The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Steve Agee

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

Actor and Comedian Steve Agee joins Andy Richter to talk about being sent to military school, finding his way into comedy, making stuff with his friends, and more.

hey everybody it's andy richter uh with the three questions and uh today i get to have fun because i get to talk to a friend of mine uh because most of these people i can't stand them oh just a bunch of tedious fucking hollywood suck-ups phonies and finally i get to talk to a real salt of the earth piece of shit steve agey a real ham and egger yeah what is that even i don't you know ham and eggers are weird ones that means because you eat ham and eggs i don know. I had a friend in when I was in high school who I only heard him say it once. Like there was some like, you know, like we were in town and there were some like truck driver types at this diner. And he's like, look at those ham and eggers. He's like, those are some real ham and eggers or something like that.

ham and eggers he's like those are some real ham and eggers or something like that and it seemed to be the perfect phrase for these guys even though it i have no idea what it means right right maybe he was just talking about their breakfast maybe speaking of which i just flashed on remembering it was a regular thing when i was a kid. I grew up in kind of, you know, kind of like a rural town in Illinois. But I remember so distinctly going to coffee shops or like, you know, the breakfast restaurant would be sort of a truck stop at the edge of town. Yeah. And you go there. And so many farmers would be eating and smoking at the same time. Like have their plate of food and have a cigarette going at the same time.

Like you can't interrupt this cigarette i remember going to my parents for a brief period of time lived in blythe california which is right on the california oregon or california arizona border uh-huh it's like the colorado river is right there dividing the two states and it's mostly like farming town and or people who work at the maximum security prison and neat i would go out and get coffee with my dad at a very similar establishment and it was just farmers and prison guards smoking and drinking coffee yeah oh it's truly amazing i mean i said nothing new but it is truly amazing and i mean why we're talking about this i don't know but just how much cigarette smoke we were around as children and i mean everywhere and how shocking it is now like i remember being at my kids at junior high and I was across like something at school with my kids and I was at

the far end of the gym from an open door. And then even another, like probably 25 yards, I could see someone had just lit up a cigarette and I could smell it almost instantly. Yeah. Remember when it used to be okay to smoke on planes? That's insane. There's still places in the world. Like, I remember when we were shooting the movie Semi-Pro, me and Kent Alterman, the director, went out for breakfast at this town in Michigan, which was like a shotgun diner. It was completely split down the middle by an aisle, and that was the whole place.

One side was smoking and one side wasn't so smoking section was literally arm's reach from you no matter where you were sitting and that's in michigan i don't know it's just because michigan's pretty fucking trashy though if there is a smoking section in a restaurant then the whole restaurant is a smoking section there's no like yeah this is non-smokers no you're we're getting the smoke effect over here too it's amazing how recent it was too because like i remember when we started doing the late night show on the on the the sixth floor uh there was the local news was across the hall and um you'd see people like running from the, the edit bay to the studio with a tape in their hand while smoking a cigarette.

You could walk down the halls of 30 rock in 1993, smoking a cigarette. And it was, did you ever have the only person that comes to mind is like Sean Penn on your show. And did he smoke smoke while doing panel? You know, I can't remember exactly. I think a couple people have, but I don't remember exactly.

I really erased all Conan memories just as a coping mechanism to move forward with my life. Well, after so many, I mean, you can't remember everything. I, you know, we only did like, I think 30 episodes of Sarah's show. And like, I can see something and be like,

I have no memory of shooting this at all. It's weird. It's really weird to see yourself in some elaborate getup doing ridiculous shit and go like no recollection at all whatever the human mind yeah well listen um you're from riverside california i don't know if you remember that i mean i don't remember being born there but i have uh i do have memories that started forming at some point while i was living there yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did you, was that where you ended up growing up and going to buy me? And I know you're,

yeah, I was born there and, um, my, my parents worked at, uh, Parkview community hospital, which is in Riverside, which is where I was born. And, um, they, I was adopted. They adopted me and they adopted me from the hospital that my dad was working at at the time. And my mom says that he had, they were looking to adopt and my dad was called her one day. He's like, there's a baby here that's up for adoption.

And I always thought it was more complicated. I mean, I think it is now now but i think in the late 60s and 70s it was like oh yeah you can have this baby it also kind of sounds to me like maybe he stole you i mean i wouldn't doubt it my dad was a scumbag no i'm just kidding he was awesome yeah yeah no it does sound like you hey, honey, come home from work. Surprise, surprise. Look what I found in the break room. Right around Christmas.

And my mom had a baby in the stocking on Christmas Day. Do you have any contact with your birth parents or any desire? It's so funny. I was telling, I don't know if you know Seth Morris, but I was telling him this story just last night that I kind of accidentally found my biological father when I was 30, like literally through just, I knew my birth parents' names

and I knew that they went to school in a Cal State Stanislaus, which is near like Fresno. It's one of the Cal state schools. And I knew that they were theater students, which really also explained a lot. And one night I was 30 and one night I was just bored. And I decided to go to that Cal State school's website. And I was like, I wonder if they

have like a link to the drama department. And sure enough, they did. And I clicked on it. And then just for no reason, I emailed the head of the theater department at that school. I said, hey, you don't know me, but my parents went to school there in probably about 1968. And these are their names. And I was wondering if anyone teaching there right now was teaching there in the 60s. And this was a Friday night. And Monday, I got an email from the head of the theater department. And he goes, 1968 was my first year working at this school. I totally knew your parents.

I don't know what happened to your biological mother, but I still keep in touch with your biological father. And I forwarded him your email. He didn't ask me, by the way, if that was okay. He was just like, I sent your email to your biological father. And I just remember going, oh going oh shit that's out there now yeah yeah and then like a week or two later he wrote me back in this really amazing long email about you know who he was who who he is and and you know that i have like half brother and a couple half sisters and yeah it was a really cool dude it still is a really cool dude

is he still in california or no he was never in california he lives in eugene oregon oh okay and my half brother jordan lives in uh um oakland and then the two half sisters also live in oregon and do you i mean you obviously have met them and they're in contact with them and everything. I see Jordan actually quite often, you know, whenever I'm in San Francisco, either doing stand up or for Sketch Fest, which is every January. I, you know, get lunch or dinner with him or something. Nice. I, you know, get lunch or dinner with him or something. Yeah. When he's a musician and whenever he's playing down here, I, you know, I try and make it a point to go see him. And did your biological father end up doing something creative?

Yeah. You want to hear something crazy? I guess. I mean, I'm here. You're like, no. So in his email, he was saying, you know, I went to school. And after I graduated, he said he moved to Ashland, Oregon, which is home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Really small town. Very quaint. It's almost more like a village, but it's really a really cool town at the base of the mountains. And it's really the first town you come to if you drive into Oregon from California. And the crazy thing is that when

I was about 27, I was taking classes at the Groundlings and I had like a really long wait between classes, like a year wait. And so did my girlfriend. And we were just like, let's not just sit in LA for a year. Let's, you know, we're young. Let's go somewhere for a year. Let's get in the car and just go somewhere. And so we got in my truck and just started driving north, and we ended up in Ashland, Oregon, and we ended up living there for a year.

Wow. For no fucking reason. Wow. And so I thought that was pretty bizarre that, you know, my biological father had just ended up in Ashland and probably when he was about the same age as I was when I randomly for no reason just moved to Ashland. He wasn't there when you were there though. No, he was probably there in, you know, the early 70s right right wow yeah um uh oh i forgot i had a question i slipped my

mind um do you have any do you that's my favorite color do you um so are there any other siblings did your folks adopt anybody any other yeah my older brother greg is about eight years older than me and my uh younger sister beth is a year younger than me and all adopted uh-huh oh wow yeah all right um and now what kind of what was your household like are you are you're you're in the middle then, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, my brother being eight years older than me. That's a stretch.

Yeah. And he was also adopted from my dad's previous marriage. So. Oh, I see. He would spend a lot of time with his mother, his adoptive mother. He would kind of divide his time between my dad and his mom. So I don't have a lot of memories of Greg when we were younger. Right.

Because he was back and forth. And then when he was like 18, he went to college. And so he was gone a lot but it was you know my dad was a doctor he was an anesthesiologist and so he was working a lot he was gone a lot i was you know one of those kids that kind of rode his bike around the neighborhood with his weirdo neighbor friends until like nine o'clock at night and yeah until the rule was always when the streetlights come on come home um but i never would and so it was always you know we'd be riding bikes or something and i could hear my mom yelling from the front yeah yeah yeah

which is totally crazy that doesn't happen anymore it Yeah. I could hear my mom yelling and I could hear my best friend's mom next door yelling. You just hear women yelling all over the neighborhood. Right, right. Just that is pretty hilarious. Well, now, too, every kid's got a phone. So it's like it doesn't matter. You know, you just text him. Where are you it was you know it was back in a time where everyone

kind of just rode their bikes to the mall yeah yeah played bb guns out in the orange groves we did i mean i we had behind our house was like woods and we'd go play in the woods and like when it was dinner time uh my grandmother would ring a bell like stand like it was a fucking ranch or something like a triangle bell no like it like a little ding ding ding ding you know like yeah like a little brass bell and uh yeah and then we'd hear that and be like all right time to eat you know yeah um but now we were i was uh terrified of getting in trouble but I feel like you probably weren't. I was terrified. Yes. My, my sister was a lot of trouble. My brother was a troublemaker. And so I had that guilty sense of, I gotta be the good one, even though really by the time I got to high school, I was probably the worst one of all of them. But like I had this, you know, feeling of I got to make my parents happy because I can tell they're losing their fucking mind.

Yeah. But yeah, I was very conscious about, you know, my parents stress levels. Yeah. Why do you think that all the kids were sort of, you know, rabble-rousers and shitsters? I don't know, but I can't, you know, I'm 52. I do not have kids. I don't envision having kids. So I can't imagine having three kids or in your case, two kids or like just the stress i remember one time i was probably like eight or nine and i was upstairs in our house and i looked out in the backyard and i saw my dad walking down walking around in the backyard i think i think he was raking the you know leaves

in the backyard and i remember seeing him talking to himself like it you know he's a hundred yards away yeah and i can just see him raking and talking you know there were no bluetooth there's no phone like he was talking to himself and it scared the shit out of me because his father had had dementia. Yeah. And so I remember a period when my grandpa was staying at our house and he had Alzheimer's and was like, fucking thought he had to go out and get the horses in the backyard. It was fucking scary for a little kid. Yeah.

And so I remember seeing my dad talking to himself in the backyard and I was like, oh, my God oh my god oh my god my dad's got dementia i didn't know that word when i was a little kid i was like my dad is going crazy senile yeah yeah my dad's unhappy and crazy and i was very hyper aware of that now at 52 i'm like oh my dad was just fucking trying to keep himself from blowing a gasket yeah yeah i talk to myself all the time yeah and also too there is a difference like in just terms of like the the parenting theory has changed so much because it used to be you got to teach a kid to submit like because that's what life is life is submitting and there

actually is some truth to that like uh you know like when you have a kid especially like it is a life skill to because you know and it's like i don't it's a capitalist world so it's like you go somewhere and you get paid to do labor of whatever kind. And part of that is having somebody that you just think is a fucking asshole tell you what to do, and you just got to do it because that's the structure of this particular thing. Yeah. And I mean, you could, I mean, you could raise your kid to be like a, you know, a Marxist reactionary or a revolutionary or something, but, you know, a Marxist reactionary or a revolutionary or something.

But, you know, odds are that your kid is not going to be that. So it's like, you got to teach them like, yeah, sometimes you've got to eat shit, which is just a, it's not a fun thing to teach your kid, but. Take your blows and fucking deal with it. Like, yeah, like I know that guy's an asshole, but if you're like, you know, it's just like, you got to do your time you got to keep your head down you got it you know and then you get to a place where you can sort of like do what

you want you know well believe me i i'm very aware of that you know i i spent two years i got kicked out of high school and i had to you know my parents ended up like so frustrated that they sent me to military school which was the big threat in all the movies in the 80s yeah yeah if bill and ted we're gonna send you to military school if you don't straighten up i was the kid that actually got sent to military school so talk about eating shit and doing what you're told for two years wow what what did you what was so bad what were you doing that was so bad that you needed this to go to prison basic drinking like i really when i was a freshman in high school two seniors took me out and got me drunk and i it was a it was a game changer for me i was like

because i was a shy kid you know all through elementary and junior high and i was afraid to talk to girls and i remember just we went to a liquor store we paid a bum to buy us three bottles of boone's farm strawberry and uh we went up to uh you know a development area where they were building tract housing and, you know, there were still no houses yet. And so we just went to an empty cul-de-sac and like turned on Van Halen and sat on my friend's tailgate and like, just chug big bottles of Boone's Farm. And I just remember being like, am I going to throw up? Is this going to make me throw up? And they're like, dude, just shut up and drink it.

And at one point, I just remember laughing so much. And then we went and watched, I think it was Beverly Hills Cop or 48 Hours, one of those movies. Yeah. And laughing so much. And then from then on out, it was every party I would go to, I would get drunk and I would be completely the life of the party and talk to girls and make out with girls. And so booze was like, you know, it was a magic pill for me. And so I just did it constantly to the point where I started doing it in the morning on the way to school. I would get a big gulp at 7-Eleven

and pour half a bottle of Southern Comfort into a thing of Coke, like a pint of Southern Comfort. And by second period, I'd be completely buzzed. And every now and then, my parents would look in my car and find an empty bottle of an empty fifth of Jack Daniels, which is disturbing to find in a car yeah yeah not beer cans like heavy hard alcohol southern comfort was my especially with it to a teenager now you know it's like one thing to find it in a 35 year olds but teenagers are

already a menace you know what i mean on in a car yeah and i um you know oddly got kicked out of a school for trashing a homeroom which i actually didn't do two friends of mine did it and they did it in the morning before an assembly and i walked they're like dude you got to go look at homeroom and i walked in and they had just like destroyed it i don't know why they it. And as I was walking out of homeroom, a teacher saw me. They didn't say anything at the time. And then my next year of school, when I was registering, they're like, you have to have a meeting with the principal. And I went with my mom and he's like, before we let Steve back in school, you should know that he trashed a room. And I was like,

what are you talking about? I, what? And then he's like the homeroom before. And I was like, oh yeah. I go, that, that wasn't me. He's like, who was it? And I was like, I can't tell you, I'm not going to tell you, but it wasn't me. And he's like, well, you have to apologize to the board, the school board before we let you back. And I was like, apologize to the board the school board before we let you back and i was like i didn't do it and my mom god bless her was like uh if my fucking son said he didn't do it he didn't do it right and i don't want him going to your fucking school if you're gonna accuse him of shit he didn't do the sad part of that was they then sent me to military school yeah because they had friends who sent their son there and he got straight it and. And I was getting like F's and D's.

Was this the first school you got kicked out of or did you get kicked out of more before that? My freshman year, there was a school. Are these all public schools? No, they're private, like Christian schools. Oh, okay. But they're co-ed. No, they're private, like Christian schools. Oh, okay.

But they're co-ed. And my sophomore year, halfway through the year, for some reason, I don't know why, I decided I wanted to go to a different school. And I ended up switching it halfway through the school year and going to this other school. And oddly, all my friends who were also drinking the next semester or the next semester got all got busted for drinking. They all got suspended. They all had to go to like alcohol programs for teens. And I managed to avoid it. So this was my second school, first school I got kicked out of. And then they sent me all the way across the country to right outside of

philadelphia to the school where they filmed that movie taps oh wow which is also the basis of preppy prep and catcher in the rye it's the school jd salinger went to oh wow um now did did you miss part of the school year or did it happen like she had that meeting with the principal and then it was like, okay, you're gone. And then three days later, you're. No, this was. So I went to the same school for my first year. The second, my sophomore year, I switched schools. So I went to schools my sophomore year.

Over the summer, I had to have this meeting with the principal to be let back into school. Oh, okay. It was before my junior year. Over the summer, I had to have this meeting with the principal to be let back into school. It was before my junior year. I understand. By the way, they sent me to this military school, and my mom and I go there, and they're showing us around, and I have to take some tests and stuff. And I remember the dean saying to my mom, like,

well, some of his grades are bad and his credits don't you know transfer so he's gonna have to do a a second junior or something it took me five years to go through high school and looking back on it i'm like i think that was bullshit and they were just trying to get more money out of my parents. Yeah. But yeah, that was two very interesting years. Really bizarre years. Tell me about it. I mean, because I can't even fathom what that would be like.

You know, I talk a good game about eating shit. But man, in military school, I would think I'd just curl up in a ball in the corner. Well, I also, by the way, I tell everybody with kids, I'm like, never send your kid to military school. Why? Yeah. Because you were literally sending them to a school that is the all stars of fuck ups. Yeah. Like I was nothing when I got to that school with like hardcore like screw ups and like people who would go on to kill their parents and like whoa like really scary people a few there were there were awesome people there too but like right people were not there were very few people who were there because i want to go to military

school it was like you, and it was. And they're also then taking those people and training them to fight with weapons. We did have to shoot, like we had to shoot like just 22s, but we had to shoot guns and march. And I had to, you know, polish my shoes and my brass belt buckles and had have daily inspections and it was insane you're marching everywhere it is insane you're getting up at 5 30 in the morning and going up to the you know the the physical education field and running a couple miles and doing calisthenics and then going back and cleaning the dorm till it's spotless for an inspection and then you go eat and then you go to school yeah and everyone is just sitting in class nodding off because they're exhausted yeah can't you tell my loves are growing wow and i mean do you voice your your like

desperateness to get out of there to your parents i mean or did you just try to suck it up and you know because i remember when they told me because i remember after this whole thing at the the second school not wanting me to come back i remember at some point going up to my parents you know schools were starting up really soon and i go we got to figure out where i'm going to school and they're like we already know we've avoided telling you to avoid conflict but you're going to military school. And I threw a fit. I was like, are you out of your fucking minds? I was like,

I'm going to be a runaway. I'm going to fucking, I go, I'm not going to military. And they're just like, try it out. If it doesn't work and you really hate it, you can come home.

They just said that to appease me because I've seen letters that I wrote to my parents from military school going, all right, I've tried it. This place fucking sucks. Let me come home. Like really depressing letters that were just like, this is like prison. And by the way, you know, I was drinking a bunch, but once I got to military school, it was like, oh, let's try acid.

Let's try speed. Let's try cocaine. I was like 17 at this point, and it was really hard in a dorm to hide bottles of alcohol because we had daily inspections. You couldn't hide a fifth of vodka somewhere. Yeah, or the smell of it on your breath or on your clothes. Yeah. You know, you couldn't hide a fifth of vodka somewhere. Yeah, or the smell of it on your breath or on your clothes. Yeah. Yeah, but you could hide a sheet of acid, you know, under your mattress. Yeah, in a book.

Yeah. It was really easy to hide drugs, you know, and we did, and we did a lot of drugs. While you're running and marching and going to class or afterwards well yeah sometimes we were doing it because we had to go run you know speed was very popular it's like sometimes you just do a bump of speed to go fucking run two miles at 5 30 in the morning oh my god well what i mean how do you get out of there i mean is there well first of all you graduate is oh really you so that was oh so you don't okay but because you said five years but I mean, how do you get out of there? I mean, is there, well, first of all, is there. You graduate. Oh, really? So that was, oh, so you don't, okay.

But because you said five years, but you only did two years there and then you graduated. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my timeline's off. I did like three years of regular high school. And then it was two years at the military school. How would he, in the summer, when you come back to California, in between those two years, how do you not go chain yourself to a radiator or something?

Well, by the end of the first year, you're like, that place sucks, but I've got some really good friends that make it okay. I'm still going to be very vocal about not wanting to go back but also i have more important things to do like hang out and party with my friends before i get sent back so i see you spend your summer out you know yeah 18 hours with your friends like you know surfing and did you have good communication with your folks or was avoidance kind of like a key to a lot of what you would do because it sounds like you'd come home everybody

knows the situation but nobody talks about it yes like they know you're dissatisfied you know they want you to go back but you just kind of yeah my parents were, you know, pretty hardcore Christian, conservative, and nobody really talked about feelings. Yeah. Until, you know, probably like the last 15, 20 years for some reason when you become an adult and you leave the house. And then all of a sudden every phone call ends with, I love you. Or, you know, It was very nice. But as a kid, it was not. My parents were great.

I really did hit the lottery. But feelings, I don't know if it was a 70s or 80s thing. But people just didn't really talk. Well, so you get out of there. Well, and I guess, well, is the friends the only good thing you get out of there well and i guess well the is the friends the only good thing you take out of there that was another thought across well i did end up getting like straight b's and a's i i really because at night there's nothing to do but study you literally every night have to sit for two hours at your desk in your room you can't

even get up you and they have monitors walking down the hall like the fucking gulag and they're just like you can't get up to take a leak you can but you have to ask permission i see um and so at some point you're just like well i fucking might as well read this fucking chapter in my history right right and you retain it and you you're like, oh, my God, I remember this from two nights ago. This shit works. You're like, I just had to read? Fuck.

Well, where do you go to college then? So after. Or are you kind of like, do you feel like you don't want to go to college because you just went through all this the the intensest school there is i never wanted to go to college it was never my plan yeah but also all my friends and when i say all my friends i mean my friends from back home i don't mean my military school friends but all my friends well and my military school friends were going to college, you know, and my parents all went to college and everyone like, and so I was just like, I guess I have to go to college. And I'd been offered a

scholarship to play basketball. I was really good at basketball and I had been given an offer to play at this school in New York or New York or Pennsylvania at West Chester University and um I never told my parents about it being offered this scholarship as a fuck you to like I'm not gonna fucking do this shit anymore I want to go back home and and so I just went to this private, another private Christian college. I mean, I grew up in a Christian household, in a Christian community. We went to Christian schools. And so all my friends were also in the same boat. And everyone just kind of went from these Christian private academies to this Christian private school, which was Loma Linda university,

which is a very famous medical school, like Loma Linda university. A lot of their students go into Loma Linda university medical center, which is where they did the first baboon heart transplant. Wow. They do amazing. You think they do that stuff for humans? They do a veterinary hospital. breakthrough. You think they do that stuff for humans? I mean, what?

It's like a veterinary hospital. Yeah, it's all, you know, horses and monkeys. Alright, so anyway, I'm sorry. But this college also has a business program. I also grew up around the ocean a lot and scuba diving and surfing and the only thing i could think i wanted to do was maybe i'll be a marine biologist and um so i and they didn't have a marine biology program but i figured i could get all my biology classes out of the way at this school and then transfer to like cal state long beach or scripts or something and um first semester just failed all my i i could not

grasp biology at all and it's crazy because they start you out as a freshman. You're still dumb. And like, they start you out with the smallest level of biology and chemistry and like cellular and molecular and atoms and like mitochondria. And you're just like, what the fuck does this have to do with fish? And like, I was like, no,

I can't do this. I'm not. And so, you know, halfway was like, no, I can't do this. I'm not. And so, you know, halfway through the freshman year, I develop an ulcer and I'm just like, I can't do this. And then, so I finished the year undecided. And then my best friend, Sam, I remember going, just be an art major. He's like, he's like, they have an art department up there. And he's like, he's like, I've seen you doodle and draw shit.

He's like, be a major. And so I was like, yeah, I'll be an art major. And so I switched to my parents were like, oh fuck. Okay.

Well, at least he's still in college. And yeah, I was like, maybe I can be a graphic designer or something. I never wanted to do any of this shit. Honestly, since I was a little kid,

I wanted to be an actor and a stand-up comedian. I remember as a kid, my idol was John Ritter. I wanted to be John Ritter. Wow. And I knew that from the time I was about 10 years old. And the first album I bought at 11 years old with my own money, album I bought at 11 years old with my own money. I went down to the mall and I bought George Carlin a place for my stuff. I was 11. I didn't understand half of his jokes, but for some reason I was like, this guy's funny and I want to do this. But I had no friends. I didn't know

anyone in that world and I didn't think it was possible. So I would just buy it and consume it and just soak it up. And, um, at some point while I was in college, I joined a band with my roommate. And also I remember my mom, you've been playing guitar all along, right? No, I started when I was like 18, 17 like 18 17 or 18 and um i think my mom knew what was up because i remember a she told me about an open mic night she's like you should do this you know it was at this bar in fucking riverside and yeah i think called carlos o'brien's or something and and i did stand up and i and she also sent me a clipping out of the local newspaper that the local community theater was holding auditions for a christmas carol wow and i was like

okay i was really excited and i went and i audition auditioned. And I got the part of Jacob Marley. Wow. And I fucking loved it from the time I first did it. And stand-up, too. Yeah. And I still didn't think it was possible for me to do it. Because that's why you didn't become a theater major. You became an art major.

Because it's still like, oh, that can't happen. Yeah, and they didn't have a theater major at our school. It was all just graphic arts. And so I have a degree in painting. Wow. Two-dimensional art degree and like a bachelor's degree. I haven't painted anything since the day I graduated or since like a week before I graduated.

Not even houses or roads? Yes, I have painted houses, yes. I did a week before I graduated. Not even houses? Or roads? Oh, yes. I have painted houses, yes. I did a lot of house painting. Yes, yes. Well, so then what? I mean. Well, then I eventually graduate.

Yeah. I also got very into rock climbing in college. I took a class because there was a girl I had a crush on and she was taking this rock climbing class. And so I signed up and just took to it like, like I was meant to do it. Yeah. So much so that like the second year I was helping the teacher teach the

class. And so I rock climbed all through college. I even took a year off and went to a college up in the hills above Napa Valley just so I could rock climb. Like none of my credits transferred. But also while I was there, I met a girl who was a photography major and we ended up dating for like six years. We moved to LA together. We went to New York together. In 1993, the art department that I was going to gave out a scholarship to go study abroad somewhere.

And so my girlfriend and I went to New York. I just wanted to go to New York. I'd never been. And so I went and I studied, I did painting and stuff at the art students league, which is on like West 57th or something. And I just loved it. And I, you know, I would take like one class every other day there. And the rest of the time I would just walk around new york i would go to clubs and i would go to museums and like fucking love it and i believe i was there i was there when letterman had his last show at nbc and you guys were announced as taking his place i don't think

i was still there when you started i think did you guys start in 94 we know we started in 93 and okay so i was still in september of 93 okay so i was still there when you guys started um but also we weren't making any money and so we blew through our money in like six months and yeah was out of there yeah yeah and but i had to come back anyway and so when i eventually graduated college with my weird degree i didn't know what to do yeah they don't prepare you for this shit it's like here's your degree bye right right and we'll ask you like once a year to don't donate money to us on you know like to just to take their side for a second you weren't exactly directed you know what i mean you didn't have like a lot it sounds like you didn't have a lot of self-direction no you know beyond kind of experiential kind of things so i mean you know i think colleges do

kind of expect you you'd have some idea what you're gonna do with yourself yeah and the crazy thing is i got to college and i just more options started opening yeah it's just like maybe i paint or i really like playing in a band and so when i graduated i was already playing in a band who i joined this band it was a cover band my roommate was in and their bass player broke his arm. And it was like that movie, that thing you do, but instead of a drummer, it was the bass player broke his arm.

And I had a bass and my roommate was like, you want to come play with us? We just do covers of our friends, you know, studio. And, and I went and we started playing and literally by the end of the first rehearsal, just dicking around, we had written like four songs, like punk songs. But like, and I was so excited by that, that I just started calling clubs.

I was like, you guys, we have to play in clubs. What are we doing? And they're like, really? And I'm like, we just wrote four songs and we have like eight covers. We can play at a club and i started calling out of like la weekly and the local newspapers and the first person to return my call was this guy i think his name was mike g and greco he used to book clubs in la and he booked us to play the fucking whiskey that was our first gig was the whiskey a go-go what was the name of the band the name of the band was the grazers uh-huh and um we played and it was awesome

and so i knew when i graduated i needed to be in la yeah even if the band wasn't gonna relocate i needed to be there so I in order to keep from having to get a job, I enrolled at this school here in LA called the Musicians Institute. And it's like just a year program. Yeah, like a trade school. Yeah, and I went because I wanted to learn to read

music and I wanted to learn proper technique, which I learned. And that ended to learn to read music and i wanted to learn proper technique which i learned yeah and um you know that ended the band ended you know our singer went on to be you know to a seminary to become a pastor and the guitar player became a nurse and i classic punk classic punk story and i think the drummer is now either a lawyer or an archaeologist I think the drummer is now either a lawyer or an archeologist. And I was the only one who I kind of followed through. And,

um, you know, my, the day I graduated from the music school, my girlfriend broke up with me and moved back to Sacramento. And I was stuck here and I just, but I fucking stayed. I loved LA and I loved every bit of music. And I met a, met a girl and started dating her.

She was taking classes at the Groundlings. And I went to a show and was like, it was the light bulb. I was like, this is it. I need to be doing this. And I had already known about the Groundlings and recruiting for SNL. And and i was like this is how i get into tv i was like this is a much better entrance into comedy for me i love sketch comedy yeah and um and you've been doing stand-up at that point yes yeah a little bit yeah a little bit so i started taking classes at the groundlings and it was a life-changing decision for me. Because I started taking classes. And, you know, you're in classes. You went to, was it Second City or I-O?

I went to I-O, yeah, ImprovOlympic. Yeah, and you're there as just a student or a performer. And you're performing with people who later go on to be, like, huge stars and friends. And you start relationships with these people that lead to working with these people. And I was in classes with Maya Rudolph and I was there with Will Forte and, you know, all these people who were,

you know, at the time were just like, just like you working at Starbucks and just trying to do sketch comedy. And, um And eventually, you know, I got voted out of the ground. What voted out? Oh yeah.

The teachers vote or something. Well, after my last class, it was like, they have to vote on whether or not to let you into the Sunday company, which is kind of like the minor league performing troop. And it was just like, no,

no, I, you know, I don't think we need another white guy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Maya made it in,

which I was a no brainer. Not right. Not because she's black or Jewish, but because she's fucking incredible you know and there were people that i was in classes with that you could just tell like melissa mccarthy you're like she's gonna be like you could tell yeah that person's gonna make it that person's gonna make it i was crushed because i had spent every day of my life at the Groundlings Theater working there for classes, performing, doing, you know, workshops. And all my friends were there.

And I literally, once I was voted out, I was like, I literally don't know what to do now. My plans are just crushed. And I ended up doing a play that a friend was in. And I ended up doing a play that a friend was in. My friend Jim Giordano was doing a play with this guy, Dave Juskow, who's a New York comedian who you may know. He's like, he was. Yeah, I know the name. He was like best friends with Sarah Silverman.

Okay. And he was doing this play about an 80s rock band who is now, you know, has been and they're trying to make make a comeback so he needed someone who could play guitar because somebody dropped out of this play my friend jim goes you should hire my friend steve he can play guitar he's been at the groundlings he's very funny and so with like two days notice i had to learn this script and i did this we did this play down on theater row on santa monica boulevard and uh opening night Sarah Silverman came to the show and afterwards she came up to me and she's like that was really funny man she's like you're really funny and you want to smoke a joint and I was like yeah and we sat outside and smoked a joint and from that point on Sarah and I were like best friends, like hung out constantly. And, you know, it formed, you know, creative and just emotional, you know, friendship.

And, you know, she's still one of my best friends to this day. And she helped me. I don't know where I would be right now without Sarah, because not only did she hire me on her show, which was my first really big acting gig, but also before that, she introduced me to Jimmy Kimmel when she was dating him. And I got a job working on his show, which eventually ended up to me with me being a writer. And also, Sarah's the one who's like, you need to go see a shrink. You should be on medication because at one point I started having panic attacks so bad that I didn't leave my house for like three months. I became agoraphobic and I just called her one night. Cause I just tried to go to a seven 11 to get food in the middle of the

night. Cause it's the only time I would leave my house. I was so scared and I go to theleven and I'm sitting in the parking lot and I'm looking through the windows and there's just one person in there. And I couldn't go in because there was one person in there. And I just called Sarah sobbing. And I was like, I think I'm losing my mind. And she's like, oh, you can get your mind back. She's like, go see my shrink. Here's their number. And two days later, I'm seeing my mind. And she's like, oh, you can get your mind back. She's like, go see my shrink. Here's their number.

And two days later, I'm seeing her shrink. And, you know, they get me on Lexapro. And within two weeks, I was like back performing and like, wow,

game change. I owe Sarah more than I could ever repair. Yeah. And you think that just, was it her help that made you get to you know i mean i know she set up your appointment with the shrink but the actual leaving of the apartment which is that you know the the hurdle you had to jump over but yeah but do you think that her having set you up with the guy helped you be brave enough or did you just push through it because you knew you had

to do something i knew i had to do it but i knew that was the light at the end of the tunnel. Even if I hadn't gone on medication, I knew I needed talk therapy. I needed to talk to somebody. I was not talking to anybody. My brain was a mess from all the, what do I do? All the artistic shit that we go through. what do I do? You know,

all the artistic shit that we go through, like, you know, I, I, I have to, you know, up until I, I just,

you know, um, incorporated. But up until then, it was like, I signed like fucking 30 pieces of paperwork for acting every year. And so every year I have, I'm juggling 20 fucking w2s and it's

yeah you know my parents had one you know right taxes were easy for me it's just like what am i doing with my life yeah yeah what form did the fear take when you were trapped in i mean what do you was was it just a like a raw fear or was there something specific that was haunting you? It was, I don't remember when it started. Oh no, I actually, I do remember my very first panic attack was in military school. I remember, I remember the day, like it, like it was yesterday. I was walking down the hallway in the dorm and two of my friends were wrestling and they both fell to the ground and one of them hit his head on the edge of the doorway which is cinder block and it's that lime green military sure wax floors and i just remember

seeing his eyes roll back in his head and just bright red blood on this like green floor. And that was the moment I was like, oh, I could fucking die any moment. And that's looking back. At the moment, I wasn't thinking I could die at any moment. But I think my brain was figuring that out. And so I went to dinner that night. And all of a sudden, I'm eating. And I couldn't swallow my food.

Like I literally, it wasn't an involuntary reaction anymore. It was literally just, I can't remember how to swallow and I know I shouldn't have to remember how to swallow. And so I'd spit my food out and like I couldn't eat. And then the next day it was fine. And that's how my panic attacks first manifested themselves, as I couldn't swallow. And it was always a stressful situation.

If I had to fly, I would have a panic attack, and I couldn't swallow on the plane. I would carry tissue and spit into it on a flight, the whole flight. If I went to a restaurant, i would have to sit near an exit if i was going to be able to eat same at a movie theater and i dealt with this for like 10 years before i saw a shrink and she was like that's a form of a panic attack and also it would also manifest itself sometimes in trouble breathing like not trouble but i would get this sense that i wasn't getting enough air in my ox in my in my lungs which was really weird

because i was taking in tons of air but it just felt like nothing was going in and then when i was working at jimmy's show i started having proper panic attacks where just for some reason i felt like i was going to die and wherever i was i had to get out of that room yeah and usually as soon as i would leave whatever spot i was in they would go away yeah and that would happen like once every few months and then they started happening once a day and then like 10 times a day to like she's clearly i can't go out anywhere because i'm gonna have a panic attack um so but i mean the and the lex pro just kind of did it and you know oh my god i don't know i mean part of me is like was that a you know placebo effect and part of me is like i don't care yeah who gives a shit i was

back performing improv and stand-up and shit and it was because of alexa pro yeah wow you know can't you tell my loves are growing whatgrowing? And then tell me about Sarah's program, because it was called the Sarah Silverman Program. Yeah. Do you have to read for execs, or does she just say it? No, she wrote that part for me, and Brian as well. Brian, who played my boyfriend and eventual husband on the show, she wrote that, and I hadn't done anything other than a few commercials at this point in my

life, but I made a lot of dumb short films, borrowing my friend's video cameras. And it was usually shit where I'm walking around the house with my balls hanging out of my pants, some dumb shit, or I go to the bathroom to take a shit. And it's five minutes

literally five minutes of me just squeezing and then i get up and there's a fucking can of soup like a hard can of soup and dumb shit like that and so sarah tells comedy central uh brian pussain and steve age you have to play these parts they're like yeah brian okay we don't know who steve is no we want to hire somebody else and she's like, yeah, Brian, okay. We don't know who Steve is. No, we want to hire somebody else. And she's like, no, I wrote this for Steve. It's going to be Steve. And they're like, well, can we see anything he's done?

And so Sarah's like, put all that shit on a DVD and send it to me and I'll give it to Comedy Central. I was like, holy shit, okay. And they saw it and they were like, ugh, alright, okay okay this guy's a psychopath clearly we're gonna hire him and they hired me and sarah this was the second incarnation of her her show she had originally written a show for herself um that she wrote with larry uh larry

charles um who's very funny. People would know as producer of Seinfeld and writer on Seinfeld and director of the Borat movie. Like a brilliant, funny guy. Very funny. Yeah. Established guy. Awesome, dude. So she wrote a show before the Sarah Silverman program that also had a part for me in it.

before the Sarah Silverman program that also had a part for me in it. And it was like Sarah and I believe Paul Rudd and Kevin Corrigan and myself. And it was really funny. And she had originally pitched that one to HBO and it didn't go. And so then this thing happened. Oh, wow. And we did, you know, four years of thebo and it didn't go and so then that this thing happened oh wow and we did you know four years of the show and it was awesome it's a it's such a funny show it's so great um and when that winds down does it get canceled i mean does sarah decide she doesn't want to do it anymore or it kind of you know what's funny is after the second season, they would wait really long periods of time between seasons.

And after the second season, which did really well, there was just this holding pattern where we didn't know if we had a show or not. And Sarah demanded a meeting. And she went into Comedy Central. And she's like, look, I don't care if you cancel us or not, but just cancel us. I need to know if we have a show or not. She goes, I don't want to be treated like Amy Sedaris. Yeah. Because Strangers with Candy was never canceled.

Right. Just stop. They just stop. Yeah. She's like, I don't want to be treated like Amy Sedaris. And they go, who? They literally Comedy Central. Wow. treated like Amy Sedaris and they go who they literally comedy central wow said who to quite possibly the funniest woman on the planet yeah whose show was incredible and that's just because

it was a new crop of dum-dums I guess so yeah yeah and they're just like and she's like Amy Sedaris she had a show on this channel for three or four seasons. And they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, right. Sure. So they're like, yeah, yeah, we'll give you a third season. So we did it thinking this is it. This is probably going to be it.

They never canceled us until after we wrapped. So we didn't get to do a proper ending. But we all kind of figured it was the third season was the last season. Yeah. proper ending but we all kind of figured it was the third season was the last season yeah and um and what i mean what's that like i mean i know what it's for me as like that's a lot yeah that's my first acting gig and i was just like kind of crushed but also i had managers at the time were like hey man this is good. That was Comedy Central. You're making no money.

We're going to get you on a network show. People know who you are now. This is a good thing. Cut to two years later, I haven't worked. And I'm just like, hey, man, where is that good part of me getting fired from Sarah's show? Yeah. And then I just became a character actor where I just guest starred on shows for I'm still doing that and it's like there was a point like a couple years ago where I

was a recurring character and I think like four or five shows that were running like yeah you could turn on a tv and see me almost every night of the week on you're the worst or new girl or american housewife or just tons of shows that i was on at the same and like not a guest star but like recurring like character and and i just couldn't get over that peak to like my own you know to being back as a regular until this past year and that's too that kind of existence is i mean it can be well you know you can be making some money and you can you know you can kind of be relaxed for a minute and but it all can get yanked out from under you and you can have periods where nothing fucking happens. As soon as one of those shows gets canceled, you're like, oh, shit, well, there goes some of that money.

Yeah. And, yeah, it's a crazy, unstable existence. Yeah. And it's not like, you know, I have friends in the 90s who bought houses from doing a guest star on friends or doing a commercial yeah they would be able to buy a fucking house down payment yeah and now it's like no you're you'll cover your rent yeah for maybe two months if you do a guest star yeah yeah on the show yeah that'd be constantly working yeah no you could it's yeah you could make if you got on a big national commercial it could be a couple hundred grand you know uh and that just

doesn't it doesn't exist anymore and you know this part of me and it's the same thing in television and like you know if you wrote on fraser for five minutes you could get a two million dollar you know holding deal for a couple of three years yeah and then those went away and people were like oh no that went away and it was kind of like well yeah because that was fucked up that was like that was too much that was you know the pendulum had swung way too far in the direction of giving everybody a bunch of money to do nothing, you know, except have meetings. Totally. Now, again, you are friends with James Gunn, right?

How do you know James? So I've known James now for probably about 12 or 13 years. My friend, Shawnee Smith, who is an actor who people would probably know from like becker or in the 80s she was you know when she was a teenager doing movies like summer school or you know with mark harman and the blob and shawnee's always worked and uh my god summer school my or you would know her from the people horror fans would know her from the saw movies. She's in all the Saw movies. Oh, okay. She's like the main person. No, I just, the summer school, because my daughter, who's 15,

went through a period a couple of years ago, and it was really fun, of wanting to see all the shitty movies that I watched as a teenager. Not because I watched them. She's just like, I want to watch 80s and 90s shitty teen movies. And that was one of them that we,

I've seen that movie like four times. Shawnee played the pregnant, Shawnee was the pregnant girl in the summer school class. And so Shawnee, because of all the horror movies that she had done, she co-hosted a show with James Gunn on, I think VH1 called Scream Queens, where they were going to find the next like jamie lee curtis or shawnee smith to do some horror movies right and one night shawnee called me and she's like hey i'm supposed to go to this like dinner party thing at james gunn's brother's house uh you know meet up with james she's like do you want to go with me i

don't i'm not going to know anybody there so i I want to bring somebody. I was like, yeah, I'll go. Okay. And so we go and I just immediately hit it off with James. It was like when I met Sarah, it was just like, we were goofing around and joking the whole night. And then he goes, hey man, we do this every Sunday night. If you want to come back, come back any Sunday. And I went back every Sunday. I loved everybody at those, like all James's friends, everybody there. I fucking love. And I'm still super tight with to these days.

Shawnee, Shawnee never went back. I kept going back and just form this awesome like friendship with James. And yeah, James is one of those people, you know, like Sandler who likes to work with the same people and likes to work with his friends. Yeah.

They're long days. They're long days. So you might as well surround yourself with people that you enjoy being around. Why wouldn't you do that? People are always like giving Sandler shit for like, why are you always hiring spade or schneider or nick schwartz and i'm like because he fucking likes having them around and he likes

working with them and i'm like i get it a hundred percent and if i was in a position of power i would do the same exact thing i've asked people if you opened a hot dog stand and you had friends that could come and work at your hot dog stand would you you go, no, no, no, they haven't earned it. And I need to see some fresh faces at my hot dog stand. No, you just hire the people because then you know them, you trust them, you like being around them. on a few occasions been in movies or television shows where the intention was to hire a friend and then for whatever reason studio notes or whatever the guys in charge the people in charge weren't able to do that they had to hire someone because of some other thing yeah always at least three times i've had conversations where somebody's like that was a terrible mistake I should have just hired

my friend because it would have been better my experience would have been better and the product would have been better that's also why a lot of directors will meet with people like as opposed to just as opposed to just an audition where they look at the tape and like yeah that was a good

performance they want to meet with people because they're like, I want to make sure this isn't a sociopath I'm dealing with. Yeah, so I've worked with James now on like three or four of his movies, and now one of his, you know, we just did a TV show together up in Vancouver for seven months. Okay. Which TV show is that?

So we did... You did Suicide Squad with... 2019 to early 2020 did. We did Suicide Squad. 2019 to early 2020, we shot the Suicide Squad. And then last fall, like late summer, early fall, Warner Brothers asked James. They said if you could do. They were really happy with the movie, the way it was shaping up. And so they said if you could do a movie or if you could do a spin-off tv series with one of these characters who would it be and he said i i want to do it with john cena

and so we did uh we spun off peacemaker which is john's character from the suicide squad um eight episodes for uh hbo max They'll be out in January. Oh, cool. Yeah, it's really good. I mean, if anyone listening likes Suicide Squad, they'll love Peacemaker. It's really funny. Oh, good.

That's great. Yeah. And do you play the shark? Because didn't you play the shark guy? You're like the shark guy, right? The shark guy. Well, I don't know. I had two jobs on that movie. did the motion capture for king shark which was really the majority of my

job like i think i think at least going into it i had more days of work than anyone on the movie including margo like it was like wow i think it was a 90-day shoot and i worked like 80 days and um it was all you know running around with a weird shark head frame on my head head and uh we in leotards or was that yeah yeah yeah yeah leotards or if i was in the water i had the wetsuit and it was crazy it was a lot of fun. And then I played this guy, John Economist, who's an actual character from the comic books. He's the warden of Belrev Prison. But in this movie, I'm kind of like one of Viola Davis's right-hand goons. Right.

An agent. Yeah. Which is what I'm doing in the TV show. Yeah. I'm that character. Well, that's really good yeah because i know uh sean gunn his brother uh did it had a recurring role on my first show and so i've known them and i've which is which show from andy richard controls the universe sean did stuff on that show that's what i'm saying

yeah no i'm saying i didn't i don't remember oh yeah yeah yeah did. There's another actor whose name is skipping my mind, and I feel terrible. Andy Richter. No, no, no. I can't remember this other guy's name. Charlie Finn, maybe I want to say. Pat Finn? No, no, it wasn't Pat Finn.

But they played like frat boy, a pair of frat boys that I tried to impress. So I had known um i knew sean and i you know and i i don't i don't you know i met james but i you know yeah we mostly are like online pals yeah yeah yeah yeah oh that's amazing well that's i mean it's pretty cool that you got to do all this shit with your friends you know i mean yeah and you know i've been living out of a suitcase for two years because of partially covid the the last year but like you know i went to shoot suicide squad in atlanta and panama and my i was not able to sublet my apartment and so i had to

give it up and put all my shit in storage thinking i'll come back in February and I'll get a new place. And I got back in February and COVID just struck and no one was showing apartments or houses. And so I had to hide out in a friend's cabin in Joshua tree for a few months. And then Ricky Lindholm let me stay at a place that she was fixing up in Culver City for a few months. And then the TV show happened and I relocated to Vancouver for seven months. But now I'm finally back with a place in L.A. and I'm stoked. Was COVID tough on you because of your anxiety issues? Dude, COVID was tough on me for a multitude of reasons.

A, yes, my hypochondria, but also B, when I got back, the very end of Suicide Squad while we were shooting, my mom was diagnosed with leukemia. So I get back. That's another reason why I wasn't looking for a place to live. I was spending all my time at the hospital visiting with my mom as she was going through chemo. And then, you know, she was doing pretty good. And so they had to get her out of the hospital. And so they put her in like, we wanted her to go back home, but she wasn't strong enough yet because of the chemo and everything.

So they put her in this like kind of a nursing home care facility to do physical therapy and get her strength back. She was still on chemo though. And so I got back and like every day was just hanging out with her for like a month or two, about a month. And then COVID happened and they stopped allowing visitors. And that was when everything went downhill with my mom.

I don't know if it's the fact that no family was around anymore, but I would talk to her on the phone and she started losing it from the chemo. There's a thing called chemo brain where you get really forgetful and stuff and confused. And I would call her every day because I couldn't go visit her. And I was like, I'm so sorry, I can't be there. And just the crushing part was her always saying, when are you going to come visit? And I would have to say, there's a pandemic, mom. They aren't allowing people in the hospital. I will be there as soon as it's over. Oh, yeah, yeah, Yeah. I forgot. Okay.

Two minutes later, when are you coming to visit? Like she couldn't remember, which crushed me. And so she died like, uh, just a couple months after the shutdown started and she was just alone and like having to deal with that alone and in isolation was the worst experience of my life and you know not being able to be with family or anybody just like sitting in a house in the desert sweating my ass off going wow my mom is dead. I have no parents now. I literally don't know what to do, you know? And it was luckily, you know, I have amazing friends who helped talk me through it, but then also one of my friends who was helping me get through it on, you know, FaceTime and Marco Polo, which is a video app was Lynn Shelton. And Lynn was a really

good friend of mine. And so for two months, it was almost daily like video chatting with her, you know, and which was keeping my sanity. And then just out of nowhere, Lynn collapsed and died. You know, she was dating Mark. She was living with Mark Maron. She's a film director. where Lynn collapsed and died. She was dating Mark. She was living with Mark Maron at the time. She's a film director. Great film director. I met her doing episodes of New Girl. She was a sitcom director as well.

And she just collapsed while she was staying at Mark's, and they took her to the hospital. Mark put her in an ambulance, and she was off to the hospital, and that was the last he saw her. Like she died that night. And it took a while for them to figure out what it was, but it was the exact same leukemia that killed my mom. Like she was undiagnosed. And so that fucked me up on a whole other level.

And then throughout the year, just other friends dying right and left. And it was just like, I was a fucking mess, you know? And it wasn't until I was back up in Vancouver a year later working on this TV show and not able to hang out with any of the cast because fucking for some reason, Canada fucked up and didn't get vaccines. And so I go up to Canada thinking so long suckers, I'm going to Canada. I'll probably be vaccinated in March. Fucking cut to all my friends in LA are now vaccinated and hanging out. And I'm like sitting in a fucking apartment in downtown vancouver just hoping i have work that day because like i'm not hanging out with anybody right and um eventually i just called my therapist my old therapist who i hadn't seen in like 10 years and i was like uh i don't know

if you remember me and she's like oh yeah i remember you and so that was kind of a life life-changing moment like getting back into therapy and it's are you maintaining that today still what's that are you maintaining that uh yeah it's been a little more off and on since i we've finished shooting and i was moving back and working on another movie at the same time since i've been back so it's hard to schedule yeah but yeah it's on the schedule and um very necessary you know i can't recommend therapy to people enough i know i my thing is i can't imagine not needing it like what did you talk about hitting the lottery like not not like going like i can't imagine going to therapy and going there i found absolutely no use for this this was a waste of my time i just feel like who is that person i mean i've met some naturally happy people

motherfuckers and uh and i uh you know they do, but it's just I can't. Therapy just to me seems like, well, what's I mean, who doesn't need to talk a little bit about their problems to figure them out a little bit? I mean, the first time I went to therapy was after I kicked out of the groundlings. A girl I was dating was like, you're driving me crazy. You should talk to a therapist. Not. Yeah. I mean, talk to me, too. You should talk to a therapist, not me. I mean, talk to me too.

Like it's a relationship and that's what you do. But she's like, but you need professional help. And I was like, I don't think I do. I go, I just got kicked out of a comedy school. I go, I had great parents. And so I did it to appease my girlfriend at the time. and yeah and so i i did it to appease my girlfriend at the time and um i remember going into this therapy session going oh fuck here this is gonna be fucking useless and literally the woman comes in and she's like so where are you from and i'm like talking she's she's like what are your parents like and i started fucking bawling yeah and the whole fucking session i

couldn't stop crying and i remember it ending way too early and i going saying can i do another hour can i just pay you for and she's like no that's not how it works she's like come back next week and i was like fuck next week yeah she's like yeah I was like, okay. And I left that session just going, that was the greatest feeling of my life. I go, that was awesome. And I can't wait to go back. And it's been that way ever since. Yeah, yeah. Now, when you went up to Canada, you know, after all this trauma and these deaths,

and you went back to work, and I imagine that was kind of part of your healing, right? Yeah, it was great to actually physically be around people. Was that it? Was it in any way the work, or was it just the sort of, you know, to use a pastor word, fellowship? Was it just the company, just to being around people? It was both. It was, and I had before that started doing episodes of Superstore again here in LA, which was awesome, but also just going, yeah, it was the preoccupation with work to take my mind off the shitty things in my life and just being able to focus on work and not think about that was

amazing but also being around friends like on superstore i was friends with all those guys mark mckinney and ben feldman and colton dunn and all of them like it was so good to granted the first time you go into work during the pandemic it's terrifying yeah you know although now i don't i feel safer on a set than i feel anywhere else because of the amount of testing they do and everyone is wearing masks so like even in the rare occasion that covid manages to get to the set it doesn't spread because everyone's wearing masks. Right. And you're working in different zones and it gets squashed right away. Yes. They'll be like, there was a COVID positive case.

It was in the art department. So it never made it this far. You're fine. We can keep working. But, you know, the first time you're on set and the AD says, all right, take your masks off. It's just like, oh, God oh god um but yeah it was being around friends in fact i remember in january you know we're shooting like the first track

first or second episode of peacemaker and it's a dinner scene and it's we're in a restaurant and i hadn't been in a restaurant in almost a year yeah and we go in and it's me and daniel brooks from orange is the new black and my friend jen holland who's on the show and this guy shakwudi awuji who's this amazing actor who everyone's gonna know yeah and uh john cena and we're all in this booth and they would cut and they'd be like okay you guys can go back to you know your trailer or whatever while we set up the cameras and you know for coverage and we're just like no we'll wait here like it was the closest thing to a dinner like we were sitting at a table so it was like we didn't want to leave, so we all just stayed at the fucking table.

Yeah, that's nice. It was awesome. Well, what's your future plans? I mean, if you gave the right answer, you can have this bank loan. Well, my future plans are to keep working. I'm renting a house now. This is my first house. Oh, wow. Didn't buy it because my accountant was like, you don't want to keep working now that I'm renting a house. Now this is my first house. Oh, wow.

Didn't buy it because my accountant was like, you don't want to buy a house right now. It's insulting. The prices are insulting. Yes. So he's like, if you want rent a house. So I have a year lease here and, you know, I don't know if the bubble's ever going to burst because it seems like they've always been expensive here in LA. Yeah.

But I like this house and so i hope i can keep working to afford to keep living in this house and um you know eventually if we get a sequel to suicide squad and a second season of peacemaker maybe i can actually buy a house so yeah any writing or anything or i'm writing stand-up again i haven't performed because of the pandemic in a year so i'm writing again and that's exciting and you know i was gonna say i i got to a point like a year or two ago where i was thinking about houses more than i was thinking about girls i was just like i would go on zillow and redfin more than I was thinking about girls. I was just like, I would go on Zillow and Redfin more than I would go on porn hub. It was just like, I was like, houses were my new porn,

man. Still are, man. I just want to own a house. Yeah. Well, what do you, what do you think?

What do you want people to take away from your story? I'm fucking probably as crazy as i no i mean i listen listen i openly i love going to the mental illness aspect of my life and you know having to deal with that because i just want anybody out there who's dealing with the who doesn't realize they're having panic attacks or have you know depression to like go oh my god that's exactly what i have because when i was in high school in college there wasn't the internet i couldn't search symptoms i was like i'm going crazy or i'm dying yeah and it wasn't until i came to la and started hanging out with other actors and comedians that they're like i would say like god i was in this restaurant last night and i like just my heart started racing and i started sweating and i had to leave

and i think i'm dying and my friend be like the fuck are you talking about that's a panic attack i have them all the time and And I was like, what? And then I started just talking. I would talk openly to anybody going, do you ever get panic attacks? Yeah, duh, dude, all the time. And it was the best. I hate that my friends have depression and panic attacks, but also I love it because it makes me not feel crazy. So I love it because it makes me not feel crazy. And it's just very reassuring to know that like,

this is oddly normal. Like it's out there and there are solutions, you know, you don't always get as lucky finding a pill the first time, you know, sometimes you got to fucking try a lot of shit before you find the answer. But yeah. And sometimes they stop working

i mean i've had that already all the years that i've been on medication or the weird you know weird side effects just pop up and you you don't know you think like it's something else and you're like you change the medication like oh no it was just all of a sudden that you know yeah but the i mean the first thing to do is realize that it's not taboo and that it's just talking about it feels fucking great yeah it's crazy to me that people are shy you know like people will talk about their sore back or their sore neck or you know or even you know chronic you know condition diabetes people have no shame in saying like i'm a diabetic but people still feel shame about saying i have panic attacks yeah you know my my brain chemistry betrays my happiness on a regular basis you know

um yeah because it just it's you know that in the little experience you know when i because it's something that i also too i talk about and um like i remember i did a guy named john moe um did a podcast he's a he used to have an npr show out in minneapolis that i did a couple times and he did a show that was sponsored by i think aarp or something like that or like a or you know pharmaceutical company or something but i mean it wasn't you know it wasn't selling anything it was just talking to funny people about their depression i think it's called the hilarious world of depression or something like that yeah and i did an episode of that and i received as much like oh yeah feedback about that podcast that i have and like in person like in the warner brothers commissary early one morning i was going to the

gym went after my workout i went to the gym i went to the commissary to just get a cup of coffee and this guy that works at the studio soft-spoken you know probably 15 20 years younger than me comes up to me and tells me how hearing me say that like basically saved his life which i was like i'm you know i want to say like i don't know if i sit you know but he said like no you talking about this made me feel like i i all this shit i could never say to my parents i could never say to my family i felt like i gotta do something about this because i don like i i all this shit i could never say to my parents i could never say to my family i felt like i gotta do something about this because i don't want to be like this anymore yeah and i was like you know i'm i'm really loathe to be like you know i've there's people out there

that are aching and i just want to let them know i mean you sound like such a pretentious fuck but it's kind of true you know you're in the public eye for another reason. And then you say, hey, you know what? My brain's fucked up, you know, and I and I work hard at getting in front of that. And, you know, I'll tell you, you know, when you came and did the podcast that I used to do with Busy Phillips. Yeah. And we talked all about depression. That got some of the biggest feedback from people going, oh my God, I had no idea. This is amazing.

I'm going to go to therapy. It was amazing the amount of people that found it helpful. And by the way, there's another podcast. It's hosted by a comedian named Paul Gilmartin. I don't know if it's still going but it was a long-running podcast i was on it called the mental illness happy hour yeah that's another one people should maybe check out yeah yeah it's just him talking to comedians and actors about

mental illness and it's awesome yeah because it's like you know it's like you said you you you get in with all these funny people that you relate to and then you find out like oh yeah they're all broken in the same way too everyone's like yeah what are you taking yeah yeah yeah lexapro well yeah well steve i love you very much and i love you too man i'm so glad i got to do this podcast finally and yeah i can't wait to see you in person. Yeah, we will. And, um, and thanks for, you know, spilling your guts. Uh,

anytime for my, a lot of guts to spill just for content for me, save your guts for me. Okay. I could do that. All right. All right. And thank all of you out there for listening. Uh,

we will be back next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. The three questions with Andy Richter is a team Coco and your we will be back next week. Bye-bye. Bye. I've 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 Galitza 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 that Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.

Can't you tell my love's a-growing? This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.