WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1438 - Amy Sherman-Palladino

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Amy Sherman-Palladino says working on a TV show takes over your whole life. This is why Amy went from being a hired gun on sitcoms that made her miserable to her own creatively fulfilling shows like Gilmore Girls, Bunheads and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Amy and Marc talk about her father’s comedy background, her early job at The Comedy Store, the lessons she learned from Roseanne, and the adjustments made when she found out this would be the final season of Mrs. Maisel. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Lock the gate! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck steens what the fuckowitzes what the fuckbergs what the fuckmans what's happening what is happening this is i guess that's a special opening for the jewish what the fuckmans, what's happening? What is happening? I guess that's a special opening

for the Jewish what the fuckers. Is everything all right? It isn't, right? It just isn't. I mean, Tina Turner is dead. It's just not all right. Another force of nature is now shuffling hard,

sometimes slow and fast off this mortal coil. What a fucking amazing performer. What an amazing person. What an amazing woman. I think I have more, like there are some artists that I have in my collection that I have a lot of records, a lot of their records. ike and tina are are are one of those uh artists i have a lot of those records and man the really early ones i know she became bigger stronger and more pronounced and amazing as a solo performer once she detached herself from the monster but those very early recordings are quite insanely painful and amazing to listen to and i listen to them often and i didn't know her and i haven't really known what she's gone is, it's just another monumental fury of charisma and power removed.

Removed. One of the good forces of nature taken away. Jesus, I'm stumbling through this like Kendall Roy at the eulogy. Holy fuck. I'm just, look, she wasn't young and she was ill, but it's just sad that this generation of people that had such a profound impact on so many, and especially my generation, I am late boomer tail end. There's a whole generation of artists and amazing performers that are just slowly being picked off by mortality. Being picked off by the unseen hand as it happens naturally.

I'm just sad about it. Today is, you know, I wake up and I try to deal and I don't know if I'm doing enough. Is there ever, is there, is there enough that any of us can do? My God, there is some shameless, just aggressive Christian fascism going on in this country and out and outright fascism, just banning books, taking over school boards. I mean, it's just shameless what they're doing to the LGBTQ communities, shutting them out, shutting them down. Like all of those fucking trans jokes that so many of these hack comics fought so hard to have the right to say, which they do. Man, you really picked a good bunch of people to hurt, didn't you? I mean, Jesus Christ, can it get any harder?

There's only one step left for how this culture is dealing with LGBTQ people, and that's killing them. Your neighbors might kill you. That's where it's at. Who are you going to be in that fight? Who are you going to be when they come for us, for whoever that is? Are you going to wear t-shirts that say hell no i'm not jewish hell no i'm not trans hell no i'm not gay hell no and on the back it just

says they're in the attic come on in i mean how easily do people adapt to some sort of status quo that is heinous? Heinous! How strong are you? How well do you know your neighbors? Do you still believe that most people in the quiet of their own minds and hearts and houses are going to do the right thing in the name of tolerance and respect for other people, humanity, progressive humanity, or are they just going to buckle? Are they just going to buckle?

I try to sort of believe that what we're doing here by embracing creative people, by embracing people's stories and how they do the work that they do. And I, almost all of it is proactive work that affects other people. Today, I talked to Amy Sherman Palladino, and she created the Gilmore Girls. She created the Marvelous Miss Maisel. She's been a writer. She's, her dad was a comic. And on a basic level, the miss mazel mrs may is about mrs mazel is about jewish entertainment it's about what jewish people at a different point in time one of the choices they made to get through and connect and integrate into this country and so many of those comics are so important to me growing up. But I mean, there is a flat out, shameless, culturally integrated anti-Semitism, anti-LGBTQ,

anti-Mexican, anti-black, anti-everything. And it's integrated. It's not marginalized. It's in the culture. You read about it every fucking day. It's not marginalized. It's in the culture. You read about it every fucking day. It's happening. And look, man, you know, I believe that having these conversations that I have and I believe that a lot of the art that's coming out and a lot of the stories that are being told and a lot of the movies that are being made are completely progressive, proactive, interesting, bold, courageous. But I was excited to talk to Amy Sherman Palladino because, you know, watching Mrs. Maisel, that era of comedy was very important to me growing up because my grandparents, my grandmother was a huge stand-up comedy fan. Loved Don Rickles, liked Buddy Hackett. My grandfather loved the slapstick stuff,

but they enjoyed the comedy. I used to talk to my grandmother a lot about it. Most of those comics when I was younger were the guys I saw on TV, that generation. Many of them are dead. Like, you know, you talk about Tina Turner's generation of performers. The generation before them of comedians

really informed my sense of humor. Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett, Jackie Vernon, Rodney Dangerfield, you know, they were on TV and I loved watching those guys. And Mrs.

Maisel is of that era, but it was interesting to have the conversation because the guy she got to play Lenny Bruce in that show is quite good. And I met the guy and I was quite taken with the guy, but I think that he's a hard guy to play because what we know about Lenny Bruce and what I know about being around junkies in general, or people that are hopped up all the time or high all the time is that, you know, it kind of takes over their body and you feel the vibration, you feel the frequency and you know, once they get lost in it, uh, it's hard to see anything else. So in that sense, outside of the Lenny Bruce records, which you can just hear the pace and you can hear the,

the sort of like this guy wanted nothing more than to be liked and wanted to get laughs and wanted to charm people. Like he did all the voices. He the shtick down he had the rhythm down and then he slowly over time uh his brain you know broke apart and he became a vessel of something bigger than himself and changed not only the face of comedy but the face of culture but besides all that the guy was a guy and i was thrilled to talk to Amy about, you know, Kitty Bruce was involved. A lot of the, the, the monologues that they had of his were real. And, and also the character of Mrs. Maisel was right from the get-go when I first watched it was sort of confounding to me, but I knew what was going on. I knew that this type of comic, especially a female comic at that time during that era did not exist.

You know, so this was created to give her that voice and to give her that point of view and to give her that freedom of mind was a device, an invention. And I talked to her about that because I thought it was kind of genius. So it turns out that, you know, she's been rotating or around comedy. We just missed each other at the comedy store. It was a good conversation, and I'm glad I had it. And I'm glad that I feel lately sort of a reconnection or an openness or maybe a nostalgia for all the stuff that kind of defined me or that I gravitated towards when I was younger. A lot of old Jews. me or that I gravitated towards when I was younger, a lot of old Jews. And also with music too, that lately I've been listening to alongside of all this other stuff that I just mentioned to you. I've been kind of poking around in the townie rock that was part of my wiring when I was younger and also those eight tracks and stuff. I don't know if it's nostalgia or regrounding.

I'm also revising my will. Look, hey, grownups, you know, get a will together. It's going to happen. Get a will together. Get a colonoscopy. Make sure you get your prostate checked. Do the tests that will enable you to know where you're at health-wise after a certain age And just get some kind of will together

So if, God forbid, anything happens You know, everybody you know or everybody in your family Isn't scrambling to keep it out of probate And figure out who gets what and what happens now It's a grown-up thing to do, it doesn't cost that much money Colonoscopy, will Okay? It's a grown-up thing to do. It doesn't cost that much money. Colonoscopy will. Okay? It's adult shit.

You can do it. Seriously. So I talked to Amy Sherman-Palladino about the show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and that series finale is available tomorrow, May 26th on Prime Video.

This is it. We talk about why thatth on Prime Video. This is it. We talk about why that happened too. Okay. This is me talking to Amy. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. Thank you. how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means.

I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. This episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply.

What studio? We're at Steiner. Oh, Steiner. Oh, yeah, those are big, big sound stages. Yeah, yeah. It's a nice studio, I will say. We did the Joker there. Yes, yes. When we did the pilot, we were in Tony Town, which is basically like any abandoned warehouse that they had a lock on.

But there was barely a roof. Oh, right. They were just terrible. Oh, really? So they hadn't really set it up as a studio yet? There was a lot of places to film in New York. There should not be places to film. Sure.

But Steiner's beautiful. It's great. It's a full facility. How many sound stages they got over? They must have like six. And they've just built like two or three other big ones. Oh, really? Yeah.

What are the tax incentives in New York? Are they good? They're better now. Oh, yeah? They just knocked them up to like – I think it's 30 percent, but they also include the – it's whatever. It was not as good before, and Kathy Hochul just pushed it. And now everyone's deciding they could use the money

and they could deploy people. Yeah. I just know for our show how much money we spread around town, which was a lot. It was a lot. Just on food alone. Yeah, seriously.

Coffee, just for coffee alone. But there's no filming in California anymore. Everything's, like California has that weird lottery thing and everything's... Yeah, I don't understand all that. All I know is that I'm optioning a book that was written by my friend and I want to make it a movie, but it has to be done in New York. So I want good stories

about being able to shoot a film in New York. I think shooting in New York is the greatest place to film. Right? Yeah, it's amazing. The crews are so good. Yeah. They're fast and they're tough.

They're very tough. And they know how to maneuver in tiny apartments or into an alleyway or you're stuffed in the back of a diner. That's because that's all New York is. Yeah. And they know how to do that shit. New York has endless buildings. And you go in these buildings and they've got rooms and there were clubs where rich people did rich things and now they just rent

them out. And you can just doll them up? Yeah. Are they already set up or you have to? Half the time they're just so beautiful. You just like, you know. Really? Yeah.

But like, so what were the sets? The apartment? The club? The club. Well, the first year was, first year we did the gaslight and we did her apartment and things like that. The last year we built a strip club. We built a giant strip club, which was amazing. Yeah.

And then this past season we built, we did like sort of our version of Johnny Carson. So we built like a whole studio with that thing. So what was shot in real live buildings and stuff? A lot of stuff. Just about anything that wasn't permanent that you saw. What about the Shmata factory? No, that's an amazing place out in Green Point. And that guy is, his story is incredible.

He was in the Holocaust. He was in the Holocaust. He was in the camps. And he was a young boy. Yeah. And they taught him to sew. Yeah. And because he was so good at it, they didn't kill him. Yeah.

And he would fix the officer's outfits. Right. And he survived the Holocaust by learning to. So he's got this unbelievable, it looks straight out of the garment district. Huh. And he's very tan with a stapper suit. He's, I don't know. He's got this unbelievable it looks straight out of the garment district and he's very tan with a stapper suit he's i don't know it's got to be 100 3 000 years old i don't know how many very little and yeah but he he boasts that every president but the trump yeah he made a suit for and oh yeah it's it's just like it's it's a really great and we would use his workers yeah because they all knew how to-

Do the machines. Work the shit. We didn't know how to work any of that stuff. And they were great. They were like those tough broads. Yeah, yeah. It was just amazing. It was so great to go back there.

Well, I was very taken with the show, and I was surprised at the beginning that I was, because I was ready to kind of like not. Well, okay. I was ready to judge it as a comic. So, you know, I'm coming to it. No, I get that. I get that. It was only because of that.

No, I totally get that. And I was sort of like charmed by it. But I also realized without knowing anything about it that that type of comedian in a woman or a man was rare. There were two. Yeah. So the idea that I don't think anybody picked up on initially was that you created this character who is a woman who could speak freely, which really wasn't the case because people were comparing her to Joan or to Phyllis Diller. But they didn't do that kind of stuff. No, it was all the only guy that was doing that was Lenny Bruce.

And the guy that you got to play him was very good. You know, and that's hard yeah i met him and i was i was very complimentary because you know i'm i you know i don't like i've seen lenny and lenny's like a you know he was like you you couldn't hardly you can't really hide the darkness in the real tapes of that guy you know he he looked like he was you know it was a it was a weird energy yeah but that guy was you know he made it charming i think was the real trick well he, he had a, he was, he understood that he needed to entertain as well as have something to say. Right. And that, I think, was one of his, what really sort of set him apart is because he wanted the laugh.

He, you know, he wanted to sing and dance. He'd go for it. Yeah, yeah. He would just do it. Voices. He just wanted you to, you know, we, when we decided to do this show, my dad was a comic. So I grew up around comics. And my fear was getting into this world was exactly that, that I did not want comics to look at this and go, you know, what the fuck?

That's not at all the world. Now, it's a different time. It's a different time. It's a different era. You were able to sort of like, you know, kind of reconstruct or re sort of, what's the word I want? To re-understand an entire era or two. You know, through, you know, something that, you know, even like from the very beginning, I realized the scope of the staging was almost musical. Yeah. I realized the scope of the staging was almost musical. Like in terms of the size of the sets, the pattern. It wasn't like this is a historical document.

Right. We weren't making a documentary. It's a reimagining. Yes, a reimagining. Of a period. Yeah. Well, I grew up hearing stories from my dad. Well, let's go back.

So where'd you grow up? I grew up in the Van Nuys. I grew up right down, take the freeway back the way I came. So what was he, the whole time? Was he from New York? My dad was born in the Bronx and he started doing comedy in the Catskills. So interesting. And he went to, he got drafted and he went into the army.

Which war? Korean. Yeah. And he went into the army and he, you know, his story, which, you know, look, I love my parents, but any truth in my family is very rare. So I take everything with a grain of salt. Total lies or just embellishments? A lot of embellishments. A lot of embellishments. But he, so he had, his story was, he said to them, I, if you put me out there and you give me a gun, I will die.

I will take a couple of people with me. And they said, well, what you put me out there and you give me a gun, I will die. I will take a couple people with me. And they said, well, what are you? What good are you to us? And he says, I'm a comic. And they said, great. Get up on stage. And so he got up on stage and he did Alan King's act, I think was the one. And he just did somebody else's act from beginning to end because he didn't have an act.

Not uncommon then. Yeah. And they said, great. Okay. And so to end because he didn't have an act. Not uncommon then. Yeah. And they said, great, okay. And so that was how he made it through the war. He claims he almost got run over by an ambulance. I don't know why he was on the ground or asleep. That was never told to me. So when he got out of the Army, then he started working as a comic and writing his own material.

In New York. In New York. And my dad, working as a comic and writing his own material. And my dad- In New York. In New York. And my dad had a, he had a run. He opened for Dinah Washington at the Apollo. What year? What do you think? I would say late, I would say, well, see, I was in 66 and then they moved to LA in 64. So I would say late 50s into the 60s.

So a club act. Clubs. Dinner club act. Clubs. Dinner club act. All clubs. Yeah. You know, The Hungry Eye, Blue Angel, you know. So who were his contemporaries that he hung around with? Shecky Green.

Oh, yeah. Jackie Gale. Jackie Gale. Dick Capri was my mother's maid of honor at their wedding. Really? She says, yeah. We actually name checked Dick Capri in the last episode. And I told my mom, I'm like, make sure he watches. That's great.

And she keeps saying, when are you going to – he doesn't want to keep tuning in until you talk about him. You know, they talked about Bob Newhart and how they would all hide from him because he was so straight. He didn't do anything. He didn't drink. He didn't do drugs or anything. So they would sort of like – He was like, you know, Newhart, he wasn't even a comic no i mean like he came out of nowhere and he did like he it was the second show of the first time he performed that became

that record yeah and that was it and then off to the races crazy it was and my dad no other way for that guy to have come to be he was so great yeah but like he he couldn he couldn't have, like I talked to him, the clubs would have killed him. Yeah. If he had a come up in it. Yeah. Because he's such a sensitive. He's sweet. Yeah.

He's a sweetheart. Yeah, you can't hang out with all those hard Jews. Oh, it's so. Get chewed up. Clubs are, they're a thing. They're a thing. But at that time, you know, like I didn't realize until I've read something like, you know, like what was that guy's name? John Berger's book that, you know, there were literally people talk about there being so many standups.

Now, there were thousands. Yeah. After World War II, it was like anybody could do it. Everyone was stealing material. There were 20 guys out there in uniform doing standup. It was crazy. Yeah. And there are all these dinner clubs, these mob run dinner clubs everywhere.

Well, and they and they loved the mob. Yeah. And there were all these dinner clubs, these mob run dinner clubs everywhere. Well, and they loved the mob. Yeah. I mean, my parents are talking about nothing about how, but, you know, when my mother was working at Mr. Kelly's in Chicago. Right. She lived in Chicago? Well, she was working there. She was a dancer and she worked, she was working a club and she was working. Oh, so doing a run?

She did like nightclub acts and she either worked with somebody somebody or she had her own little her and a few guys. Yeah. She was cute. She was about this big, redhead. Because I know that when I saw that she's a professional dancer, I always wonder about the goal of that pursuit. Of dancing? Yeah. It's poverty.

How many gigs are they? But going into it, comedy is crazy. I know. But even acting is crazy. I'm going to be a dancer. It's like there's three jobs. Yeah, we're like, how many gigs? It's poverty. How many gigs are they? But going into it, comedy's crazy. I know. But even acting's crazy. If I'm going to be a dancer, it's like, there's three jobs. Yeah, I know. I know. And the thing about dancing is you never make money.

You just never make money. There's no way to make money as a dancer unless you're Mikhail Baryshnikov and there's one. Yeah, it's such a princess dream. It is. But back then, she could do backup. But it's a real, it's a pure love of just that art form. And it's quick. It's a quick in and out, you know.

Right. Now, with physical therapy and, you know, all the stuff that you can blast into your 40s, 50s, but, you know, not back when my mom did it. So what's she doing at Mr. Kelly's? What's the mom's story? She was doing a show there, and my father came into town to see her perform. And the guys, and she loved these guys because they would make sure she ate, and nobody hit on her, and she felt very protected. And my dad was sitting there, and they came over, and they introduced themselves. And they sat with him, and they said, listen, we're going to go outside and beat the shit out of this guy.

You want to come with us? He goes, you know, I would, but my wife is about to, she's coming on any minute. I think she'll be mad. So like, you know, maybe next time, you know, so that is the Mr. Kelly story. The possibly true in the Sherman household. They would ask the Jewish comic if he would come out and help them kick someone's ass. My dad was tall. He was a big dude then. He was like six, two then. So he had some height on him. Well, it seemed like there was sort of an, uh,there had to be an unspoken or spoken kind of relationship because they owned all the clubs. Yeah. Yeah.

So do you, like, do you remember, like, when you were—how many kids in your family? Just me. So do you go—did you go to shows? Well, as happens with comics. Yeah. My father had a really good run and signed with the Morris Agency and they brought him out here. And he started writing on the Bobby Darin show and anything with a name and a show. He wrote on for a while and then my parents had um some my my sister and she passed away very very young and

it threw everything into as will happen because you lose a child that's it everything's different so it kind of threw him off his trajectory and for a long time my mother was the breadwinner in the family she started teaching dance and that's how we ate. And then my father started doing the cruises. Sure. And the great thing about my father and the cruises was he wasn't blue. He didn't work blue. It's still the way. Some of them have a blue night though.

It used to always be you got to be clean on the boats. But now they have a blue show. Oh, they do. They've got one dirty show. I don't know how exactly it works. At like 11.45. But there are guys that do the boats still. I mean, they do the boats but now like you know they have a blue show oh they do they've got one dirty show well i don't know how exactly it works but there are guys that do the boats still i mean they do the boats it's i'm telling you it was it's an amazing gig my father has a very um a very conversational way of or he did long form whether it's it wasn't one-liners? It was like Alan King? Stories.

Like Alan King. Yeah. So he would go on boats, and he would talk about the specific boat. So everybody felt like, oh, we're getting a special show that's just for us. Right. And the great thing about those boats is they're a scam. They sell you this thing. They say, don't bring your wallet.

Everything is free. It's included. You go, nothing's included. The minute you order Diet Coke, it's $49.95. And then they bring you out to see an iceberg at 3 in the morning. And you're standing there and they bring these beautiful soup bowls around. Everyone's cold and you eat the soup. And that's $58.95.

So about halfway through a cruise, all the men realize they've been scammed and they start to fight with their wives. And then the kids start to mobilize and it's Lord of the Flies off. And it starts to get very frightening. And it's literally, it's horrible. And so my dad would not work until halfway through the cruise and he would come on and he would just say,

who else can't fit in your shower? Who else did, this thing where they were going to take me on a tour of the boat and I got in a boat and they put me on the boat and I'm back on the boat. So I was like,

he would talk about what basically a scam the cruises are. and it was so cathartic for especially these these schlubby dudes who were dragged out there and they felt so good and happy that by the end of the cruise my dad was like bono like he like all the all the old women just loved him right to him and then he started marriages oh myed marriages. Oh my God. It was great to watch. So I actually didn't see my dad do standup until I was about 13, 14 years old

because he was always on boats. And I was, you know. And so when I was 13, my dad said, come take a cruise with me to Mexico and we will- Short one. A short one, yeah. A short one.

I mean, that's good for the Sherman family. And, and so I was, uh, so my mom put me on a plane to Florida. I had to meet him in Florida cause he was already out there. So I was going to meet him in the boat in Florida and I got to Florida and this is pre 9-11. So I got to Florida and he wasn't there and I didn't have a cell phone and I just sort of said, I'm here for the cruise. And people said, well, the bus over there is going to that boat. So I just got on the bus and I drove to the boat and I got on the boat and I said, I'm Don Sherman's daughter. And they said, okay. And they showed me to his cabin. And as I'm walking the cabin, I'm hearing people who will work on the boat saying there's hurricanes and the entertainment's not going to make it in time.

And so I'm 13. I'm on the boat. I don't have money. I have nothing. I'm supposed to meet my dad. I sat in the room for a while. And then there was the lifeboat drill. And someone said, you got to put your – and come to your boat.

So I put my thing on. I went out to the boat. And the boat's starting to pull away. And I'm like, well, at some point somebody's my thing on i went out to the boat and then the boat's starting to pull away and i'm like well at some point somebody's gonna tell me to get off the boat or something but they like literally like at the last minute the car the with him and like a heart player right you know and the with the spoons and whatever and they and they and he was in a panic but it was it was like i almost took a cruise by myself which i was where was your dad he was he was because my dad would he would get on a boat, but then he would like either stay somewhere and work many boats or he'd go from boat to boat to boat.

But that boat – the one you got on, it was going to hit bad weather, so they basically canceled it? No, my dad was stuck in bad weather. The boat that he was on was stuck out in a hurricane. And so he had to get from that boat to this boat. That's crazy. So he's a real boat guy. He was a boat guy. But it was amazing watching it and it was amazing watching.

When did you get to see him finally? Then, when he finally made it to the boat. We got to the boat. We spent a week together and I saw his act. That was the first time, 13. First time. Did he do TV stuff? He did some TV stuff, but he mostly when I was really young

he was touring. He toured with Sergio Mendez and he toured with Jose Policiano. He was like Pauly's dad. Sammy. Mitzi was a very good friend of his. So when I got old enough, Mitzi

threw me a couple of jobs at the comedy store and then promptly fired me when she realized I wasn't going to become a comic. Because those jobs were supposed to be for comics. Which ones did you get? When I was 18, I worked in the office. Sure. So I got to hand Sammy his $30 check, which was... So that's going back when he was still around.

Yeah. Wow. And so I was there for like a year and then she realized i need that job for somebody what was that like in the 70s yeah i think so yeah must be and then when i turned 21 she put me at the cover booth yeah and i worked in the or yeah and then i also worked in the main room in the cover booth um? Yeah. Wow. So that was so, like, that was an informative time. But you were around then. I was around then.

The lineup when I, right before I got fired the second time, was Kinison and Arsenio Hall. Oh, so that's the 80s. And Dice and Charles Fleischer. Yeah. That was sort of like the main group that I would see. Well, I must have just missed you. I was there 87. You must have been there in like 84, 83.

I know. Sam was dating Tamayo Otsaki. I know. And watching that, those two people fight. Dude, I have a tape of that in the OR. It's the greatest thing in the world. Because I lived in the house where Tamayo lived in Crest Hill. Like I lived there when I was a doorman.

So Sam used to come up there and party for three days and yell. Yeah. All they did was yell. All they did was get in fights at the back of the bar. Yeah. Well, I have this weird tape that I need to digitize because I found it in Mitzi's office because they were cleaning it out. And I have, like, look, I have this.

Look at these. Her driver's license. Oh, my God. Why are these just sitting here? Because, like, Binder did a dock, and the office was all, like, you know, a mess. So I asked if I could take some shit, and that was on the floor. So I'm like, well, Peter knows I have it. That's amazing.

Yeah. That's so great, though. And then I got the one from 74. That's, like, right after she took the place over. Right. So you were, your childhood, like after you saw your dad do comedy, was it the idea that you were going to be in show business?

Well, I mean, I was not, my family was not set up to do anything else. I, when I had graduated and I was in my like, I was like 23. Yeah. We were having dinner and my dad turned to me and he goes, did you want to go to college? Because we could have sent you. And I was like,. We were having dinner and my dad turned to me and he goes, did you want to go to college? Because we could have sent you.

And I was like, and at that point it was like, no, the ship has sailed. Because it was just, you know, my mom really wanted me to be a dancer. But she really didn't want me to move to New York. If you wanted to be a dancer, you had to move to New York. There were no California dancers. But to do what? Be a rockette? I mean, what's the big plan? Broadway. Okay New York. There were no California dancers. But to do what? Be a rockette? I mean, what's the big plan?

Broadway. Okay. Broadway. Musicals. Musicals. Musicals. Now, the thing is, I can't sing. I can't sing.

Okay. So that's a problem. Yeah. It's an issue. Yeah. I was a good dancer, but I was, I didn't, it was not, it was not in the cards. Yeah. What happened is fine.

My mother's not okay with it, but what happened was fine. Yeah, I think she'd still prefer. After you made a billion dollars in television, she's still like, you should have been a dancer? My mother is 92, and she's working on her fourth one-woman show right now and writing her memoirs. And I don't know what any of that means because this woman has worse punctuation than I do and cannot put a sentence together to save her life. But she's going to ask you to help her out, isn't she? No, no, no, no. She's very, she's got her own. Who's going to publish a memoir? I don't know.

I don't know. I'll bribe somebody to do it, but it's just she's... So she's pushing you to be a dancer. You're in your teens? Yeah, I was in dance class at four and I was dancing when I got my first job on Roseanne. I had a call back

for for cats yeah and for a touring yeah bus and truck right and which I never would have gotten anyhow because I lied and said I did gymnastics which I didn't do right um and I got the call to I had a writing partner for one year and we got the call to that we got the job on rosanne but you were doing scripts you were writing things you know i was in improv classes and we were bored and out of work so we would sit and we would write some spec scripts and for what i had a thing for um uh richard lewis so we wrote an anything but love spec script because i thought well you know did you know him i don't never met him Never met him. Do you know him now? No. But later in life, he heard that story, and he actually left me a really lovely voicemail.

I don't know how he got my. Yeah. But I never talked to him. I have the tape. Yeah. I don't know what you play it in anymore because I don't have answering machines anymore. Right. The little one? The little teeny tape?

Oh, yeah. You got to figure out. It's adorable. Well, no. I wonder what he thinks of the show. He needs a big Lenny head. Well, I hope. We tried to be very.

Kitty was very involved because Kitty. Kitty Bruce. Yeah. She controls all his material. So anytime we want. And we never wrote stand up for him. We wrote his dialogue, but we never wrote a word of stand-up. It was all his stuff.

So she had a lot of say and could have been a pain, and she was absolutely lovely. And she came down once and did a set, and she was really... Did she like how he played him? She did. She liked Luke a lot.

That's sweet. The ladies like Luke. Yeah. He's very likable. Yeah, he is. I'm telling you, I was totally surprised. That's sweet. The ladies like Luke. Yeah. Yeah. He's very likable. Yeah, he is. I'm telling you, I was totally surprised. I was cynical. I was going in it with the wrong glasses on.

I was immediately engaged. Well, he's such a worshiper. It was weird because he came in to audition for the pilot, and the Lenny Bruce character was in one scene. He was just playing like a strip club. through his character was in one scene. He was just playing like a strip club. And he was,

and there were like actually weirdly like three really good, like one guy who looked just like him and did like a dead-on impression. And then there was Luke and then there was another guy

who was also very good. And we sort of were going back and forth and we said, if we ever wanted to bring Lenny back and ever wanted to have him have a scene

with a character yeah you got to go with Luke yeah okay just want a dead on impression right you're right it wasn't an impression yeah he could act it was it was a sense of it sure he's a really terrific actor and and Luke just knows everything so I would he knew coming in or he knew everything he was obsessed with it he knew all the recordings and so every time i would and there were so many different versions of the same bit because it existed in so many different ways that he did it that yeah i would put something forth and he would say but you know here he kind of did like a and he did some of that can i put that in yeah so it was a lot of like and kitty's on set

and kitty was only on set once. But everything went to her. And we had to say, you know, here's what we want to do. Because we had to also mix and match pieces. Right. Now, what about Rachel? I've talked to her. We had a conversation in season one. It's very interesting to me.

And it's not a criticism. Because I noticed this about, look, Steven Spielberg did a movie about his family of Jews with no Jews. And then, you know, and then James Gray did Armageddon Time, a movie about his family with no Jews. Yes. And then Rachel, not a Jew. Yes. And what, like, how many Jews did you see?

Many, many Jews. Many Jews. Every Jew that left Egypt auditioned for Maisel. I will say that. There were many Jews. You know, the thing about it, it's a hard part. It is. And a lot of comics, good comics, came in and auditioned for it.

But it was that mixture of, it was also the mixture of, especially at the very beginning, she couldn't be a polished comic. You had to watch. You had to know that the spark was there, but you had to watch the evolution because that's what the show was. What's interesting about her and why it worked from the very beginning is because she has that as a character. I don't think as a person, but she has that kind of like almost sociopathic self-centeredness. Oh, my God. A complete narcissist. Right.

That you need to just plow ahead. Yeah. Like, you know, right from the beginning, it's so clear that there's that disconnect between emotional capacity and her desire to do this thing. Well, because the thing about comedy is you have to be willing to talk about your life. If you want to do that kind of comedy, sure. Yes, yes. And you have to be willing to potentially upset people in your life because you are being honest and you are talking about the things that happen. Right.

But that's a modern configuration. You chose to construct a character and time travel her. I did. a character and time travel her. I did, but, you know, part of the way I did her comedy was because I knew I was dealing with an actress and I was not dealing with a comic. It's probably better because, like, comics,

it's hit or miss with the acting. Well, it's tough. It's a hard combination to get, you know, the actors can't play musicians. Well, right, because the comedians have that thing we just talked about. So you're going to tell them instruction, but they're going to have that weird disconnect where they don't have the right amount of capacity for engaging, for listening.

We always had comics in our room on staff. They would jump in and they would say, that's bullshit. Or they would jump in and say, it doesn't, here's the experiences. With the bits with the with the and with everything right with clubs with how much you time you get with every little tiny thing because i wanted to make sure that it felt especially in the beginning was as she was learning and as she was putting it together i wanted to make sure that they would look at it because i didn't want her to come out and boom, she was the funniest thing in the world and knew how to craft a joke and knew

what the whole thing was. And so it was in, they were sort of like keeping us in check. But the other thing about Rachel was for her to be able to play this part, she had to have an emotional thread in whatever monologue she was doing. Even if it was a quickie, there had to be something in it. And we tried to always tie what she was talking about to something that was going on within the show. So she had something to grasp onto. And then you could structure jokes around that and you could work with her. And she was very, I mean, the great thing rachel is because she's so smart and she's so fearless yeah

and so um doesn't really care what people think about her and i mean that in the best way because she would be up on stage with a room full of extras staring at her she's the star and she would say tell me how to say this tell me where inflection, because she just wanted it to be right. Then she would get up and work it and work it and work it. And there were times where she would come to me and she would say, I need something to get me to this. I need something to get me to this. So the monologues were very much about letting her feel like there was an emotional story connection because then she didn't feel weird going out doing jokes. I think if we had just given, because you know, like Joan Rivers, she weird going out doing jokes. I think if we had just given,

because, you know, like Joan Rivers, she had these great jokes. Sure. But I think if I had just given Rachel great crafted jokes, I don't know that she would have known how to do them

because she was thinking. Yeah, and that's a, and it's like it, you know, it, the possibility for failure would have been high. Yeah.

Because there is a way to shtick. Yeah. And that's not what she's doing. Yeah. So that choice was to create this character. It almost becomes all the way through. Once she has success with the tour, with the,

with the R&B group or that guy. Yeah, Shai Baldwin. Yeah. And then, you know, just onward. It's,

it's, it's seeing this, the re-imagining is really kind of a, an alternative feminist history of this period of, of show business. Yeah. it is. It is. I mean, we, you know, people keep saying, well, who did you craft her after?

And my honest story is my dad. Sure. Because I grew up with these stories. I mean, I stripped stuff out of his life. He toured with Johnny Mathis. You know, I did things that he came, you know, he told me about. And I said, well, I don't know. did things that he came, you know, he told me about. And I said, well, I don't know a good thing.

And also, like, it's interesting that, you know, he started stealing from Alan King because that, you know, is really, you know, out of Alan King was the guy that, you know, made the middle class Jew, you know, a thing. Yeah. You know, he pulled it out of the borscht belt and made it, you know, it was back, it was, you know, it was the passing bit. Yes. You know? Yes.

But it was about life. It was about passing bit. Yes. You know? Yes. But it was about life. It was about middle class life. And, you know, and Midge, Rachel's Midge comes from, it's almost pre-middle class, but it's upper class. They live well. Yes. That was back in the days when if you were a tenured professor, you had a beautiful apartment. Right. On the left side.

They gave it to you. But that's the style, right? So it's not really a Lenny Bruce thing. It's really kind of that, you know, it's those Jews who were talking about bourgeois life. Yeah. Yeah. And then by making her a female as opposed to my father, it allowed sort of a – well, I never looked at it as a feminist show because I don't ever look at my work like that. I just say that because it's a point of view thing.

But it does come – It's important. But it came off a little like that. And I'm fine with that. I'm not upset with that. It allowed sort of a point of view that made it less – because the thing I was really concerned about is I didn't want people to look at this and think like, that's my grandma's show.

I wanted people to be able to enjoy it and I wanted young women to be able to watch it and not feel like, eh, you know. What do you know about the audience? I want to see girls,

you know. So, I think that by watching her struggle and watching her come from this, and this adorable girl, because Rachel's so damn cute, with the cute clothes and everything, and yet can't hold the husband. Has, you know, going up against the family, going up against not getting the respect.

Like, it made all of that palatable, and it made her more human. So what do you know about the audience in general? Nothing. I don't know anything about them. Because it's interesting. They're alive and they're out there. Well, I imagine that, you know, there is that generation of people that, you know, enjoy the, what is it, the Alan Arkin, you know, Michael, what is that show called? The Kaminsky Method. Like clearly there's an audience of people of our parents' generation that are engaged in stuff that speaks

to them. So I think that you have this spectrum of people that can be pulled into this because it has the trappings of their past and it speaks to the experience of that. And the patter of it kind of is reminiscent of something they grew up in, but yet it's really a young people's show. It is a young people's show. Although the interesting thing is the gripes about the show that I heard through, mostly through the filter of Rachel Brosnahan, who cannot put her phone down. I love her so much. Right. But it's like, baby, put the phone down.

Just put it down. Yeah, yeah. Is this issue about you're a bad mother. You're a bad mother. And this became a very big issue. And Rachel talked to me about it a lot. And I, at first I was very cavalier about it. And I said, you know, Rachel, I don't give a shit.

I don't care what you read online. I'm not on social media. I don't, we're not doing the show for the six people who are calling you a bad mother. Right, right. But then like, I would have New York Times say, so what's this thing about the mothering? Like, wow, so this is a thing?

Really? In this day and age where we're talking about women and this and that, you're asking me, like, she's a bad mother because she's got ambition and because she wants to go on the road and she wants to have a career. Yeah, but what the fuck is that? I mean, it's like, you know, you listen.

But you listen to the stories of any entertainer's family. They were all shitty parents. Of course, that's the point. It's like, you know, they make a choice to do this thing. You need shitty parents to make more entertainers. Right, like Buster Keaton was used as like, you know, just fodder. Yeah. I mean, it was like there's no it's it's interesting thing that you're putting this modern sort of point of view into the past and then these people are criticizing her on behalf of what?

It was huge. Domestic expectation? It was huge. And they would ask everyone about it. They would ask Alex Borstein about it who didn't have kids in the show. Well, she's another interesting character because at the beginning, she was the one I had the most trouble with because I thought it was broad. But then you just start to realize she's just weird. Yeah.

And then it kind of settles, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And Alex is a very special talent. Yeah, I just talked to her. Yeah. She's because she brings a level of pathos into the room with her. And it's what grounded Susie.

Because Susie was such a ball-busting, fuck you, I don't care, whatever I think I say, you know, I'm going to be alone anyhow, so I'm not even going to try to connect with humanity. But there's such vulnerability in Alex Borstein as an actress and as a person that it actually took this character that could have gone much more in the stratosphere and it sort of tethered her to the yeah i can see that so like but this is like this show is not it's not like anything that existed before really like you know in in the way that you know it's not like a three camera trip it's not you know it's it's it's not quite a movie but it engages all these devices of you know know, old movies in a way. But like how do you like when when you started writing, we were talking before that you were doing spec scripts for Richard Lewis. And you're like just because you but you're just general show business family. You're dancing.

You're working at the comedy store. Was Roseanne at the store when you were there? Roseanne just left. She would come in every now and then. I guess she came in and bombed one night and then just screamed at the whole audience and then left. But she's still doing that. Yeah, so there you go. But, so, how does it

unfold? So, you spent, like, a long time at the store at that time. So, you saw everybody. I saw everybody. And it was really, it was, you know, and I also saw, and I wish I could remember his name because I use this example all the time. He was a guy who was so sweet. He was a very tiny guy, but so lovely. He would come in and he always had

an early slot. I think he emceed a little bit, but he would emcee and then his actual slot was later and he would come in early and he was sweet and adorable and he would stand at the back and he would drink and he would drink and he would drink and get nervous and drink and drink. And by the time he went on stage,

he was so angry. He assumed the audience was going to turn on him before he walked up on stage and he attacked immediately and he bombed almost every time he went on stage and then i would see him the next night at the beginning of the night and he was sweet and adorable and i'm like just don't drink yeah yeah See what happens if you just go. But Missy kept him in that late spot. The fear. Yeah. The fear of like, comedy is so fear driven. It's so interesting.

Yeah. I saw, you know, I think comics, personally, I think it's the art form. I think it's the most terrifying art form out there. Because if you go up there and you bomb, you can't say, oh, the script was bad or the director hung me at the dryer or my dress looked like shit or my actor. Yeah. It's you.

They don't like you. They don't like what you're saying. They don't like your point of view. Your life is not interesting to them. Right. It's total and utter rejection of everything that you are. That's so hard. Well, it's crazy.

But I used to say that really for as long as it takes, about 75% of the job is pretending you're not afraid. Yes. And then eventually you're not because it doesn't matter as much anymore. You're just numb to the world. Well, no, you're not numb, but it's like any other job. Some nights are better than others. Yeah. And you get past a certain point where you're going to be run off stage probably.

Yeah. Unless something really fucked up happens. But so when you watched it, the nuts and bolts of it every night when you're working the cover booth at the store, I mean, were you empathetic? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was very empathetic. It broke my heart a lot. And, you know, I had to turn the light on in the OR when you sat at the cover booth.

Eddie Cantor's. You had to give him the light. The Eddie Cantor picture? Yeah, and it was horrible. It was horrible, like, having to, like, say, like, and you're done. You know, it was just. But they had a certain amount of time. I know they had a certain amount of time, but it was weird for me because I was not,

I didn't have that ambition. But did you think you did? Is that why you got the job? No, I think it's just because it's all I knew. Like, I grew up with that. I needed a job. And my dad got me the job. Mitzi always was very sweet, sweet to my dad.

And according to my mother, she was in love with your dad. Mitzi was in love with your dad. I don't know if that's true, but according to my mother, Mitzi was in love with my dad. The great love of her life, I think, was Steve Landisberg. Oh, really? Yeah. After Sammy, it was Steve Landisberg. And then she, I think, went through a dark period where she just fucked a lot of comics.

Yeah. I think her boyfriend was Danny. Danny Stone? I must have just missed you. I mean, come on. Were we there together for fuck's sake? I think we were. What happened?

I don't know. Why didn't you notice me? That's crazy. Because Danny Stone, all he did was that fucking, it was the weirdest thing that they were together. All he did was Dangerfield, the Dangerfield impression. Argus Hamilton. He's still there.

At the comedy store? Yes, every night. He's grandfathered in. As long as he's alive, he gets an opening spot. He comes in, parks his Cadillac, does like the second spot

in the main room, and leaves. Unbelievable. And he kills, man. Really? And you know who else is there again? Driesen. Really?

Yes. And it's the same thing like with Miss Maisel in a way. Is that like I watch Tom, Driesen, and same with Argus. This is old style patter. Yeah. The way they do jokes. And I think for people of a certain age, it's very comforting. Yeah, it is comforting.

It's like it's the way. And it's funny. Sure it's of a certain age, it's very comforting. Yeah, it is comforting. It's like, it's the way. And it's funny. Sure, it's funny. You know, it's fucking funny. Yeah. It's just fun. But it's a style that you don't, there's very few people that do it anymore. Yeah, I know.

The guys who carry that tradition are rare. You know, like Dave Vitello is like the best example of a guy who like lives in that and took it to another dimension. Anyway. Yeah. So Comedy Store Talk. So you got out. I got out. guy who like lives in that and took it to another dimension yeah anyway yeah so comedy store talk so you got out and as a writer that's where you when you got your job i got my job a couple years later how'd you get the job on rosanna that was the first job it was literally like yeah it was just it was a fluke and it and it was it was i hate telling people this like young people who are

like how did you get in i'm like you don't want to hear my story because it sounds too easy. It's, it's, it was, uh, again, I had a partner for like one year. We were in, we were in the Groundlings school together. Her name was, her name was Jennifer Heath. And she was actually, I thought she would have really, she did, she did stand up, but Jennifer, and she was very funny, but Jennifer didn't like clubs. She didn't drink. She didn't like people who smoked. She couldn't take the clubs, so she couldn't do it. I mean, you've got to be at the club to do stand-up.

So it didn't work out. But I actually thought if she had a belt and a smoke, she would have been really great. But we were in the Groundlings Loser classes together, and then we decided we'll write a couple. She really wanted to write a spec script. I'm like, fine, I don't care. Okay. So we wrote two spec scripts. We wrote a Anything But Love, and we wrote a Roseanne spec script.

And I was in, and I realized, oh, God, if I'm going to do this, I've got to learn how to use a thing, because I don't even know how to type. So I went to take a class at UCLA, which was, I don't know why they exist. But the teacher of that class was a very nice man who I also can't remember his name. That's welcome to my world. A TV writing class? It was a TV writing class. And he was working on a show called City

that had just been picked up with Valerie Harper. And he wrote Crash. He was running the show? He was starting comedy. He was a comedy writer. Haggis. Paul Haggis. Yeah.

So he said, well, come in and you guys just pitch a bunch of stories. And I said, all right. So we went in there and we pitched a bunch of stories, all which were absolutely just dreadful. Yeah. But we didn't know what the show was or anything like that. And Paul Haggis said, okay, well, look,

take your pencil and if you can throw the pencil and sticks in the ceiling, we'll hire you. Which sounded, I didn't know anything about sitcom hazing at that point. I'm like, that sounds insane. And so 45 minutes later, everybody wanted to go to lunch, and he's like, that's fine. So we actually got a freelance script on City. And so by the time we got meetings with agencies, we had already been hired with something. So you had a thing.

You did an episode of City. Right. And so from the time we wrote those spec scripts, the time we got on Roseanne was six months. And it was a very quick. First season of Roseanne? No, it was third season. So it was up and running and she was already huge. She was with Tom.

Yeah. She had just broken up with her husband the season before and fired everybody. Fired everybody that was there, all the writers, and they were starting fresh. And Bob Meyer came in, he was running the show, and they had no women, so they needed a cheap team of girls. Who was in the room? Bob Meyer, Chuck Lorre, Jeff Abagoff, Brad Isaac, Joel, Don Foster, and then me and Jennifer.

And it was already like a machine. It was huge. We walked into like a huge show. Right, but the characters were defined? It was an unbelievable first job. Yeah. It was so lucky. She had just done the national anthem when we got hired.

So the first time I met her, we went over to the house that they were renting that later they were sued for trashing that house. It was in Brentwood somewhere. Her and Tom? Yeah. So we went over there and the whole time they just had taped every news show that was talking about her and they were just watching.

We just sat there and watched everybody trash her and trash her and trash her. And then she and Tom started finding it funny and they started fooling around and then they started making out

and then he unzipped her pants and then we all got up and we left the house. And so that was my first introduction to rosanne as a person but i like everybody abruptly got it we just we were i love those moments with crazy people it's time to leave um used to happen with sam up at crestal we're just sort of like what's going on everyone just goes yeah let's just go let's just go we don't need we get it we know it's gonna happen no goodbyes we're fine fine. Thank you for the burger.

But I will say, you know, going onto a show like that that had, as crazy as she was, what she brought to the table, nobody could bring to the table. Which is fucking funny. And of such a clear point of view, such a clear who I am, what my story is. And then they surrounded her with John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf. I mean, it was just like, it was gold. But also like, you know, she, I think one of the great things about that thing is that she grew as a character. Completely. And like that just, it's not always the thing that happens. But they.

As the kids grew, everybody grew. I will say they wouldn't do now what they did then. And they knew, for example, they knew John was the right husband for her. Right. John was busy. He was doing Julius Caesar on the old globe, I think. Yeah. And they had to wait.

That's why it was a mid-season show. Yeah. Because they could have cast somebody else, but it wouldn't. Right. they could have cast somebody else, but it wouldn't. They needed to find somebody that would let her have the space to become an actress and yet not tamp down who she is. And they found between Laurie and John. Yeah.

And you would see that. Great actors. I mean, the best. The best. They could make anything funny. Yeah. Anything funny. And it was just, it was like a marvel to watch.

It was also because the mantra of the show was make the small big, make the big small. Yeah. We weren't writing like they're all stuck in an elevator. Right. We were writing like stories of family stories. Right. Like shit that really happens. And there was no, you need a certain amount of laughs per page.

Right. Just like let it happen. Yeah. Let the scene happen. And if there's no laughs, there's no laughs. Right. Is it interesting? Great. Well, that's a kind of a uh that must have been a fairly new thing it was well i mean i guess though like you know with those 70 shows like mary tyler moore lou grant i mean there were definitely serious episodes there was there were serious episodes but i don't think anything had this level of just be first of all i mean just the look of right well family stuff was wrong

it was completely different you know that they are a couple in love they still like to have sex yeah it's like that just the visual it's not mary tyler more it's not you know right um and then also she had banned she had banned the studio in the network from the stage for whatever reason. So when I came in as a newbie, there were no notes. Carsey Warner? There was no edit table read. They were sent away? They were gone.

I never saw them. And we would have our table read and then we would go do our work. And it was just like a weird, fucked up summer stock company because you were just doing the stuff. But that's nice. It is almost like theater. Everyone's involved. It's collaborative. It was the best until I went to a different show and I realized who are all these people sitting around and why are we listening to them?

It's like, well, that's the studio network and they have opinions. And I'm like, oh, my God. Because I think if I had started with that, I don't know that I even would have been a writer. I didn't want to be a writer. So how long, how many seasons were you there? I was there four seasons. That's a lot. Yeah. I don't know that I even would have been a writer. I didn't want to be a writer. So how many seasons were you there? I was there four seasons. That's a lot. Yeah.

I have the record. I think I have the record. Eric Gilland may have beat me by a bit, but I think I have the record. And why'd you leave? It was time. It was time. I was, you know, I, she once said, I will never have a woman run the show because it's no fun being mean to a woman. And everyone who ran the show, at a certain point, she turned on them and made their lives a living hell.

Right. Not the whole time. It was like there was a certain point toward the end of the season, she's like, and now. Yeah. Oh, really? And then she would usually fire them. Okay. So it was sort of a, and I had different interactions with them.

I wrote a pilot for them because they told me I had to. With Roseanne's production company? With Roseanne and Tom. Oh, my God. It was for En Vogue. Wow. It was insane. And then they broke up.

So you stayed through all these different staffs. I mean, comics wrote at some point. Yeah. Wasn't Alan Stevens in there? Yes. Alan Stevens was not my year. The year after me, I think, Alan – the year after I mean, comics wrote at some point. Yeah. Wasn't Alan Stevens in there? Yes. Alan Stevens was not my year. The year after me, I think, Alan, the year after I left, the staff started to get really big, and she started to pull a lot of comics in.

When I was there— Was that the last season or the last couple? Well, no. I mean, I was 3, 4, 5, 6. But how long did it go on for? And then it went to 7, 8, 9. Oh, my God. Really?

Yeah, it went on. And then it went on to like, we won the lottery and the train and Steven Seagal and blah, blah, blah. But I will say, I think it was, if I had been on any other show as my first job, I just don't know that I would have. Because writing inherently is not a fun job. I hate it. It's the worst. I hate it. It's depressing. It makes you feel bad. I hate being in a room. I hate being in front of a blank page. I agree. I agree. It's terrible. And I didn't like writers rooms because at the time writers rooms were very male. And it wasn't even that I felt like, oh, it's so misogynistic. It was just like, it was just like a dirty, you know, like everyone

sort of smelled weird. And, you know, everyone picked up the trades to go in the bathroom. And it's like, I just, oh, my God. Like you just sit there for hours. Sometimes nothing happens. Just the worst. And I just, I was like. It was terrible. It's a terrible environment.

I hated it. So after you leave, though, what do you just do? You do other, you're just around, just doing episodes here and there? Well, I wrote a couple of pilots and not realizing that, you know, I always had sort of like a, I always felt like I was going to leave. I wasn't going to be a writer forever. So I always felt like, well, I'm not really this. What did you think you were going to do, dance? I don't know what I thought.

I didn't, there was no, My family was not big on planning. We sort of fell into stuff. Yeah, I know that. I know that feeling. And so I kind of dicked around for a while. And then I was on a couple of terrible shows that were just like just painful to be a part of. Mostly because just the more I learned about the backstage part of it the creepier it all got it was just like in what way well you know i was i was there when less moon vest would

come down and you know they'd go off and talk about we're gonna go get the heidi girls yeah it's like i don't i really don't need i just don't want to hear it yeah do whatever you want to do i just don't want to see it you know and the ugl do. I just don't want to see it. And the ugliness of, you know, I did a show and the woman, the creator was a female. She was sort of a playwright and then she did some movies and stuff like that. And she and another guy started to have some sort of relationship. And there was a lot of them going to Benihana's. And I'm stuck with the room. And then the studio coming to me and

saying so tell us what's going on with them and I'm like you know I'm not I'm just yeah I'm just in I'm just writing terrible jokes in the other room that's all you need me for you don't need me to I'm not spying they would say well we need you to rewrite stuff behind their backs I'm like I'm not going to do that like I just don't please right find someone else to do that shit it's just not who I am so but that's what the business was. It was kind of gross and ugly. And I never, I was not a staff person. I needed to either.

So did you like lose it? No, I just kept humping it. And then I got on a show that I truly learned what my limits were. And I was running a room. What show? I lobbied for the job. It was called Veronica's Closet. Right.

And I lobbied for the job because I said, I've got to get that executive producer credit. I got it because I got to get my own show on the air. Right. I've got to do it myself. So you knew that. I knew that. I knew that much. I said, if this is going to take, I got to be the one. I've got to hold the pencil. I can't be the person who feels like I can fix it and not be allowed to fix it. There was some real crazy on that show.

Yes. And there was. And from many different. Ron Silver and Christy Alley. Oh, Ron Silver, who had his manager call me and said he doesn't there was a joke about something in Yiddish and his manager called me and said he does not want you to call him a Jew on the show and I said he played Alan Dershowitz

he got a fucking Oscar nomination as Alan Dershowitz he's Ron Silver look at him he's a Jew I'm gonna what do we want me to call him we want. He's a Jew. I'm going to, what do we want me to call him? We want you to call him Armenian. And I'm like,

okay, all right, that's great. So, okay, so you get your executive producer credit, but like, what'd you learn?

It was horrible. And I, but I didn't get to, I didn't get to pick my staff. My staff was picked by the powers that be. And I had a room full of people who all wanted to be on Friends and who did not have any interest in writing on a show for two women in their 40s who were not hot. And it was a constant litany of every pitch was a fat joke. And it was constant constant and it was just like i i had no control

over the room because these people weren't loyal to me they would all like stare next door because the friend's room was next door oh wow the cool room yeah the good kids were next door like we're in the shit room it was just like it was like this wasn't even my show and i'm like come on cheerleading and like and i later just recently found out that one of my writers was a serial rapist for 20 years. He's in jail. I know that guy, Eric. Eric Weinberg. Yes.

Yes. And the weird thing about Eric is you could look at him and know he was a serial rapist. Yeah. I didn't know him that well, but I think he wrote on Bill Maher's show. Yes, he did. Right. He, buh-bye. Yeah.

No one misses you. Yeah. But it was that kind of, I mean, it was a toxic, you know, he was there and the young men worshipped him and they followed him. And it was just like. Eric? Yeah. It was like an endless beating your head against a wall trying to make that show something good. And he was working against you.

Well, the whole system. Right. Frankly, the whole system was working against me. Yeah, because he was such a dick. He was a dick. But, you know, Kirstie is Kirstie, and Kirstie had her own belief system. Yeah. And they didn't appreciate that belief system, but they certainly knew who she was when they got into bed with her.

They just thought, like, well, we've got, you know, this, we've got this production company, which is, you know, we got these names. People seem to be interested. And she was the biggest star. I mean, she's coming off of Cheers. She was the biggest star. When Veronica's Closet won the year, she was the highest paid person on television. Right. And God knows she's talented.

Yeah. She's so funny. Kathy and Jim, they were funny people. Daryl Mitchell was on that show. He was great. I mean, they were great people on the show. The show could have been, if anybody had given a shit, it could have been something really terrific.

You, the talent was right there and it drove me nuts that I'm the only one fighting for something that is even mine. Yeah. And it got to the point where it felt like, you know, unless I was going to be willing to break down and cry every single week, this was not a – I would come home. It's 5 o'clock in the morning.

Yeah. Every night, I'd get into bed and I'd cry. Yeah. And my husband would say, you've got to quit. Yeah. You've just got to quit. I can't. How long did that go on for?

The whole year, the whole season. That's terrible. But I had not a quitter. I didn't want to quit. And they didn't want to fire me. Yeah, but that was the expectation, like, you know, that people would stay all night and then take abuse from executives. It was the worst. It was absolutely horrible.

It was the worst experience of my life. And I will say, like, I thought David Crane was a delightful man. I think he's very talented. And I appreciated any time that he was in the room. But they weren't in this room. And so I had people actively working against me outside of the room. I mean, they literally hired my replacement mid-season. I was in the trades and I'm showing up to work and I'm saying like, you know, guys, could you hide it from me like a little bit?

Because I'm still humping this show till 5 o'clock in the morning every fucking night could you maybe just pretend could you hold the announcement just like a month maybe it was just so awful it was abusive and it was the kind of thing where the first day I got the job a couple of writers of other shows

of theirs not Veronica's Closet but they had two other shows going they took me out for drinks and they just, and they just told me like, it's, it's a, it's an evil place and it's horrible. And I wanted to not believe that. I wanted to say, look, let me have my own experience. What, all of the shows or just that one? The system.

The umbrella. The system. Yes. Okay. Yeah. The system was not a, a warm, fuzzy system. Right. Sure.

It was a system that you were going to have to like, you know, get, get, get some therapy. So this like, you know, upon your realization of,

you know, what was going on behind the scenes, this was like the, the hitting of bottom. It was. And I just thought, you know what, this is not for me.

I don't want to be in this world. I don't like this world. I don't want to be in this room. I just started like sending them home and I would just finish the script on myself. And there were a couple of girls that I, that were great and they would sometimes stick around and help. But it was just, it was easier for like, get most of the joke pitching done, send everybody home. And I would just sit there till six and I would just get it done because it was too ugly. It was too ugly. And then knowing that Friday was going to come, they were going to appear.

They were going to see the run-through. They were going to throw the script out because they threw it out every time we had a run-through or everything like that. And then we were going to work all night again. And Friday night was the night that I was always called into the room to be told what I have done wrong in the week. And this one particular Friday, I just said, look, if this is going to be one of those meetings. Yeah. Can we do it Monday morning? Yeah.

Because I've just got such a rewrite to do. Yeah. And they said, okay, we'll see you Monday. And so Monday morning I came in and it happened on Monday. But like over that weekend, that was the weekend I decided, look, I can't, I'm not going to cry anymore. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not going to have somebody wait for me to cry, pick up a tissue box and hand it to me and go, we all cry here.

Yeah. It's like, why? We're doing fucking comedy. Why are we all crying here? It's a terrible thing to do. Yeah. So I quit sitcom. I said to my husband, I can't do it anymore.

And he says, great, don't do it. Yeah. He was working on Family Guy. He goes, sit at home, figure out what you want to do. And what did you do? I sat at home and I wrote Gilmore Girls. That's what you did? Mm-hmm. I sat at home. I wrote Gilmore Girls. That's what you did? Mm-hmm.

I sat at home. Courtney Love was dating Edward Norton. Yeah. She was renting a place across the street from me, so I would just sit. I would sit at my couch

and at three o'clock he would come up and she would run out of the house. Was that where? Like Whitley Hills or somewhere? Like the Larchmont area.

Oh, okay. And then I would just sit there and watch them for... They seemed very happy together for a moment. Yeah. And then I would just sit there and watch them for, they seemed very happy together for a moment. And then I wrote Gilmore Girls and, uh, and that was. And he sold it with your husband or was that just you? That was just me. I, you know, I went in for a meeting at the WB and I said, I have this and I, uh, Susan who had been trying to get me in there for a while. And I said, well, here's my pitches.

Yeah. And I said, there's a mother and daughter, and they're more like friends. She goes, I want that. Yeah. And I wanted it to be an hour. And I said, I don't, I'm a half hour. What do you, an hour?

What is that, just more pages? Yeah. I'm like, what? It's single spacing. It's like, oh, that's, hour sounds really hard. It's a lot of pages. But fuck it.

You know, it's, what did I know? I didn't know anything. So I sat at home, and I wrote Gilmore Girls, and I've had my own show. And for long time a very popular show yeah it was good and it and it holds up i guess so because when it went on netflix that's actually when it really gained most of its audience it always had like a like a fan base how many seasons was it six six seven seven seven seasons i wasn't there the last season, but it was seven seasons.

But like, because I know, I dated a woman who was obsessed with it. But I mean, she would watch it all day long. It happens a lot. And it's a very big cancer show. So I cannot tell you how many letters I got that said, I watched this with my mother while she was going through chemo. I mean, like stacks and stacks. It makes them feel better? I guess. And I would say to Lauren and Graham, and she would say, our motto should have been Gilmore Girls Were Bigger Than Cancer because she got the same things.

It was a show that if anyone was going through either medical or divorce or heartache or something, it was sort of the go-to comfort food for them. That's great. Are you kidding? It's amazing. It's amazing that young people are still into a show where there's no social media, there's no cell phones until midway through the show. There was no answering machines. I think

they had a pager, like a drug dealer that they walked around with so they could communicate a little bit. It was really... And Melissa McCarthy. And Melissa McCarthy. Who took over for Alex Borstein, who was supposed to be Zuki. No kidding. That was the way that happened? I think she told me that.

Yeah. Yeah, but Mad TV wouldn't let her out. I just work with Melissa. I love her. Yeah, Melissa's very talented. So funny. Yeah. She's just so funny.

Yeah. She's one of those people that can be so immediately funny on purpose, it's baffling. Yeah. There's not many of them. But she's also, like Alex but she's also you know like alex like she's somebody who has remarkable acting chops yeah you know and always had them like that's something that developed like she had them day one yeah yeah so that was a great run so you landed yeah so but you clearly after that you wanted to do more well what else am i gonna i'm

trained for nothing i have no children i don't either i have nothing to do more. Well, what else am I going to do? I'm trained for nothing. I have no children. I know, but like, I don't either. I have nothing to do if I'm not working. There's just nothing. What else am I going to do? See, like, I don't have that. Like, for me, it's like the idea of working. Is horrible.

No, no, no. I mean, I do comedy. I do this. I do, you know, the acting gigs here and there. And, you know, I do stuff. I work all the time. But the idea of getting involved with a TV show it's a big fucking underage it's and it's like it's like that's going to be your life that's it yes yeah and it is your life and

and if and if your life is and if that and if it's great then your life is terrific right it's horrible then your life is horrible and and but you know i was i've always sort of been able to like my whole career has been weird yeah like the one time I focused on something and said, I want this and went after it. Yeah. Was the worst time of my entire life. It was that, it was that job that Veronica's closet job that,

that forced me to. But you also knew that you needed something to get where you wanted to get. And you hadn't gotten it yet. You said that you wanted the executive producer credit. Yeah. So you could have some. And you hadn't gotten it yet. You said that. You wanted the executive producer credit so you could have some. I thought that's what I needed. But I think actually what I needed was to stop doing sitcom. And so it, because sitcom was not my future. Right.

So the format of Gilmore Girls was something different. Was that what didromedy? It was, I don't know what you call it. But an hour. But you, but it didn't require the endless pitching in rooms. No joke, not joke to joke to joke. Yeah, it was just, and frankly, when Gilmore came on, the WB didn't quite know what to do with it because it didn't quite fit the Dawson's Creek thing. It wasn't Superman and it wasn't Buffy.

And the star was a 32-year-old woman, which was way out of their demographic at that time. Yeah. Right. If you were menstruating, they had no interest in you. They really wanted them young. But there was something about just being able to write something that was purely like whatever I wanted to do. And because Gilmore came in under the radar that paid nothing for it they sent us off to Canada they had bigger problems they had a couple of those big Bruckheimer

shows or something that were blowing up all over the place and and by the time they paid attention to Gilmore uh we got a lovely review I mean they they they just didn't really focus on it. And then they started to focus on it. There was a little bit of bullshit back and forth. It was the normal stuff where they call you at the beginning before you've premiered. And they say, oh, we just want you to know we're very, the network's very angry and disappointed. And I said, well, I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry about that. Would you like to call my mother?

You two can commiserate. Have a lovely conversation. And it happened quite a bit and then finally i said look you guys you can fire me i have i'm happy to be fired yeah or you can never call me again because what i can't do i just just know i'm not going to be abused it's a blanket i understand you're angry and disappointed just know the message has been received so you can but you have you have many different ways you can go so just tell me what it is and they kind of went away for a while and then we got a beautiful review in the times and and they

sent me flowers and that was it and i never heard from them again it was great and they they didn't give me notes because they didn't so you didn't hear from them again never heard from them five years no six years nothing it was complete it was great complete science we just worked in a very tiny our own little vacuum. We took over the back lot. Yeah. We walked around, walked those girls around circles in Burbank. Yeah.

And then, and that was the right atmosphere for me. Just like complete megalomania. Just a very, like, don't bother me. If you don't like it, tell me to go away. Yeah. I will leave quietly. But otherwise, I just really. Well, what did happen with the last season?

Well, the last season, our contract was up. Yeah. And we were very burnt out because we had been writing every script. After five or six? We were six. We've done six seasons. And we went to Warner Brothers and we said, we would like, we don't need more money ourselves, but we need more writers and we need a directing producer on set. Yeah.

We need that. We just have to have that. If we're going to do another one. Yeah. And they said no. Yeah. Because they were used to us doing everything. Yeah.

And we were kind of like, okay, well. Yeah. Okay. And we left and we like, okay, well, okay. And we left and we left and they had another season and I've never seen it, but Lauren Graham would call me once a week and say, I just want to read to you what I'm saying this week. Because Lauren's character was a character

everybody was afraid of. They were afraid to write that character and I don't know why. Lauren Graham is smart and sharp and it's like, it's not a mystery what she's good at. So I never quite understood. And she couldn't understand

what the new writers were doing. No, because she was setting up for everybody else. They made her like the straight man. You know,

she was Judd Hirsch and everybody else was, you know, Dan DeVito. Because that's what they knew how to do. Yeah. So after that,

there's just a couple more. What happened to the return of Jezebel James? Oh my God. Well, the last strike happened. I went to New York. Because that was like

Parker Posey, right? That was Parker Posey and Lauren Ambrose. Two unbelievably talented people. Yeah. But they work so differently.

Like that was not a match made. Because Parker, I don't know if you've ever met Parker. Yeah, I did. Parker is all here. Yes. like that was not a match made because parker i don't know if you've ever had a wire yeah i did parker is all here yes right and parker will sometimes like she would be rehearsing and she would stop and she wouldn't tell you why she was stopping yeah and she would just you would see her

mind working and then she would just go back yeah and start at some point in the without telling anybody else so nobody knew where they were supposed to be. But that was just her thing. She was just like this. Yeah. A lot of headstands. Yeah. Cried every day at four o'clock.

Yeah. Every day at four o'clock I'd have to hold, I've never held anyone so much in my life but just crying. It's like, oh, it's four.

Okay. She was just very like, you know, and Lauren is very, but why? But why? Yeah. But why is that funny?

But why am I doing it that way? Well, it seems like if you see them as characters, that they should work. But this is who they were. It's people. Right. And both so talented. Yeah. And if they could have found a way to zhuzh together, I think it could have been really

great. Yeah. But the writer's strike happened. So like, and then it was sort of like, we're done. And then it just disappears. Yeah. Yeah. And then we went on the line and we walked around with signs. And then like, and then it was, it was sort of like, we're done. Then it just gets, disappears. Yeah. Yeah. And then we went on the line and we walked around with signs.

And then like Bunheads, Bunheads was for your mom? Bunheads. Bunheads. That's how, that's where you got your dancing thing in? I got the dancing thing in. I got to work with Sutton Foster. Yeah. Who is my dream and my everything.

I love her so much. And that was, it was a hot second of, of like literally I gave Capizio's my credit card and said, just keep the shoes coming because we had,

talk about no money, like nothing, nothing at all. Who was it for? It was for ABC Family, which does not exist anymore. They're called Freeform now. And it was a dance class,

a dance school show. Yeah, it was about a dance class, a dance school. So you're going to ABC Family, you made a fortune off of Gilmore, it was about a dance class, a dance school. So you're going to ABC Family. You made a fortune off of Gilmore Girls. You're a big hit. You can do whatever you want. And then this was a passion project? Or you thought like, what? You knew? I just need

to do my shit. I don't want a deal. Like, deals freak me out. I don't want to, like, we're under a deal now at Amazon. Although, are we? I don't know. Because I think they're getting rid of all their deals now because of the strike. But we were under a deal. But you're done with, this is the end of Maisel, right?

I know, but we were under a deal. So like the thing is when you're under a deal, you owe them your blood and your life. Okay. And I just sort of like. So you don't, it's a matter of the work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, look, I don't, I've made delightful money. I have a very comfortable lifestyle. I live in New York. Yeah. All I ever wanted to do was live in New York. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I don't, I've, I've made delightful money. I have a very comfortable lifestyle. I live in New York. Yeah. All I ever wanted to do was live in New York. Yeah. So I, I don't, you know, like I said, when you don't have kids, that's a huge. What was that choice?

I just sort of felt like the madness needed to stop with me. I feel like it was time to sort of break the cycle. Yeah. I don't know. I just, it was, I think that what I do is very narcissistic. Yeah. It's very much what I need. And you like doing it.

And I'm good. And I just don't know how great I would be. Right. Responsible for another human to feel loved. Right. Well, I mean, that's sort of the issue that Maisel has. Yeah. And what she got criticized for.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, completely. I mean, completely. I mean, we. But people just had them then. Rachel and I talked about this because I, you know, were. And God love Rachel because she's so brave. Yeah.

She didn't give a shit. Yeah. Like she was surprised as I was that it was such an issue. But she felt like, well, yes, this woman is a complete narcissist. It's got to be. And if you want to reach the height she wanted to reach, you've got to leave home. Yeah. You can't take the kids with you.

So where are we at? It's almost over, right? It's done. Okay. It's hard. It's bad. Well, it's like family, right? This cast.

Yeah, Shalhoub's so sweet. It was, we had a weird bonding. Like a really, like after five years we never there was no i've had enough of you yeah and and when the word came down it was very hard like we were very what do you mean it came down that it was last year but who said that you oh no shit no it wasn't me but things come to an end i understand that i thought it was so successful yeah but you know there's orcs to pay for there's a lot of orcs running around they gotta pay for the orcs mazel was a very expensive show by the end it was very i mean all those all those bells

and whistles yeah yeah yeah cost you know doing period shows are very expensive it's not just it's not just the cars and the dresses and the sets. It's, it's all the work afterwards, taking out all the modern stuff. I mean, the special effects are special. You wouldn't think we were special effects show. We got no dragons. But, but aside from that, like, okay, you know, granted you've been on shows that have gone on multiple years and, you know, even Gilmore girls after six. I mean, it sounds like, in other words, it could have been done. Yeah.

So is there a part of you that feels like you've told this story? Well, once we knew, we looked at that fifth season very differently. Right. And we had a fifth season planned that was not this fifth season. Right.

It was a fifth season that was to go on. Well, I mean, you had decades that you could have gone on. Yeah. So. This show could have ended up with the beginning of Hacks. Yeah. Something like that. And she turns into, after some terrible plastic surgery, she's taller.

Yeah. Well, you know what I mean. And she could have gone through generations of comedy. Yeah. Yeah. We touched on that in the fifth season yeah you know um but we we looked at the fifth season like okay let's let's let's land the plane yeah let's land it you know and because halfway through the fifth season

people started saying well i mean what about our reboot what i'm like oh my god just let me land the plane yeah let me let me make sure that if people liked the show and if people watched the show, that at the end they feel like their journey was fulfilled. That's close. Yeah, absolutely. That was very important to me. Oh, great. That's good. Yeah.

I was very lucky. My whole career I've been very lucky. I fell into this. Yeah. I didn't seek it out. And I've worked with such great people. And I'm just very lucky. I'm so lucky to be where I am right now. And as sad as I am, too. And also, we were going to do a panel on Monday, and we were all going to be back together again. And then it's like, and we're on strike. And it's like, and we're not there. So it's a bummer. And I miss them desperately.

I just miss seeing them every single day. But I had something that a lot of people go their whole career and they don't have. So I'm super lucky. That's great. Well, I'm sad, but I'm also happy. It sounds like a bittersweet thing. Now, what do you think of Broadway? I am worried about Broadway.

But, I mean, what do you think about doing Broadway? I would love to do Broadway. Broadway is, and I've toyed with it. I've stepped my foot into it. It feels like it's where you should go. I want to. But not in a bad way. Well, I want to do it. It sounds like you have, it feels

like you have a Broadway show in you. Well, thank you. I need to clear out, you need to clear you need to clear stuff out. Because Broadway takes decades. It takes so long to mount a Broadway show. And there's so much work that goes into it and i'm not afraid of that work it's just i haven't broadway's not something you slip in

sure in between seasons right broadway's is something you turn to and you go okay i'm here i'm down i'm gonna build this thing yeah so i'm i'm i'm thinking about it i'm tipping my toe into a little something now. I love live theater more than anything. I just think there's nothing like it. Yeah. And it's great. And I worry that I want Broadway to come back full force.

Yeah. It's still not back yet. It's not back yet. The audiences aren't back. You know, everything's not back yet. Yeah, sure. And Broadway, there's no, like, you know, you need butts in seats. You need people to come and sit.

Yeah, yeah. And get these sort of amusement park ride shows. Yeah. Yeah. It's, there's no, like, you know, you need butts in seats. You need people to come and sit. Yeah, yeah. And get these sort of amusement park ride shows. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, and the, and a lot of like the smaller, more interesting shows get shoved out still, you know, so I'm glad that they, the, they, I think they figured out a way for the Tonys to go on because the Tonys, unlike the Emmys and the Oscars, the Tonys are their lifeblood because Tonys can save a show

because people will watch a performance and go, oh, that looks interesting. I'll go see that. It's not the same for the others. So it literally saves lives and careers and shows. And Beetlejuice was failing and they went on the tonys and they had a huge good run good and then suddenly they're like packed and people are coming to see it so it it's a it's a life or death thing so they're doing the tonys this year i think that's important yeah it's

really really great um it's a it's a great and and theater people are the best yeah sure because they work harder than anybody else in the entire world. And it's all so immediate. Yeah. Yeah. And it's different every time. I mean, there's something, it's interesting like watching comedy on Netflix and things because it's fun to do, but it's not sitting in a club where something can go wrong. Sure.

And it was interesting when the latest Chris Rock special, and I've since heard that maybe they've fixed it, but where he, everything was driving toward this one joke. And it didn't go. And he fucked it up. He fucked it up. Yeah, I mean, I didn't watch it, yeah. There was something kind of great about that moment. Because it reminded you, oh, wait a minute, this is a live animal. Man, people used to tank all the time.

Yep. Like, you know, it used to be something to watch. Yeah. Man, people used to tank all the time. Yep. Like, you know, it used to be something to watch. It's like that story you told about that guy who was, you know, sweet at the beginning of the night, but by the time he went on, it was a fucking disaster. It's great.

I mean, there's a sense of danger in theater. There's a sense of danger in comedy. The sense of danger is something that, you know, when you do TV, when you do movies, you can get rid of the danger. Of course, yeah. You know, and the danger's fun. Well, I hope you do something. Well, we'll see. Nice talking to you.

I'm trying. Thank you for having me. Okay, there you go. That was exciting, lively. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel comes to an end tomorrow night, May 26th on Prime Video. You can watch all five seasons now. Hang out for a minute, will you?

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis

Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on saturday march 9th at 5 p.m in rock city at torontorock.com folks we've got a special treat this week for full marin listeners we pulled out some old segments of the show that not a lot of people have heard with

guests that made people at the time uh say what the fuck? Were the ends well-defined or were they blobby? The ends, I don't spend a lot of time looking at it. Maybe I should look at it and call you back? No, no, you can just try to remember it. Oh, yeah, it was good. The more you talk about it, the better. I pinched it off and it had a nice tail on it. Okay.

Was it fluffy with ragged edges, the tail? This is getting me a little uncomfortable. I mean, I'm playing along here. But okay, so now we're on the sixth question about the shit. That's what people who are homebound have to talk about. And that is also very common. That's basically what unites us. Hey, man.

You okay? You cool? You're cool're okay you cool you're cool i mean you're cool wow fuck yeah fuck all right just just breathe dude yeah just breathe bro man. I can only breathe out. No, no, no. You can just pull in. Pull in. Pull in. No, no, just pull in. Yeah.

No, no, no. Now do both. One after the other. Okay. That's all right. Yes, Senor Juarez, do you have a question for me or El Chupacabra? Mark, why don't you believe in God? Because I just don't find that I have a need to believe in God.

What happened? When did you die? Nothing. Wow. Is he all right? Hello? Hello? Oh, that's a shame. I think Singapore just found out what was about to happen to him.

We've had our first death on the air by caller on a show that has never taken calls before. This is a tremendous experience. I recorded some of my thoughts and memories of those clips as well. These were things that only happened during the first year of the show and only about a dozen times. To hear that bonus episode plus all the weekly bonus material as well as all WTF episodes ad-free, click on the link in the episode description to sign up for the full Marin on WTF Plus. You can also go to WTFpod.com and click on the WTF Plus tab at the top of the page. All right? Put a will together.

Get your ass checked. It's my new record. Here's some guitar. guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. boomer lives monkey lafonda cat angels everywhere all right all right