i'm really kind of yeah i mean you know everybody tells me oh you don't have to worry about that and it's like yeah you're i'm the only person that can't go i don't have to worry about that i don't have to worry about that. And it's like, yeah, you're I'm the only person that can't go. I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to worry about that. And it's like you say about your looks. I'm the same way. I don't think about, you know, I mean, I'd like to drop a few pounds.

I'd like to be younger. I'd like all kinds of, you know, I'd like all kinds of different things. But in my life, I'm happy. I'm fine. I, you know, I feel like i'm a you know a lovable human being um but then there's just that level of like no i do have to think about how i look i do because it's a reality and i can be as swashbuckling and i don't give a fuck about all of this as much as I want or convince myself

that that's what I'm doing but no you gotta you know yeah you can't just you know they're gonna look at you they're gonna judge you by how by how you look they're gonna you know judge your voice by how you you know and also acting you gotta you gotta be good you gotta you gotta you gotta you gotta critique you know so you do have to care you'd have to think about it although there is a lot of a lot of not a lot of freeing yourself from caring about a lot of stuff that's like that's where the like that's a skill you learn as time goes on of like what you should care about what you shouldn't care about and when you should just effortlessly say no i'm not going to do that uh and and not and not sweat the the fallout supposedly from

saying no about something yeah i i think the um i the one thing i started doing when i got to chicago because i was so like constantly thinking about making it, which is something I don't believe in anymore. But at the time, I was like, I want to make it. And I started writing down... I had this notebook, of course, where I wrote all my bits. And I started writing down... Anytime I got too stressed out about that or other things similar to that, I started writing down little catchphrases, little inspirational, helpful... And I've had them change every couple of months or whatever I need at the time. But my thing lately that I've been writing down over and over again when I feel

stressed out is you're young and you have enough. And I think that's really having enough and not constantly wanting more is a thing that even in a short time in LA, having met almost exclusively cool, nice people that I really like and respect. It's just that there's a, there's a desire for more of everything constantly that I do relate to, but don't want to, um, invest in because it feels so adopt. Yeah. I don't want to adopt. I don't want to, I don't want to feed it. It can, it can be there. It can be okay that I want more and that I want to do a lot of things still, but I'm young. I do have enough. You don't, you don't really need the world.

And it's, I think it's particularly in LA more than Chicago, certainly. And even I would say more than New York, there is kind of something in the air of like, I need more. Yeah. And I think it's interesting.

That's well. And that also, I, I, one of the things that quotes, I remember somebody saying the screenwriter patty chayefsky said once that the desire for fame uh is perfect is a perfectly fine motivator when you're young like go for it if that's what you if that's what your fire you

know what puts the fire in your engine go for it but at a certain point you got to turn off because it will make you mentally ill i mean he didn't say that i'm saying that um but yeah so it's like i do think like yeah you come out here and it is like there's all this you know there's it's like you're presented with a ladder and you get on one rung and then you look at other ladders you're like holy shit 20 rungs above me you're literally bathing in gold you know like how can i not want that and you get knocked off the ladder and you get another ladder and you start again and it's sort of rung by rung um but yeah but ultimately you're right it's about if you have enough you're making a living you know, that that was another very Midwestern concern of mine when I came out here was just look at all these people making a living.

They're all, you know, like I don't need to be I don't need to be Bill Murray, but, you know, I could certainly be like one of those guys where you're like, oh, yeah, that guy. I've seen that guy in a hundred things, you know, that character actor. That's great. You know, or just doing fucking cartoon voices. Like I know people who make a really know or just doing fucking cartoon voices like i know people who make a really good living just doing cartoon voices and what a life like wow what a life i can't believe the number of people that i have never heard of that do very well yeah as writers or producers or yeah voiceover actors or whateverors who never get anything on screen. You work for years with deals, writing things that never get made.

It's like, you know, I mean, that's not a particularly fulfilling way to exist, but it's there. Right. $300,000 for a script that they're not going to make. That's okay. That's all right. People do that. Yeah. There's worse.

There's much worse things to do with your time where you're you know earning a living um well now now uh do you have any i mean covet is it's you came out here at a weird time like and like you said you you have had a weird introduction to la successful, you know, you know, burgeoning success in comedy. Is there something like, what are you looking forward to? What is like, what is kind of like if things really work out in the next couple of years, how you want them to, what do you think, what does that look like? I, um, I want to do shows when I want to, with who I want to,

I want to go. Oh, well, fucking Lottie. Da. La. Jesus Christ. Okay. Yes.

No. Okay. You want to, you want to hang out with your friends. Okay. No, I want to do good work with people you love. Oh,

I want to, I want to cook in a stove made of gold. Okay. I want diamonds on my a stove made of gold, okay? I want diamonds on my light switches. Yes, yes. No, I want to do... That is in the live space, the thing I'm most interested in. I don't need to do...

I don't need a special. I don't need to do stadiums or anything. I just want to do shows with people I like in that space. And the thing I really want to do is acting in TV and movies and directing. And the thing I really want to do is acting in TV and movies and directing. I just shot a pilot for TBS that I were waiting to hear back now if it's going to go or not. Really love everybody who's involved with it. So I'm like, that would be kind of cool.

You know, even if we only got to do a season, I think it'd be really cool. And I, yeah, I want to act. I want to make stuff. I am really right now trying to think about like directing. Like I'm like, okay, I've, I have been on sets, but I, I have some friends who are directing really cool shit. And I want to like, when things are a little more normal and COVID's not so fucking derailing for everything, I want to just like go shadow people and learn more about directing and stuff. But I think in the next... I'm thinking mostly in months at a time. And I think in the next year or so, if I'm selling an animated show that we're almost to the end of the deal on, the pilot we're waiting to hear back on, and I'm writing a movie about a gay country music star. I think if those three things... And well, there's another show I'm working on. If the things I have in development would just progress even slowly, I would feel really excited about that.

Yeah, yeah. And if they all happen at once, you'll want to kill yourself. Yeah, and if they all happen at once, I'll probably get sued by somebody because I don't really know. How you could do that. I don't really know how you can do that yeah i don't really know how that works but i yeah that's the problem with putting a lots of irons in the fire it's like oh no if they all heat up at once what the fuck is gonna happen oh yeah but i mean that's you know you figure it out every every it's all just making one decision after the other just as they come and don't get too worried about,

you know? Yeah. I kind of do whatever I want and just trust that my lawyers have gotten under control. Like I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, yeah,

I can do that. My lawyers. He's already saying my lawyers. That literally, I was, listen, Andy, I was shocked to learn that if someone asks you to do a TV show and

you're already doing another one, you're not allowed to just say yes. Yeah. I was like, what? They're like, oh, yeah, your lawyers have to negotiate. I'm like, to say I can do, I'm not even at work right now. They're like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

That is fucking insane to me. I was like, I can't believe this. No, they own you. If you say yes to a TV show, they own you. They own your TV-ness for a while there, you know? I was shocked. I was like, they can't do that to me. And they're like, yeah, they can.

And I was like, oh, I guess they can. I mean, yeah, I literally, I literally know nothing. And I just walk around going, oh, I can do that. And then someone goes, no, you can't. And I go, what do you mean? Yeah. What do you mean? Oops.

Yeah. Well, now. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to, uh, the last thought I had on that was I, my, the whole time I was in Chicago, pretty much, I didn't see my family a ton. And then, uh, because going home just took so much time away from work and shows. So I like went home for the holidays or whatever, but I really, uh, want COVID obviously to slow down and I want to just go see my family more. I like being in Missouri and I like seeing calendar to go and see somebody or something you like is such a massive privilege that i just don't think people who have it really think about that often yeah it's crazy well um what have you what have you learned both good and bad from this you know from this you know relatively it's a you know we're talking about

a relatively short period of time from you know from from your life changing um what what are the things that you've learned so far do you think that you can tell someone else who's like you know interested in a similar path? Yeah, I just, I feel like in terms of the work stuff, like comedy stuff, it's like all luck. You have to be prepared when luck comes, but it's like good luck. I hope luck finds you.

That is what you're waiting on is someone to come out of nowhere and sort of say maybe, and it feels insane to be waiting for that. It happens quicker for some people than others, but I think it's all luck. And I think on the life front, the more important thing, it's just all about good people. It's just hanging out with good people, spending time with good people who make you feel good. It feels so basic and cross-stitch on a pillow type shit. But it's like, I don't under that. The thing I was talking about earlier

of loving every place I've ever lived. I've loved every place I've ever lived because I've always hung out with cool, good people that make me feel good. And I think it's hard to have a bad time when you're hanging out with nice, interesting, cool people who are nice to you and don't treat you badly. I think that's it. That's the whole thing. That's the whole point of everything is hanging out with good people. And hopefully you get to do it at work too, but at least in your life. you know, not seeing my family for, I didn't see my, I saw my family Thanksgiving before the pandemic and then not at all until I got vaccinated in like March of, um, 2021. So it's like a year and a half, a long time of not seeing anybody in my family. Um, yeah. So I think the big thing on my mind lately has just been good times with good people. That's the whole point. Yeah.

Well, uh, good luck to you. And thanks for coming on here. And I will keep watching what you're doing because I think you're pretty fucking funny. Oh, thanks, Andy. You're welcome. I thought this was mostly fun. And I think if I could give you one note, it would be all the homophobic slurs that you were putting in the chat during the podcast recording yeah yeah i wouldn't do that next time if you have a gay guest i just thought that was overkill no i meant i'm a fan of nelly the the rapper

yeah i just i don't know the the all the slurs you were typing in the chat i thought were totally random i just was leaning on the keyboard it's so weird it came out that way yeah they came out super clear sentences that people would really not like to see. But thank you for having me. You got that over me. Thanks for having me. This was fun. Sure.

Thank you. And thanks, all of you out there, for listening. And we'll be back next week with three more questions of some unsuspecting questionee. That was a terrible sign-off. Got a big, big love for you. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Your Wolf production. It is produced by Lane Gerbig, engineered by Marina Pice, and talent produced by Kalitza Hayek. The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair,

and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Make sure to rate and review the three questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts. Can't you tell my loves are growing? This has been a Team Coco production in association

with Earwolf.