Billy Crudup

23:11But when I was younger, the times that were scary were the drunk driving times. My brother at 13 or 14 had to take over the wheel. Those things were not fun. But the guns and all and the colorful people and the new ventures. I mean, we went to flea market after flea market. We were always finding these new products. There was constant optimism. And occasionally he would be on the right side of the line as a bookie. It was not a very good bookie, which is really bonkers because it seems like that's a lock to play the house in those. In any case, I think there's probably he's gambling on the side.

23:46He just makes sure the bets are equal. Back to the jackpot thing. Oh, I made 10 grand this year. I'll put it on red. Why not turn it into 20 or lose it all? He had a riot shotgun next to his bed and his instructions were, all right, don't go near that. Right. Right. So it didn't feel totally dangerous. But as I got older, obviously, and was in a relationship myself, I began to see how his lack of self-reflection and his inability to take responsibility was not a virtue in a mentor. But also, you are paying the ultimate price, which is like you're moving nonstop, it sounds like. I went to nine different schools by the time I finished high school.

24:27Right. So you were probably buffeted by having two brothers. You're in the middle. If you're an only child in this scenario, you're probably pretty fucked up. And the three of us, we were posse. And you just look at each other and you're like, all right, this is batshit crazy, right? And as long as they both agree this is batshit crazy, somehow we're good now. It definitely helped. And, you know, we all had our different way of developing our understanding of our father later. But when we were younger, we just revered him. I found a journal, like 1981, I must have been, I guess, 12, in it. And I'm talking about how my dad's a winner.

24:58How being a winner is the most important thing in the world. And I'm so proud of my dad because he is the ultimate winner. You know, he just had that energy about it. I do think there's a moment though that people hit, which you obviously hit at some point. I hit it recently with someone in my life who was sort of a mentor when I was younger. And it was like, oh my God, this person's so great. And then you hit adulthood and you realize the reason they were so great is because they were your age mentally. And then once you pass them, you can start seeing. What a great observation. Oh, actually, that's just very immature.

25:31That's very childlike. Right. And then that's very disappointing to feel. That's perfectly said. I totally agree. Also, too, when you get to be the age they were when they were parenting you and you realize, oh, I don't think I would have done that. That's a really risky thing to do. Obviously, it was a different period of time. They were smoking in the car, no seatbelts, cooler in the backseat, feeding a Miller High Life while the windows are up. My poor older brother, he never smoked, but boy, was he exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke because I smoked when I first started acting out of nerves and because I guess my parents smoked and my younger brother smoked too.

26:05But my older brother, he was just around it all the time. He might as well have just started smoking. A hundred percent. Why not? But I think that considering how young they were when they were making these mistakes, you have both the kind of appreciation and empathy for them. And also it's exasperating. How were you dealing with the starting new schools nonstop? It was extremely helpful that my older brother, Tommy, we were a year apart in school. He was a year and a half older, but he was a junior when I was a sophomore. And he always set the table. Was he a stud? He entered St. Thomas. Well, we both entered St.

26:36Thomas Aquinas in 1984. So he entered the school as a junior and was the senior class president as a senior. Wow. And he could find his footing. And so when I walked into the classroom, it was always like, oh, you're Tommy's brother. Was he handsome and tough? Yes. both of those. He was a catcher on the baseball team. You had it made. When my career started to have some success, he was working as a publicist at MGM. He had been tending bar on the Upper East Side, Mad Hatter. It's the name of the place. I waited tables there in the summer. A woman who was a regular there said, you're not working here anymore.

27:11You're going to come to MGM and be my assistant just by the force of his own personality. And so he starts as a publicist. And when I would go to these premieres or I'd have some event, Tommy would be there bulldozing the crowd. He's like, I'm taking care of Billy here. You know, you want to talk to that person? They'll talk to that person. And he's just that kind of guy. So that was one thing that really helped. The other thing was because it started very early in our lives, adaptability and this sort of carnival life felt very familiar. What it sounds like is you either adjust and you can do it or it destroys you.

27:45Yeah. And I think your point about having siblings, the three of us were aligned, really looked after each other. And certainly my mom as the consistent one who had to make the money and go to PTA meetings and be involved. Back to the civics thing, she was involved in the community. She did the lion's share of mentoring and responsibility. I grew up very similarly. And then I lived in this first apartment I had for 10 or 11 years. and I lived in the next house for 16 years and never wanted to leave. The apartment that I've had in New York, I've had for 20 years. Right. Were you a freak? Like I was a freak about my bedroom.

28:24My bedroom had to be the same. I did not renovate until I was in a relationship with Naomi. Occasionally I would do things like build bunk beds for my son or try to fix all of the problems myself or install the appliances myself. And I did not want things changing. And I think at a certain point, Naomi realized that there was a slight indentation in the couch where I watched my baseball games for long enough to put an indentation in the couch. When she would walk into my apartment, it was like her eyes would bleed. You know, she's really interested in design. And frankly, my son and I were the occupants of that apartment.

29:00It was for us. You know, the reason we had a couch like that is because we like watching movies together. It all seemed incredibly comfortable. And a lot of the stuff, I had this thing, somewhat sentimental. And sometimes it kind of sneaks up on me in the ways that I'm sentimental. Like I said, I had a very close relationship with my grandfather. And when he passed away, nobody really had room for a lot of this stuff, except for me. I took the share of, put some of it in storage, and then kept some of it in my apartment. They had these beautiful glass-blown lamps. They reminded me of my grandparents' house and of him.

29:31And they were just kind of romantic looking. but they were sitting in my closet in my new apartment 20 years ago. And at a certain point, I said, I think I should hang these on the wall. Sure. And so I got some hooks. Of course you should. But they're not a sconce. They weren't plugged in. The decoration. And I realized if you looked at it at a certain angle, that you could imagine those lamps in a two-story house. That one might be in the den downstairs. And that one might be back up in the bedroom. So I think I was trying to bring in some of them. Oh, interesting. Well, to everybody else, they were like, what in the fuck are those lamps doing on the wall?

30:07Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are they doing up there? You turn those on? No, not the actor. He's the lamps guy. Do you find that you read up on the wall there and you need a lamp right there? But I did have this idea of getting an electrician to put in plugs so that I could put them in. But I never got around to that. So to your point, I wanted for my son to have some stability and consistency. Yeah, yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

30:58Just have one conversation with Alexa and it handles everything. Dinner reservations, entertainment, the works. It learns your style and puts thousands of services at your fingertips. What I love about this concept is how natural it feels. You're not barking commands. You're just talking. And it works across your compatible devices, Echo, Fire TV, and more. It's your all-new, smart, proactive AI assistant. And honestly, the idea of having AI that actually anticipates what you need, that sounds pretty amazing to me. Check it out at Amazon.com slash new Alexa.

31:56I was the new guy trying to fit in and class clown was my angle. Nice. And so anytime I got a part in anything, I was happy to humiliate myself for it. Did it do anything though, as far as preventing you from creating deep friendships? I have some lasting friendships from the time I was born to my oldest best friend, Rayfield Bemprod, fourth grade, Dallas, Texas. We're still extremely tight, had dinner with him two weeks ago and still have fantastic friends from high school and college. because back then you moved ultimately to Fort Lauderdale. You can't call your buddies in Texas because it's too much money to make it.

32:33I don't think young people realize that you couldn't talk on the phone. I became possessive of those friendships. I realized that people around me had been friends since first grade. And when I started to see that, I would reach out to Rafe. When we reconnected in high school and then when I was in college and subsequently thereafter, you'd have periods of time where you'd build different friendships. but it was really important to me to return to those friendships. So in a way, it did build a skill of attending to your friendships in whatever way you can. Yeah. Well, it was going to require effort if it was going to be maintained and you did.

33:08And it also gave me an incredible opportunity to live different kinds of ways in America. There were times when things were great and we were living in a nice house somewhere. And there were times when things were not so great. And it was a little precarious between Texas and Florida and North Carolina and New York. I've lived in a lot of different ways in this country. And I think it's a beautiful country in that way. And to get to experience the different kinds of people in that way, albeit not always great for a child growing up, it definitely had its virtues. So I think that's another reason I have incredible affection for this place and the people in it.

33:46How do you pick North Carolina just because of grandpa and dad? Yeah, exactly. Because if I had left New York and then I was in Texas and then Fort Lauderdale, I feel like I would be like, I need to get back to New York immediately. Well, it's interesting. We left in New York when I was six and we were on Long Island. So I only have kind of frosty memories. I didn't feel in possession of New York. We weren't in Manhattan. It was like another kind of place. And if you go to Carolina, you're going to have all sorts of Carolina swag up in your house. And so my grandfather and my dad had signs indoctrinating you, the propaganda.

34:17If God wasn't a Tar Heel, then why is this guy Carolina blue? You know that kind of stuff. Oh, nice, nice. Yeah, good point, too. We just love it. Hard to beat that. So there was a kind of mystique surrounding that university. And my brother ended up going to Texas Tech. And so it was sort of left to me to carry that tradition. Truthfully, I did not get in on my own merits. I was a part of a legacy group. I know full well how this country works, frankly, on the legacy bullshit. Okay. Because I am a benefactor of it. And it really started to haunt me at school because 85 % of the student body was in state.

34:55And so getting in from out of state was really difficult. And I was a good student and I was very active in sports. I was on the student council. I did all the things that you should do. I was a well-rounded student, but still definitely not good enough. It's so hard to get into that school out of state. So hard to get in. And because my dad and granddad went there and because my dad knew somebody at the admissions, I'm certain the reason that I got in. I did not like that at all. I felt like a fraud when it started to really dawn on me. Oh, really? And I think that was a part of me branching out and saying, I'm going to cut my own path as an actor.

35:27And that's why I got my master's. I paid for it. This is fascinating. You weren't floundering there though, right? No, I was thriving actually. I mean, I loved it. Yeah, that's an interesting thing you focused in on. I would feel that way if I got there and then I was an embarrassment and I wasn't rising to the level everyone else was on. But if I was thriving, I was grateful for it. But I realized as well that there was another candidate out there that was probably more qualified that didn't get it. Yeah, I saw it up close and personal. So when I decided to go and get my master's, I was mostly hedging my bets because I realized that there was nobody in my family that was in the entertainment business.

36:04I didn't have any reason to think that you could actually have a career. And most of the mentors in my life were teachers. And so I thought I would really love a life as a teacher. I really love performing, so I would love a life as a teacher of acting. Oh, interesting. So when you went and got your master's, you were mostly thinking, well, I'll teach. I was. I was hedging my bets. I would like to act professionally, but since nobody does. Again, you're rebelling now against your dad, which is like, I'm going to be ultra realistic. Correctly. I'm going to be responsible. I wanted to pay for my applications.

36:37You know,$50 fee here,$100 fee there. I wanted to drive to the auditions. I wanted to get in on my own merits if I got in anywhere. When I got into school at NYU, that felt like an enormous accomplishment in the way that Carolina did not feel like an enormous accomplishment, even though I still had to survive at school and do as well as I could. So that was a big part of me establishing my own sense of self. You were in the Tisch School? Yes. It's called the grad acting program because the undergraduate is the Tisch School and they're all a part of Tisch, but the undergraduate has three or four separate acting components.

37:14And the graduate program is a conservatory style program where there's 20 people in each class and you have three years and you just spend day and night studying voice, speech, text, movement. Kristen went to Tisch undergrad. Yes. And she did Alexander technique, breathing into people's mouths and the young men are wearing sweatpants and people have boners. You're not breathing into people's mouths. You're not. He says it every day and it drives me nuts. It's not true. That is not what you do with the Alexander technique. It's just a way to find a neutral spot so you can process air through your lungs and create a good, reliable sound with your voice.

37:53A nice, consistent voice. And listen to his voice. It's one of the best. Alexander techniques really worked out. Breathe into each other's mouths. I know. The sweatpants is dead right. And we had this incredible Alexander teacher whose name will come to me in a second, but he had like four acolytes. Is that the right word? The people who followed underneath him. And so you would typically not get with the grand master of Alexander. You spend most of your time with the other person, but occasionally you'd get a session with him. Sometimes he'll do table work where he'll try to help you align to your spine.

38:26You're trying to figure out how you naturally hold your body so you can find a more neutral place of starting and then build a character from there. And so he'll be like doing some work on you and you're lying there trying to readjust yourself and breathing. And he'll listen to your breath. He put his head on my chest at one point. Now we're getting somewhere. No. And then I hear. Oh, no. And I start laughing. He fell asleep. The laughing will come up and he goes, and take a breath in. Oh, wow. That's what's even worse, Monica, than I said. It's going to sleep on each other while you're breathing in each other's mouths.

38:57It's like sleeping with each other. We didn't breathe into each other's mouth. There's no breathing into each other's mouths. I also studied theater, so I take some umbrage with this because I did not breathe into anyone's mouth. This is funny. My Rafe, that's his name, right? Yep, you got it right. My Rafe is Callie, and she actually is in marketing at Netflix, and she did the J. Kelly trailer. This all circles back. Oh, you're kidding. Yes, but she brought up the other day that in one of my acting classes, I have no memory of this, but I had to wear a mask, like a blank mask. Oh, yeah, sure, yeah.

39:28Mask work. Mask work, yes. Sure, that's mask work 101. Neutral mask, we call that. That's right. We had to wear it around campus. Oh, no. We had to be. Wait, where was this? University of Georgia. Oh, wow. So you're a bulldog. Yep. I can't imagine doing that in Georgia. But her mask liked Alabama. No. Roll Tide. The mask is neutral. It said Roll Tide. That's the way to get killed at Georgia if you walk around with it. Roll Tide. She was like, no, we would try to find you on campus while you were walking around in your mask. Because they wanted to laugh at you? Yeah, and they wanted to like distract me, but I had to not pay attention and be neutral.

40:02Could you not remember walking around campus with a mask on? No, that's like hazing stuff. It is. Acting is already so humiliating. I know. It's so embarrassing. It's not a bad idea in general to get you used to the idea of rejection, which is a common denominator for us as actors for the rest of your life. Yeah. Anyway, I was pretty impressed with myself because I was like, man, I was committed. You don't even remember. You were so in character, you weren't even imprinting memories. Exactly. Yeah, Monica's brain was offline. Man, I do remember neutral mask work. Okay, so this is really great and a bit informative to my broader questions about your path.

40:38But you're not hell-bent on being a professional actor. I wasn't until the first day of acting school when you have something called showings, where the incoming class does the monologues that they did to get into school. And this is the first year, second year, and third year. The second year does seam work. And the third year does whatever they end up doing, whether it's a personal piece or seam work. When I saw a collection of 60 other young people who were actually invested and interested in a craft, and I saw the shit that they were doing, I thought, oh no, that's exactly what I want to do.

41:17I just needed to be around people who were taking it seriously. Now, at the time, I was targeted to get my master's, et cetera. But there was no question that they rung a bell in me. Well, now it wasn't a pipe dream. It was a reality that was observable in all these other people. Exactly. So maybe it didn't seem so crazy. That was it. And, you know, at Carolina, I wasn't a theater major, even though I did theater because I knew my dad and my grandfather would not accept that. So I was a speech communications major. What the hell did that mean? It meant you took class in broadcasting and marketing and rhetoric.

41:48But they also, they had a performance studies concentration. so I could take classes like oral interpretation of prose and poetry. My dad thinks I'm doing marketing. But meanwhile, I'm figuring out how to do like a James Joyce short story as a performance. I'm having a ball. You're doing monologues. And I'm doing monologues and getting A's, most importantly, to make up for that not-so-stellar 1.7 GPA. Yeah, that we started with. Trying to right the ship. So I did a lot of performing. And I also did work in the theater department there where there were two teachers there, Susanna Reinhart and Didi Corvinas.

42:22I took introduction to acting with them and they were like, you can sign up for whatever class you want. You have such an interest in this and you have so much energy. I took the whole slew of classes in the acting department and I did performances there. So I was around a lot of people, but we were undergraduates. And you're in North Carolina. You know, Playmakers has a great repertory theater and they produce really good work, but it wasn't the same kind of thing as seeing these hyper ambitious, focused, obviously professionally talented people. Robin Weigert, who's a fantastic actor, she did this monologue that she wrote that was an imagined discussion between, I hope I'm getting it right, but I think it was Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso.

43:07Whoa. And she was like Meryl Streep. And she was in my class. Yeah. I'd just never seen anything like that. It was incredible. So you graduated in 94, and then you get your first big Broadway plays in 96? 94, actually. It was about six months after I graduated school. I landed a part in a Tom Stoppard play. Arcadia? Arcadia, yep. That was at Lincoln Center. Were you shocked to have success that quickly after graduating? Definitely. And my friends and colleagues make church to make me feel like I should be shocked. Yeah. Everybody was extremely happy for me. Now, I'm a Philistine, but I understand Tom Stoppard is what everyone has a boner for.

43:45Like all my friends that are super into acting, he's the dude. You've done a couple. I have. His writing is just unusual. He's got a fascinating mind. And English is his second language, or maybe his third or fourth. I'm not sure. I think he was born in Czechoslovakia. His attendance to language is just unusual. He thinks on different levels at the same time. And he was actually there for rehearsals. Trevor Nunn was directing it. I used to watch these tapes called Acting Shakespeare. They were like VHS tapes that had the Royal Shakespeare Company. And Trevor Nunn was the youngest at that time, I think, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company talking about monologues.

44:21And it was like Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, Anthony Hopkins, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, just badasses. And so all of a sudden, this guy that I was watching in high school talk about text and language and how to lift it and perform it and celebrate it was directing me in this Tom Stopper play. And Tom Stopper's there. So Tom Stopper, back to the point about his use of language, I tried to say very little because I did not want to get fired. And I was like, sorry, Tom, is that a double entendre there? And you go, perhaps or maybe a triple could be quadruple if you take the time. what do i do with that though it's incredible i'm like is that playable he's like no definitely not but if you were asking just a brilliant brilliant mind and that character in particular he's like this tutor to this 13 year old math prodigy he wants to be byron he thinks of himself he's like ah i'm a fucking tutor and so like he's got to make all of his jokes to himself but the audience gets to share in that.

45:25So he's a great conduit for the audience and he's a romantic figure. And then he dies saving her. That's like winning the lottery. You come out of school into the professional life as this hero, this incredibly articulate, beautifully dressed by Ronic hero. Dangerous first hit. Definitely nowhere to go, but down from there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that'll get you hooked. We had a cast, Robert Sean Leonard, Victor Garber, Paul Giamatti, Jenny Dundas, fantastic actors up and down the line. So there was a great support system in it. Now, when you're doing that and it's working and it's heaven, are you content or are you like, I want to do movies?

46:05Where are we at and where we think is next? I wasn't thinking about that. No, the sort of training that I had implicitly or explicitly was suggesting that it might be a good idea to take as many different kinds of parts as possible so that you will build some level of versatility to combat the periods of time where you are uncastable, which just happens. So I was interested in the parts and it didn't matter to me whether or not they were in film or on the stage. I discovered pretty quickly though that television scared me because I had auditioned for, it was a news show, it was a pilot. They wanted me to do a screen test and I was in New York and I was standing on the corner, I think 57th and 6th on the pay phone with my new agent, Philip Carlson.

46:52And he was telling me that I had to sign a deal. And I was like, cool. What does that mean? He goes, well, this deal is a seven-year deal. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. A seven-year deal for what? He's like, the show. But I don't have the partner. And I'm like, they don't want to fly you out unless you're going to do it if they cast you. And I'm like, do what? I read one scene. How will I know what it is that I'm going to do? You're going to do this scene for the next seven years. I'm going to do this scene for the next seven years? That's not going to be great for the whole versatility game.

47:23That scared the shit out of me. And I kind of stopped. I was lucky enough to make enough money to cover my expenses. You're a nut. My nut, as my dad would say. I was ready to do that, not to make money. But I was lucky enough to make enough money. Okay, so when you get in sleepers, because the play is 94, sleepers is 96. And just to remind everyone who's in sleepers, because you might have forgotten. It's Brad Pitt. Yeah. It's Kevin Bacon. It's Robert De Niro. Dustin Hoffman. Jason Patrick. Minnie Driver. What? Directed by Barry Levinson, who made some of my favorite films. Oh, Diner. Oh, the Baltimore Trilogy.

48:00Avalon. Phenomenal. What could be more exciting? Nothing. Yeah. That's so cool. How do we compute that? Like, first play is a Tom Stopper, and then our first movie is like fucking De Niro and Hoffman. I was shitting myself. Yeah. Were you intimidated? It was Jason Patrick. Brad Pitt, Ron Eldard, and myself, who were supposed to be four buddies. And we got sent to juvie and not treated well. Ron Eldard and myself, our characters did not turn out well. We became a part of the Westies. We were all molested and beaten. So Brad Pitt was able to get out of it in some way. Jason Patrick was able to get out of it in some way.

48:36But Ron and I got caught up in it. In any case, we were paired up for most of the scenes. He had a very similar approach to acting that I did. We were really acting nerds. That was a safety net for me. We talked shop a lot, sat there marveling over De Niro on the stand, playing a scene. You know, we could barely hear him and watch him work. Did you have the type of personality you try to talk to these folks between takes? No. I mean, Dustin Hoffman, he played our lawyer, so he would talk to us. And he was extremely entertaining, often trying to steal our lines. I might add, Dustin. Not his first roadie.

49:08But he was incredibly charming. And my mom came to set one day and he made this big thing of like jumping over the, what do you call them? Benches or what's in the courtroom where the people sit. Yeah, the pews. I know, I want to say pews, but it sounds kind of churchy. It is. Well, he leapt, frogged over them and it was like, what's her name? Georgian. Georgian. And my mom was out of her skull. She still has the picture of me and Dustin and her from that day. So that was an amazing moment. There were lots of aspects of that that were novel in a way that you can't describe. And you're trying not to fuck it up.

49:45I don't know anything about film. Your dad must have been going berserk. My dad started to go berserk when I did Without Limits. And it was about an athlete, Steve Prefontaine. My dad started to get on board because Without Limits was the first time I was starring in something. He actually had this hilarious habit where he was terribly interested in words. It's somebody who tries to use big words but always gets it wrong. And my dad was kind of like that, but he had a word a day calendar. And on his answering machine, he would always leave. He'd say, well, you missed me this time. However, I am going to give you a gift today.

50:18The word of the day is superfluous. Superfluous. And he would change it every day? Regularly. If it was every day, probably not, but regularly. And me teaching you this word is in fact the definition of the word. Superfluous. You don't need to know this. He might say something like, hey, Bill, you were superfluous in that. And you're like, okay. Maybe you got the super part. Sure. Maybe going for superb. Okay. So without limits, Prefontaine, you're already a runner. That helps. People love to play Prefontaine. This has happened a few times. Well, you know what happened actually is they were part of the same creative team.

50:57The producers, writers, directors, Tom Cruise was going to do it first. Then there was some disagreement about how to proceed. Of course he wanted to. He's the best on-screen runner we've ever fucking had. A hundred percent. Nobody runs as fast as he does. It's terrifying how fast he runs. During the period of time that they were fighting about how to make it happen, he felt like he aged out of the part. Okay. So he became a producer. But what happened was, I can't remember who it was, the producers or the writers, but one group got enough money to start making the movie. At which point the other group was like, we have to make the movie first.

51:38So they were literally in a race and I had no idea. I had been cast. I moved up to Eugene, Oregon, where we shot a bunch of it. I went to the field where he ran and somebody said, which of the movies are you with? And I was like, which? And that was when I learned that there was a competing movie happening at the same time. Okay. That was the Jared Leto version. That was the Jared Leto version. Ours was called Pre first. And because theirs came out first and it was called Pre Fontaine, they had to change the title and it became Without Limits. Okay. Okay. This is like Wyatt Earp and Tombstone.

52:15Exactly the same. Speaking of which, I'm about to go to London to do a stage adaptation of High Noon. So I've been watching Westerns and Patrick Wilson turned me on to a whole bunch. I I didn't really know the Western genre so well. My Darling Clementine, if you like the Wyatt Earp story, Henry Fonda plays that. It's awesome. My Darling Clementine. Okay, I like those movies. I like a Western. They're very applicable to right now. And what you discover is a lot of the writers, the guy who wrote High Noon, the movie, was blacklisted. If you rewatch High Noon under these circumstances, you see it's really not about that kind of heroism.

52:52It's about cowardice in the face of a violent threat and how people kind of turtle up, even for somebody who they have lionized before, if they feel like it's not in their best interest. So is what McCarthyism? The big red scare was people giving up names, people being blacklisted, companies not wanting to put out anything that might be perceived as left leaning. So yeah, that culture, you watch those movies that were made in the 50s and it's essentially, how do you make a civil society out of a lawless community? So without laws and the rule of law and consistency with the rule of law and its application, what you have is a bit of chaos.

53:34And can you have a civil society in a chaotically structured environment? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I become very aware of you, of course, like a lot of people my age, almost famous. I watched a little clip of you and Sam Jones today, which was kind of funny. Oh, he's awesome. He's the greatest. And I loved his show off camera. It was so great. But he's talking about, he actually was the one who had to photograph you for the cover of Esquire. By just coincidence. He's a great photographer. Oh, he's a fantastic photographer. All of our artwork is shit he took of me nine years ago. He's a phenomenal photographer, but I was, this can't be a nice story.

54:14Well, no, it's not nice or not nice. It's that it was not for you. Yeah, it was not. I think that's my big curiosity from looking at you from afar. What wasn't for you? Being famous. Oh, cover of magazines. Got it. It didn't feel right. I'll tell you what happened was in the 90s, there was this big rush by entertainment glossy magazines, and there were a lot of them to discover the next big thing. So there was something called the it guy or the it girl. I'm sure they still have it. I sound like I'm 104. We had things called the it guy. It used to be more in your face. It was different. It was intense.

54:56They crammed some people down your throat and you rejected most people. I want to say someone's name, but I don't want to say their name. I was aware of those kinds of things. They were happening before people actually produced anything. I was not feeling terribly confident. I feel like I did good professional jobs in movies, but I didn't think I was giving like memorable performances, but they thought I photographed well. So they wanted me for their magazines. And I realized I didn't want to be a model. I didn't want to wear somebody else's clothes. I was just interested in acting. I definitely didn't want to talk about myself or talk about my personal experience because how am I going to be able to convince people that I'm somebody else if they know all this shit about me?

55:34And I'm also not that good. So, you know, that was a conscious strategy on my part, much to the chagrin of many people I worked with. Yeah. So this is kind of common. We've interviewed a bunch of people. They're hesitant to be interviewed because they have this old architecture of you don't want people to know the real you so that you can convincingly play with these other people. Neutral mask, if you will. Neutral mask, if you will. Breathing in one another's mouths, damping on each other's chest. No, no, no. We already talked about that. No, no. I think a lot of actors said, well, I don't want everyone to know me because then they won't be able to believe me in this.

56:08That's the logic they've employed. But I do think simmering under that are some fears. I'll tell you this. I was not unambitious in my work. I went after some shit. People would say sometimes, oh, you don't want to be a star. I was like, did you see Watchmen? You think I was not trying with Dr. Manhattan? I mean, I wasn't demurring. Almost Famous wasn't meant to be a niche drama. It's just that it didn't work. You know, Almost Famous lost money. It did? That's insane. This is so weird, right? So people think about it, and I was number one on the call sheet. And since I wouldn't do press either, it wasn't like my rate was going up.

56:42So I wasn't getting a lot of the opportunities. You know, I had to audition. I had to put myself on tape with dummy sides for Alien Covenant. At this point, when that came at 47 or something, I've been in a lot of things. I wasn't demurring from that, but I wanted to do it on the merits of my work. Yes. Not on a magazine's interest in exploiting my cheekbones, which by the way, is cartilage from my hip. So I don't walk so well now, but I've got these great cheekbones. You had them put in from your hips. Yeah, from when I was young. My parents did that. Oh, good for them. They wanted to set me up for success.

57:17They thought ahead. Got it. They made the right call. They're gorgeous. I remember sharing a story about going to a couple of different schools. And the way that the writer rendered it was that he had a very difficult upbringing. And that was one of the first articles that I think came out. My mom was in tears. So I think there was also a part of me that was protective of my parents and the people around me. But also, it kind of sounds like it's the UNC thing all over again. Like you really are only comfortable if you feel like you really earned something. Probably. There we go, Monica. You kind of circle.

57:55I think that's a good observation. It's hard for me to be comfortable in general because I think I realize how much luck there is in life. I walked into, even though, you know, we talked about some of the difficulties of childhood, I walked into a fastball in my life. I got really lucky in a lot of different ways. I'm going to go one step further on that. So I think you were feeling like your dad if you were to jump in the spotlight and do all these things. That would have been a very dad move. Definitely. Live fast, die hard. Yes. That is not a long career. Yeah. 100%. So that's what I mean is there might also have been in the mix a little bit of I'm still defining myself as not being like my dad.

58:29I am absolutely sure. I think that's in so many aspects of my young adulthood. Yeah. Is trying to figure out the ways I'm the same, the ways I'm different. How can I embrace the things that I loved about him that are in me without accepting the things that were difficult? And often they're the same thing. That's what's so hard. That's true. That's really true. The irony is if you're me, and then you just wake up and you look in the mirror and you're like, oh, I'm him. I tried to be the opposite and I just really became him. I did this show called Hello Tomorrow. Which I love, by the way. I appreciate that.

59:02Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a sort of death of a salesman sort of story. They're selling plots on the moon. Selling plots on the moon, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a traveling salesman in a retro American future. So he's selling timeshares on the moon. Except there are no timeshares on the moon yet. but he believes that, well, it was totally coincidental. We shot in Manhasset, the street, like in the opening sequence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in Manhasset. On every call sheet, they list a hospital and the hospital is North Shore Hospital, the hospital that I was born in. Whoa. And you're playing your dad.

59:31I'm playing my dad. Yes, you are. And when I look at pictures from that and some of pictures of my dad, I mean, it's like spitting image. You're so good. When you sit down in the diner with the guy who wants nothing to do with you. The way you turn that whole scenario. Oh, thanks, dude. Was so fucking skillful. You can't really act your way into it. There has to be some kind of cellular salesman in you. You know, my dad, there was a kind of curiosity, even in the word thing. He was curious about things. He loved people much more than I do. Terribly interested. You know, he'd get into a cab and, hey, how you doing up there?

1:00:10Give me your name. I see it and I don't exactly know how to pronounce it. And I'd like to be correct. And the guy's name is like, it's John. Wonderful to meet you, John. I'm Tommy Crudup. You can call me TC, Big T, Top Dog, whatever you like. This is my son, Billy. I call him Disco. You can call him whatever you like, too. He's an actor, John. Now, tell us about you. Oh, wow. And then he would lean into the conversation. Yeah, so gregarious. Typically, by the end of it, trying to get John to be a business partner with him. Sure, sure. You ever thought about selling Spanish Bibles out of the trunk of this thing?

1:00:47What are your thoughts on the inflatable ice chest job? Go great in this cab. Unique. From the outside, what I have observed in the kind of theories I've come up with about you, and it's substantiated by people I run into who know you, which is like, you're an actor's actor. Every actor has a boner for you. It's a fact. Even the actor-iest actors, there's a ton of reverence there. And a lot of the guys that I know that are really fucking good, they all admire you in a very similar way. And Jennifer Aniston, we just had Jennifer Aniston on and she said the exact same thing. I feel the same about her.

1:01:21But I was like, oh, this is one of these unicorns who was not pulled towards a ton of money like I was and loves the stage and just prioritize that. And it seems almost impossible for someone to make that decision. If you're like me and you're a greedy little pig and you want security. So I've just always been curious from afar of like, wow, this guy has some kind of integrity that I really can't imagine having. Is this broadcast? Because I'd like to put this out all over the place. I really appreciate that set up there, Dax. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:02:06My interest was in trying to exploit the best of my potential. This kind of goes back to civics because you should contribute to your community. And if you have a skill set that's applicable in some way that can contribute to your community, even if it's stupid storytelling, if you can be really good at it, you can be really useful in a certain sector of somebody's life. You know, there's part of their life they need a half hour break. Like that guy in Hello Tomorrow, that character feels really useful when he can light that guy up with a little bit of hope. And I feel useful when I can tell a good story and I can collaborate with people with disparate upbringings and ways of seeing and create something that none of us imagined individually.

1:02:54One of the reasons why I love New York, why I've been there, it is pluralism, right? Smashed in your face, you know, it's just compressed, distilled. And so the audience is there. Hasidic Jews sit next to a cowboy. And on your way to work on the train, you're going to sit next to all of those people. And one of them is going to tell you to fuck off once a day. So you're not going to be able to get a big head about it, but you're going to be a part of the community. And so I suppose that's one reason why the theater in particular, I think the biggest reason is because that's where I've had some of the best parts.

1:03:23You know, how do I turn down some of those parts? I studied this kind of work so I could apply it in this way. So if somebody is going to give me an opportunity, I should get off my ass and do it and keep my cost of living low. That's another big thing. Well, one thing I happen to know about you is you did have a safety net from 1998 to 2007, I want to say. Oh, more than that. More than that. Yeah, hold on. I was actually just. Don't say, though, what. Okay. 1998 to 2005. A big safety net. And I've printed something up for you, and I hope you'll cold read this for me. I certainly will. Because Monica probably doesn't know this, and this is great.

1:04:02Yeah. Get in position. Oh, this is exciting. This is a treat for you. Oh. Prada sunglasses. $548. Striped blouse from the row,$1 ,600. Hermes Birkin bag,$38 ,500. Realizing halfway home from Santa Monica that despite how cute you look, you're going to Tonka in the car. No, no, no, no. Stop. Stop it. Priceless. There are some things money can't buy for everything else there's faster cart. I don't even know what tango means but does that mean shit yourself? Yes it is that I can do a better table How dare you This is like that thing I wrote Realizing halfway home from Santa Monica that despite how cute you are It's too hard It's too hard Hold on I'm a professional If you pay me a little money I'll take it very seriously This is the only way we're getting the campaign back I think I deserve some money for this.

1:05:12I can guarantee in the 13 years I did it, I never had to say$38 ,500. Yeah, right. Realizing halfway home from Santa Monica that despite how cute you look, you're going to... I can't do it. I can't do it. Oh my God. It's incredible. That's great writing. I got to tell you. That is right in the case. I'm so embarrassed. Did you watch this great doc we watched? It was about these people. I mean. No, that's the good one where they fight. Chimp crazy, I think. Is that what it's called? I don't know it. Oh. All these people who try to own these chimps, they end up getting their faces eaten off, right?

1:05:44But one of the chimps was Tonka. And Tonka would wipe his duty on the glass. And they would throw his poop. And they would make Tonka clean his. So when Monica had an accident, she's been referring to it as Tonka-ing. I said, I felt like I was Tonka. Like I was just an animal with like no control. We have a friend, Naomi and I, who is desperate to write a book called Shit Happens about all of those kinds of stories. Our favorite stories on earth are, we call it unauthorized evacuation. We have a prompt on Fridays and people tell us stories of their unauthorized evacuations. There was another one that I really liked where somebody thinks they're going to pass wind and something else.

1:06:24It's I gambled and lost. Yeah, that's right. People say I trusted a fart. I haven't heard that one yet. I trusted a fart. I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it. Let's see. This is you. Prada sunglasses,$548. Striped blouse from the row,$1 ,600. Hermes Birkin bag,$38 ,500. Realizing halfway home from Santa Monica that despite how cute you look, you're going to Tonka in the car? Priceless. There's some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Master's Car. I mean, there's a professional. Thank God he was not around in 1997 when I was auditioning for that. But that's a gift of all gifts, right?

1:07:05For sure. That gives you the freedom to have the exact career you wanted. I was just texting last night with one of the producers of the MasterCard campaign. Greg Lotus is his name. You're so good with names. It's kind of maddening. Joyce Thomas. She started the whole thing. Joyce King Thomas. By the way, what if they're all made up? And I'm getting them all wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're selling it though. Do you know Timothy Oliphant? Yes. So he does what you're saying, but he really does it. He says, Deborah so-and-so, and then that's not who it was. And he started saying names when we interviewed him.

1:07:38I go, stop. You know these aren't the real names. It's very possible. They're close. It's important to give these two credit, though, because Greg wrote to me last night. And Joyce is at the point where she could be in the Advertising Hall of Fame or something. He was like, would you write something? And I wrote exactly that. She worked for an advertising agency. And they were often trying to get an account, to win an account. So they would do a temp version of what they were doing or do a real version of it and try to give it to the company, in this case, MasterCard. But I did one for Champion Athletic Wear and MasterCard.

1:08:09And I was just doing it for the session fee and getting some experience doing voiceover. She called my agent and said they won the account and they just wanted to use the voice that they used in the track. And I got to say the first year or so, even though I was making some money, I didn't understand what I really had. And I was kind of like, oh, this is a pain in the ass. I got to go up to 20th Street again and go record. It was about two years into it where I realized this is the gift of a lifetime. So you're right. I had an enormous safety net. I mean, when you're starting out, if you can bank on 20 grand, 50 grand, whatever it is a year, your life opens up creatively.

1:08:49You don't have to take those jobs. You don't have to do seven year contracts or the marketing. You just work your six months at a time. Try to keep yourself employed, stay in the game, take the good parts that you can. But I'm telling you, by year 10, I could walk in, do 20 spots in about 20 minutes. And it's iconic. It's a cool thing to be a part of. It was also a great spot. It's actually one of the greatest. It became a cultural phenom. I occasionally would be invited to these charity events, be like a golf event, because I played golf when I was growing up and I like competing at anything.

1:09:20So I would show up at these charity events and I'd walk up to the foursome and I'd say, hi, I'm Billy Crudup. I'm your celebrity fifth man on the team. And inevitably I get, no, you're not. And I'd say, well, I think this is group number four. He's like, I just paid 10 grand for goose gossage. Who the fuck are you? And I was like, nah, I'd have the MasterCard in my bag. So I just wait until like the third or fourth hole after I'd had a birdie or something and help the team. I'd go, so you guys don't like theater? You don't get to see a lot of theater? Well, there are some things money can't buy.

1:09:55And they go, oh, get the fuck out of here. It's a MasterCard church. Yes. Yeah. Fuck to Chi Chi Rodriguez or whoever I want to play with. Look at Arnett. Arnett, like, oh, dude. He's been Jamesy trucked for like 25 years. That's incredible. I mean, oh, I'm so jealous. Okay. We've arrived at Jay Kelly. Let's talk about Jay Kelly. Amazing. Also, we've had Reese and Jennifer. You're the third morning. I can almost not do any more morning show. Yeah, we've had almost the whole cast. By the way, another blessing getting that part. I mean, that was just great. Good luck. Fun season this season. So hope you're tuning in to the morning show.

1:10:32Yes. So everyone check that out. That's still airing on Apple Plus right now. I don't think we've reached the end of the season. No, you're stellar on that. Of course. Thank you. Jay Kelly. I'm just reading Hermes bag. I looked up those prices. I wanted it to be real. That's what a fucking bag comes. 38 ,000? Not all of them. I mean, I don't have one. The one I looked up. That's tough. That's really tough. Okay, let's talk about Jay Kelly. So Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach. Yeah. We love Noah Baumbach. Yeah. Terrific director. Squid and the Whale is the first thing I saw. Yeah, amazing. Kicking and screaming back in the day.

1:11:07He's made so many good movies and has been such a consistent filmmaker and such an interesting filmmaker for a long period of time, very hard to do. I think if you make one good movie as a director, like a good movie, you're probably a really, really good director. If you make two good movies, you're probably one of the better directors of your generation. If you make three good movies, you're freaking great. You're in for the history books. They're really hard. They're really hard. People underestimate. Herding cats, especially if it's something that you have written and then you've got your own guts in there on the paper.

1:11:43And that's a hard thing to sustain. And Noah has done that for a long period of time. And there's a beautiful script about a movie star. George Clooney. Yes, I know. George Clooney, perfectly cast in the sort of twilight of his career. Looking back, back to your earlier question saying, was it worth it? Or what did I do wrong? Or what did I do right? And he's got two grown children. The last is leaving. Exactly. and he starts to have a bit of existential crisis and immediately, narratively in the film, his mentor dies. So he ends up at a memorial for his mentor and all of a sudden his North Star is gone and his children are sort of out of the picture and one of his former acting school friends and roommate is at the memorial as well and they haven't seen each other in a long time And so Jay Kelly, George, is feeling like nostalgic.

1:12:40He's like, hey, man, you want to go get a beer? And so the character I play is his acting school buddy. And we go get a beer. We start to bond about, oh, who's still working? And basically nobody is working still. One of them does voiceovers from that class. Jay's the one who took off and just kept flying. But it turns out the character I play is holding on to some things. George's character, Noah built into it a little bit of a narrative trick where George's character says to my character, oh, you were always the one we looked up to. You were the great actor in the class. I mean, I could watch you do anything.

1:13:13I could watch you read the menu. And so then that's what the character has to do in a way that is impactful. And so the way that Noah had written it, he was describing a kind of like method acting that is not the way that I work. And the way that I work is, like I was saying before, storytelling. I just want to try to tell the story that the writer has written and that the director is trying to compose in a way that makes the audience become involved. I don't try to manifest emotion. If emotion comes in the playing of a scene, I'm not afraid of it, but the aim is to accomplish the story, the event of the scene.

1:13:50Why is the scene in the movie? Why is the scene in the play? All right, let's make sure that the three of us as actors collude to make sure that event happens. And then whatever happens in between, you're listening to each other And then you have something that is creatively novel because you're all trying to be witness to it at the same time. And this one is saying, no, this event has to happen. I kept telling, no, I'm not sure that I know how to do that. So I told him, I'll tell you the way that I work. And I think it could work in the same way. And I describe it exactly the way that I did now, which is kind of long.

1:14:24This is one scene in the movie, you know, and he's listening very patiently to me. I was actually in London doing a play at the time and they were shooting part of it in London. So on the day off, I was going to go and do this scene. And I kept writing to him saying, you know, what if it's kind of like this? And he'd listen and say, oh, that's an interesting idea. And then I'd come in for rehearsal, me and George and Noah rehearsed. And George is like, yeah, I hear you're going to try some new things out. And I was like, yeah. And, you know, we wouldn't quite get to them. And I was noticing that the script wasn't changing.

1:14:56and like two weeks before I was like, geez, I better figure out some fucking method shit. So I did a quick and deep dive into whatever I could in their repertoire. And during the day's work, I said to Noah and George, I got no idea how this is going to go. So I've got a lot of backup plans, but just bear with me if you could. Is that easy or hard for you to say out loud? It's okay to say now because I know that I want to be helpful. That's my baseline. Yeah. It's not ego. I don't want to be destructive to it. It doesn't mean I'm not passionate about, I'll have these discussions with the writers, great writers on the morning show, Carrie Aaron the first two seasons, then Charlotte Stout the second two seasons and their whole team.

1:15:36And if something doesn't sound right to me or I feel like it's going down a way that I don't understand, we have big creative discussions. I don't have any problem having that kind of discussion if I don't understand the story. This one was more about accommodating my ability to tell it in a way. Like what Noah probably wanted to say is like, I understand you work that way, but the character you're playing doesn't work that way. Correct. And I'm like, but no, I'm a 57-year-old actor. I've been doing it for so long. That's great that you did that. But this character that I wrote that you're going to come play, does it different?

1:16:04Precisely. But it's kind of life imitates art a little bit. It was. It was really great. And to be asked to do something that you don't know how to do, that's a big gift. But the reason why I'm saying all of this is because that's the pretext for George's character to go on a journey of discovery. So if I don't make that work, him going away dramaturgically doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Failure to launch, we'd call it. It's a failure to launch. It was a really great experience. And I had known George and wanted to work with George. But moreover, the stories about George and Adam Sandler and their partnership.

1:16:42Does Adam play his agent or something? Plays his agent. Yeah, yeah. They didn't give us the movie. Normally I would have watched. Yeah, we tried. I could only watch the trailer. So I'm piecing together who Sandler is. Sandler is his longtime agent and Laura Dern is his publicist. I mean, there is a murderer's row in that cast of great actors. And Noah, the way that he described it, he was feeling somewhat disenchanted with movie making after he made a film called White Noise. And it wasn't received in the way that he imagined it would be received or the story didn't land in the way that he had hoped that it would land.

1:17:13And it felt kind of cynical about it. And this is sort of a beautiful, not necessarily love letter, but description of the carnival life that we lead. It's gilded with the George Clooney charm and also a beautiful, heartfelt performance. And every part of it, you know, I only worked for like three or four days, but I'm at every press thing. I love being a part of this group. Oh, you guys want me to show up in Venice? Sure, I'll buy my own ticket. You know, like whatever. Cover of Esquire magazine? You got it, baby. I'm up for it now. Now I'll do it. Oh, that magazine folded? Damn it. I'll do the online version.

1:17:48I'm riding their coattails as far as I can. It was a beautiful thing for me to be a part of and a really gorgeous film. I talked to Netflix and also some personal publicists and I was like, guys, if there is a movie that the Arm Cherries would want to see, because our listeners, we call them Arm Cherries. We talk so much about this, about looking back on your life and the things that seem like they're going to be so great aren't necessarily so great. I mean, it's so us, Callie, my Callie. She obviously saw it a long time ago and was like, it's so good. And it's about this. And I was like, that's our audience.

1:18:23So I really encourage the Armsteads to see it. I would expand on that by way of saying, I do think that's an American phenomenon in particular, this notion, and we talked about it a bit with our fathers too, that my great life is about to begin because it's the land of opportunity and abundance. You're sure that you're gilded life. And what better way to describe that than a movie star who we think somehow as a completely protected, gorgeous life, free from any kind of malady at all, well protected from the mundane realities of living. And if you are busy looking forward to your future, you miss the life that you're having.

1:19:04And so I think it's a great metaphor for some kind of American discontent too. I'm taking more of a sociological kind of take on The movie itself is just lovely. Oh, I had one question. What is it like to work with Tom Cruise? We went on this summer, my family did. We called it Tom Cruise's Cruises. And we watched almost the entire canon. Oh my gosh. So we watched all eight Mission Impossibles. Wow. You're in the third one. You're fucking great. Thank you. And I got so obsessed with him. And this is not my observation. This is Adam Scott's observation. And he too is a huge Tom Cruise fan. And I was like, I go after doing this summer thing where we watch all of his movies.

1:19:46You really forget how insanely good he is in Rain Man. He's like playing someone that's completely not Tom. I don't forget. He was incredible in that movie. That is a phenomenal performance. So I said to Adam Scott, I'm like, this is going to be a dumb sentence, but I think Tom Cruise might be the most underrated actor alive. That's hilarious. Yeah, because obviously he's so... Do you remember him in Tafts? Yes. Always had this rabid intensity that is unusual. But what Adam said, and I think it's really astute, He said, I think Tom Cruise's gift as an actor is he is acting solely for the audience sitting in the seat watching the screen and his understanding of what their experience is going to be with that lens on with me at this distance doing this with my eyes.

1:20:31That that's his genius. And I was like, I think you're right. I think he has a better idea than anyone's ever had about what this thing I'm doing right now will be experienced as in one year on that size screen. I completely believe that. When you're acting with him, what kind of things are you observing? Because you must be equally fascinated just to get to work with him. Yeah, you have to catch yourself a little bit because he's a star. I grew up loving movie stars and he's one of them. Risky Business smacked me right during high school. Tom Cruise was the man because he was a producer on Without Limits.

1:21:04I had some superficial interactions. He was always incredibly supportive. Like, Billy, what do you need? We're going to make that happen. Well, let me tell you about that experience. And in the way that I think of it, this is what's going on. There's like a team player. There were two moments that I'm thinking of now. One was because J.J. Abrams made that movie. J.J. is a brilliant man. In the movie, I play somebody with duplicitous motivation. There is one scene in particular where I reveal to Tom Cruise the extent of my duplicity. And it comes in the form of a monologue while he's tied up and been beaten up.

1:21:40I only do well with text if I have time with it. I can memorize things, but not well. I mean, anymore. I think everybody who's an actor probably got into the business because they could internalize text. That was the way their brain worked. Otherwise, it's just too intimidating. So as you get older, it starts to atrophy a little bit. What was once the special skill is sort of gone. In any case, I had this monologue that I realized too, like the Jay Kelly thing was pretty important for the plot of the movie. And JJ, when he sent it to me, he said, don't memorize it yet because we're working right now.

1:22:17And as we're working on the script and they were shooting also while they were working. And about two weeks out, I said, JJ, that monologue is about a page long and I want to kill it for you. So I want to start memorizing now. So I'm just going to go with what I've got. And he writes me back, definitely don't. Oh boy. Because the names are changing and the order, it's in flux right now. A week out, I go, dude, this is DEF CON 1. I'm in triage mode here. I have to start. And he's like, it's coming today. Three days before. Billy, I can promise you, the morning we're shooting it. In the makeup trailer.

1:22:49In the trailer, I get the pages. No. This is how I'm recalling it. It may have been the day before, but I believe it was in the trailer. Cut to Tom tied up. Me off camera reading the text. Thank God they're shooting his sight first. His sight first. You get some practice. Give me some practice. Turn around to me. Total panic attack. Melting under pressure. No. Can't remember anything. This is what Tom Cruise does. Billy, you ever work with cue cards? And I was like, no, Tom, I have not ever worked. We're working with cue cards today. Has somebody write up the whole monologue. and this motherfucker is holding the cue card like right here so he can still have an eye on you.

1:23:27He's still giving you. So he's giving me everything here where he's got the card over here. And I'm doing everything I can to not play the scene like, you really should go after the rabbit's foot. When you would go to Central America, that's a bad idea. But JJ and Tom are so good that they made it work. But really, when you go home at night and you lay in your... I just want to die. Oh, man. Well, you said you needed it and you didn't get it. I told him I needed it. And JJ was like, no, it was totally fine. We'll make it work. It's great. But I could have done so much better, Dax. Okay, so that one's a little bit of the girl who got away.

1:24:04You won a second chance. Tom saved me on that. And the second was my father died. Because I had about maybe two weeks work on that movie. But it was spread out over several months. And during that, my father passed away after he had cancer. and we had a memorial for him. Then I had to fly to Los Angeles on Monday to work on Monday. And Tom, as he did every day that I was there, came bounding into the makeup trailer. How are we doing today? You know, we're looking good here. We're on fire. Ready to go. Let's go. Good attitude. Good to see you all. Wonderful people here. So he goes, how are you doing?

1:24:40And in my head, like I start doing all this social calculus. I'm like, oh, which way do I do this? and I said well actually Tom my father passed away so I was at a memorial over the weekend you haven't been consoled until you've been consoled by Tom Cruise because that motherfucker is right there like he came in to the point where I was like no it's totally fine I mean everybody has a dad they all come and go what are you going to do Tom Terrific he's built for it he's fearless right he's like this is awkward for most people but I'm fucking going in I'm coming right in I thought it was Wow. Well, Billy, this has been so much fun.

1:25:18It's been my pleasure. I'm smitten with you, as I told you. We got to spend some time this year over the summer. We did a lot of dancing. Yes, we did. We did a good two hours of dancing together. Your family are some dancing fiends. Right back at you. We had a great time with them. Yeah, Naomi's got major moves. I hope she slows down at a certain point because I try to keep up and I'm like, is it the right arm or the left arm? Which one should I be looking out for? You were not signaling that at all. I like to keep up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was great. I adore you. I think you're magic. I'm so glad you came in.

1:25:49Everyone see Jay Kelly, November 11th in theaters. If you don't make it, but you should, it'll be best consumed there. You should. December 5th. I'll tell you why it should be seen in a theater because there's a tribute to Jay Kelly in the movie. Jay Kelly is attending a tribute to himself and in that they use George Clooney footage. Oh, fine. Real footage. Spoiler alert, but it is worth staying to the bitter end in the theater. If nothing else, you're going to have a great time in the movie, wherever you see the movie, whenever you see the movie, but in the theater, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, awesome.

1:26:23I hope everyone checks it out and please come back. Absolutely will. Thank you guys for having me. This has been a pleasure. I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong. He wears short shorts. If you dare wear short shorts, Nair wear short shorts. I don't get that, if I'm being honest, because Nair doesn't wear short shorts. Well, in this case, Nair does wear short shorts. No. In the commercial. I know, but it doesn't make sense. I know, Nair can't wear shorts. Yeah. Is there like a little pair of tiny shorts on the Nair bottle?

1:27:00Let's think about this. If you dare wear short shorts, Nair, maybe they're using wear like a verb or not a verb. Like never? No, like nairware. Like that's a new term. That's like you nairware'd it, which is no hair. Yeah.

1:27:22Nairware means no hair on your own. Oh, why am I wearing headphones? Oh, yeah. You just wanted to. Well, we were just doing. You feel safer. We were doing Armchair Anonymous. Yeah. And then I got used to it. So that's crazy. You still can if you want. I was like, what? You sound really loud in this fact check. Because I'm no longer hearing you in my ears the way I used to. Exactly. We have this distal between us. You're at the distal end of this conversation. Okay. Okay. First things first, I have a huge question to ask you. Oh, my God. I love huge questions. Do you eat the skin of the baked potato?

1:27:59You know, I did it when I was a kid, and now I love it, especially if it's a little crispy. Do you eat it? So you, like, cut the whole baked potato. You eat fine. that have skin. I usually eat the organ meat out of it. Okay, you eat the inside. Yeah, and then I cut up the remaining skin. Okay. Again, if it's crispy, I prefer that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Sometimes it's damp. Yep. And then it's just like you're eating like damp bark. Yeah. You're eating a brown paper bag. That was sitting in dirt. You're eating dirt. That's why it's that color. I think they're white on their own. You scrub them, they're white.

1:28:33Maybe certain ones. Not rustic. I don't think rustic. They're brown. What made you think of this? Did you have a baked potato last night? Not last night. And do you call it a baked potato or a baked potato? I call it a baked potato. You're portraying your Southern roots. I know. I'm treading very carefully. Why? Because you hate when I claim Southerness appropriately. Yeah. Well, you don't have Southern roots to portray. I am a Southerner. You have a house in the South. I live in the South. I will say you have a house in the South. A house in the South. House in the South. Listen, I was at a restaurant and a baked potato was bought by Jess.

1:29:12It was a twice baked. So I don't know if. That guarantees crispiness. Right. Okay, yeah. So I see him cut this potato and eat it like a steak. Yeah. And I was like, what are you doing? Right. Like he was a psychopath. Yeah. Like you are not supposed, that's not what baked potatoes are. It's to eat the, that's just the vessel for the inside. That's the wrapper. It's the wrapper. Exactly. It's like if you ate an orange by cutting it and taking bites. It's like, no, no, no. You're not supposed to eat that peel. I mean, that's a little more harsh, but because there's no version of an orange peel tasting good.

1:30:02And there certainly is a version of a potato skin. So this is why I wanted to ask you, because he was like, you don't eat that? And he was like, you don't eat potato skins? And then that was an interesting point because I was like, oh, I mean, I have eaten potato skins, but not like this. By the way, I love potato skins. I haven't had them in so long. I would go like this. slice slice slice slice slice slice you what take that that knife is scary okay so like oh my i thought maybe it's sticking really cool you're acting willy-nilly listen so i wanted to put this out there i was like i gotta ask dax's opinion on this and there's a high chance that he too but i don't do it like him and i think that's cool he does it like that he's mixing textures it's like full-bodied for him It's soup and nuts.

1:30:56It is. Yeah. He said he mentioned the crispiness a lot. Like you have now mentioned crispiness. It's imperative. I just, I'm just shocked. I never, I would never been exposed to anyone eating the outside of the baked potato. Oh, really? Yeah. Ever? Yeah. That's why, like. No, I think when we were at Brick Tops, I want to say I took down a baked potato and then I did eat the skin. You did? Yeah. I think. I thought that was the way you ate it. I think it is the majority of people eat it that way, but I don't think, I think that's 70-30. Rob? I don't eat the skin, but it wouldn't freak me out if I saw someone eat the skin.

1:31:37It wouldn't? Somewhere in the middle of us, which is generally his chosen safe path, I think, through these minefields. I just didn't even know it was an option. Well, are you open to trying it? My mind was blown open. Are you open to trying it? Yeah. They're good. I mean, again, he had a great counter. Potato skins are fantastic. Yeah. I guess I'm open to trying it. But I, too, have this idea that it's a paper bag. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, do you eat at Little Dom's ever? Yeah. Okay, so we almost never eat there because I'm always freaked out that there's a line. Oh, sure. But we happened to be in the mood to go out to eat two nights ago.

1:32:16We were in a rush, and it was 530. Uh-huh. So that's a great time to hit a restaurant. Side note, there were three birthdays in a row. And the whole restaurant sang for all three. It was so fun. When was it? I felt like it was in Italy. I was there on Friday. Two nights ago. Tuesday. Tuesday night. So you've eaten there. Yeah. They do a whole baby potato and they're smashed and cooked. Those are incredible. And those have the skin on them. They do. Yeah. So I said, it's not that I'm against eating the skin on a potato. I've had smashed potatoes. A red potato, you'd always eat the skin. I've had plenty of skins on potatoes.

1:32:49It's specifically the baked potato. But how about when you eat a bread bowl? Right. The soup. Do you eat the bread? So. Because I think that's the best comp. I eat a lot of the bread inside the bowl. Mm-hmm. But you leave the husk. I do. Every now and then I'll peel off like a little bite and stick it in. Yeah. But no, I'm not. I miss a bread bowl like crazy. We can get you a gluten-free one. I don't think so. Gluten-free bread in general is pretty shit. It's tough. Now, what's so interesting is like Kristen has now taken a stab at gluten-free sourdough bread. God bless her. She's worked very, very hard.

1:33:29There's been like nine or ten batches. They're never really comparable in any way to sourdough bread. Okay. Yet she makes gluten-free waffles that are kind of sourdough with the starter. Yeah. Those are fucking dynamite. Yeah. Those might be the best gluten-free, you know, alternative in the bread space. They've also really nailed pizza. Yeah. They have figured out pizza. Yeah. Sometimes I even choose gluten-free crust at Lucifer's. Well, I keep the colonel in Lucifer's. Exactly. It's been a long time. Can we hear about your day yesterday? Are we allowed to hear about it? Oh, sure, sure. My first filming day in, I think, five and a half years.

1:34:08Yeah. How was it? Well, it was great in that I accomplished my goal. Okay. Which is in the morning when I meditated, I really was really thoughtful and mindful. I was like, I just want to go today and not have any power struggles. I want to be a joy to be around. And I want to service the director. And in this case, the star. Yeah. And the project. And I did that. Good. And I felt really good about it. Great. Because I feel my cockles coming. It was like 630. I got to be on set at 630. I was like, that feels early. And I look at the call time. I was like, hey, why am I there now? And I was like, and shut the fuck up and show up at 630.

1:34:52And then I went into the wardrobe fitting. Yeah. And the costumer was an arm cherry. Oh. Which made me so happy right away. That was lovely. And then I had a, I forget how fun it is to order breakfast on set. That is fun. What'd you order? I said, do they have gluten-free bread? Ding, ding, ding. Waffles? No. I said, do you have gluten-free waffles with a sourdough starter? That my wife makes. And they did. And then so I had a fried egg sandwich with bacon and cheese and mayonnaise. And it was fucking outrageous. And I ended up going with my gold tooth. You know, I had two different options. You had a grill.

1:35:33A grill and gold tooth. I went with the gold tooth. People liked that. That was great. Great. I see you're not wearing it right now. I'm not. Well, now I'm in a tricky sitch, which is now that tooth is for that. So now I don't want to be all around town and on the show and stuff and you see it nonstop. And then when you see that, it's not like, oh, that's a thing. So I kind of, I fucked that up until the whole project's over. Okay. Which is a long time from now, like I think March. Okay. Interesting. So I do want to say that I did notice in a recent edit, this edit actually, you were touching it a lot.

1:36:09Yeah. I did not touch it at all in my scene. No, I know that. I'm just saying, I think like maybe subconsciously. Oh, yeah. Of course, because there's something weird in your mouth. Yeah, you're just like checking it. It always feels like it could be popped in just a tiny, a hair more. Right. This is, and if you watch Parenthood, it's a mess. No, not Parenthood. A little bit there and then bless this mess. Since I've never worn a wedding ring in real life, when I have a wedding ring on, I just touch it nonstop. I can't not because it's this foreign thing. It's so clear I'm not used to having a ring.

1:36:46Yeah. That's why I'm a bad actor. You'll see some of my bad acting when I just play with it. Bad acting comes out when you have rings. But in my defense, I do see some guys playing with their wedding ring a lot. It is a thing. It's a fidget spinner. I do think when they first get it, there's a lot of that. I do think over time it becomes second skin. Do you know what's great about Aaron? He's pretty clever. What? He gets 10 packs. His wedding ring has these like rubber rings. Oh. And he like knows he's going to lose them. He plays with them. And it's just he has a bunch of he has a ton of wedding rings.

1:37:16That doesn't sound like a wedding ring. That just sounds like a regular ring. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare.

1:37:34OK, that brings us to something fun. And this is maybe unethical. Uh-oh. Okay. If it goes sideways. Okay. I guess by the time this comes out, we'll know. Okay. So I very much want Christmas lights down in Nashville. Oh, yeah. I want it to be like a spectacle. Yeah. And I got a bid and it was insane. It was offensive. Yeah. It was offensive. I can't help but be offended. I cannot imagine that was the price that non-actors would have received. Okay. You think it's personal. I do. I do. I do. I'm like, what is this place going to be? Like the North Pole for this price? Maybe. That's what you want.

1:38:13Let's just put it this way. I said, well, fuck, I'm sure for three grand, Aaron would be happy to go down there for a week and string lights up. So it was three grand? Oh, no. It was. 30? 17 ,000 to put. I was like, are you fucking kidding? It's offensive. Yeah, I don't know that. In my mind, I'm going to overpay Aaron three grand to do it. Let's just put it this way. I said to Aaron, hey, you want to go decorate the house for three grand? He's like, fuck, yes. I'd have to drive Uber for, you know, two weeks or three weeks or whatever. Hold on.

1:38:47I'm serious. Oh, man. You keep doing this. This is what happened on Race to 270. And it cost me four times what I said the prize money would be. I'm sorry, but people deserve what they deserve. Well, there's two. Okay. There's a lot of issues. You're saying five because the bid was 17. I'm not, actually. I'm not, actually. Okay. I think that's actually a hard job. I think that's a - I don't think so. I've strung Christmas lights on my houses for the last, I'll, you know, do it here. I know, but you get like ory about it. It's a day. At best, it's a day. So anyone in America is making three grand for the day, I think that's a damn good fucking wage.

1:39:28We are making way more than that. Don't talk about what I make. I'm just saying. We're talking about what this is. I'm just saying if we're going to use that as like a daily - I can't believe I'm getting shamed into five grand for a day of hanging lights. Also, he's going to be hanging in Nashville, driving my shit around, having a blast. No, but you got to separate that. It's a fun time. I need you to separate that. He's very excited to go. Okay, I guess I'll pay him the extra two. Now, I did. I am. So, I was like, hey, do you want to go down to Nashville and do this for three grand? He was like, absolutely.

1:40:01You know, let me find a couple days and all. So, I'm in a flight. I had to buy a plane ticket. Listen, that's not part of it. That's not part of it. It's his work. You're going to have me up to like 18 grand all in. I should have hired the professional company. Exactly. Probably look a lot better. Well, that's the thing. How good is it going to look? I have very low expectations. I want to be colorful if he over delivers great, but I'm not expecting him to do a great job. He has to get on ladders and stuff. There we are. There we are. You're at the heart of the issue. Now, let's go back in time.

1:40:33Aaron was a roofer for 15 years. Yeah. He lived on a 30-foot ladder. Yeah. So if there's any guy for the job in that department, it is Aaron. He lived on a ladder. But hold on. I'll poke a hole in that in a minute. I'm going to get you there. I'm going to poke the same hole. Okay, great. So I'm just like, he said yes. I've said great. I've bought a plane ticket. And a couple days go by, and I'm just like, if he falls. I know. I know. We had such a laugh about this. I called him. I FaceTimed him. I'm like, I'm starting to get a little worried that you're going to fall off a ladder and die. And I don't want Christmas lights that bad.

1:41:09Yeah. So please, like, if you got to rent a bucket or whatever. He's like, I think I, you know, like the little machine you drive in, it's got an arm on it. You sit in the bucket and it's got a remote control. He's like, I'm way more afraid to be driving a bucket around through your yard and fucking tipping the thing over on the sidewalk or some shit. And I'm like, that's kind of a good point. But we were saying, we had such a laugh. We were saying that at the eulogy, I would be giving the eulogy. That's okay. this is our sense of humor. I know, but I don't want, yeah. I said, at the ULG, I would say, some people have suggested that I may have saved Aaron's life by sending them to treatment.

1:41:41I don't know about that, but what I know for sure is that I have killed Aaron quickly. I killed my best friend because I wanted Christmas life. So listen, we had a long talk and I'm like, look, it looks dicey. I don't give a fuck. They don't have to be up that high. And then we were joking. What if he just put them all on the bottom of the house to be the first step where we just go there They're all laying around the bottom of the hall. Like the pants fell down on the decorations. But we had a long talk and we had some safety measures in place. I don't want him to go. I want him to wear a life alert, a MIDI alert bracelet.

1:42:16So if he does fall off the ladder, he can hit a button. I don't like it. Oh my God. He can handle decorating a house. He's very competent. He's extremely competent. Don't you think I could go decorate the house? Would you be worried about me? I don't like that either. I don't. I wish I would like you to farm this out to a professional because that house is big and there are a lot of high areas. It's very modest. It's huge. It's a very modest home. I'm not doing that. It's a huge house and it has high areas. One high area. Also, is it going to be on the boat area? What's that called? The dock? The dock?

1:42:52Yeah. No, I'm not going to have him decorate the dock. Well, that's cute. I bet the other people would do that. Well, another side note to this is I don't want him to have to go get all of the lights. Yeah. So I have been ordering lights ahead of time that are getting delivered there. So I ordered a ton of lights. So is the original bid that thing? Did that come with the lights? I should hope so. Right. I assume it does. I would hope so. But again, I went for broke. You can't spend$1 ,000 on lights. Your whole place, they're so cheap. Right. So anyways, I ordered like 11 strands, probably like 1 ,200 feet of this one kind.

1:43:34Okay. That Kristen liked because you can make, you can change the colors. And then I was like, I want those kind that like rain down. You like icicles. Yeah. And they're not, because there are icicles that are like hard plastic. These are like little ropey. No, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. Aaron calls them that too. Yeah. That wasn't the name on Amazon. But anyways, I had already ordered all these ones and then I changed my mind. Oh. And I'm like, well, he's got to decorate trees and shit, too, if he wants. Monica, he's going for a week. It's like a. Yikes. Okay. So I then ordered like 1 ,300.

1:44:07I ordered a quarter mile of the kind that I like. The icicles? Yes, the icicles. There are so many. When he arrives, there's going to be so. I bet it'll take him one day to unwind all the lights. You're more to my point. This job has gotten enormous. Okay, I'll give him five grand. Okay. Also. She never brought this up. Also. The$2 ,000 mistake. Listen. Yeah. Just because he was a roofer. Yeah. Doesn't mean he's still capable in the same way. Because listen, I just went to play Mahjong at Anthony and Allison's house. And they have a young daughter. She was excited to show me she's been working on splits.

1:44:49And she wanted to do a split contest. That's part of Mahjong? No, the daughter. No, but what's splits? Splits. Oh, do the physical splits. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just like, we're hanging out with the kids before we play Mahjong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just bouncing around from topic to topic. It was like, Mahjong. Was it clear, Rob? Nah, I mean. Yes, it was. God, he can't say anything. Okay. So, you know, she's like, yay, Monica's here. And then, and I made that part up. But like in her head, she was. Oh my God. All my dreams have come true. Monica's here. They do get excited when friends are over.

1:45:25That wish on that falling star worked. So Allison told her daughter, you know, Monica is going to really love seeing your splits because she used to do splits all the time and she was a cheerleader. She was really bragging about me. Of course, building you up. Yes. You're a legend now. And they were all very impressed by this. Yeah, yeah. And I, and she was like, can I see? And I was like, well, first of all, I'm not in the right attire. And second of all, I can't do them anymore. Not even close. Right. You got to maintain that. Just because I was once a huge professional doesn't mean I can still perform in the same way.

1:46:09Okay. Counterpoint. Are you ready for it? Yeah. When Aaron was a roofer, he had two bundles on his shoulders all the time. He was a drunk. He was smoking cigarettes while he climbed the ladder. Yeah. He was hungover or even drunk. Yeah. And he was heavier. Right. So in many ways, you'd be more safe to assume he'll be much better on the ladder now than he's ever been. No, but he's not in the routine of doing it. I've had him run drills. He's been climbing the ladder all week. No, you haven't. I'd leave that up to him. look here's here's what at the end of the day i would trust myself to put the lights up and i have the same faith in him that i have in myself can he wear a helmet oh my god please can he wear i was thinking i wish there was a way for him to tie in yeah you know what i got yeah i would love that i know i'll give him 500 extra if he wears a helmet well text Tell him that.

1:47:11Or I'll, yeah, we'll text him. This is crazy. I need, yeah. This is getting crazy. What if he goes, I'm just not coming. This is, you guys have now scared me. He's like, I was just going to go hang lights, which I do at my, he already did his own house this year. I'll give him$50 for football pads. Oh, okay. Wow, the price is really. We should get the armchairs involved and see if those spots are. But he's like, he looks like he's a goalie for a hockey team and he just falls off the ladder because he's got too much shit on. Safety glasses and fucking gloves. I mean, the number's really getting up there.

1:47:42I think it's, I'm happy for him. Yeah, so that's what's brewing. Are you going to do this house? It's done. Isn't it underwhelming? So you aren't doing it. No. Kristen did hire someone. Exactly. You didn't put lights up here. So we don't know if you're still capable. This year, I get it. This year, that's what I mean. This year, you're both 50. Things change. We're both in better shape, though, than we were. It's nothing to do with that. It's equilibrium. Well, mine's great because I do so many, you know, I do my bicycling. But Aaron doesn't. He plays pickleball all day long. That's not for equilibrium.

1:48:21He's as agile and his balance is. Okay, I'm going to give you$3 ,000 to not have Aaron. This is getting very complex. We're going to have to bring an accountant in. And someone's already mad at me, rightly so. Someone's already in their car going, you're going to spend three grand on your fucking Christmas lights. I know. Like, that's what I make in a month. So already. I know. And that's understandable. Yes. That's understandable. Absolutely. That made me excited for Christmas. I love that. Now, I have another question for you real quick. Yeah. Okay. You know how I had two, twice I've had these pierced.

1:48:59Ear infections. That had turned rancid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both times. Yeah. Do you think I could try it on the other ear? because they were both on this ear and maybe this ear just has a sensitivity. You're going to hate this answer. But if you do it and your ear falls off, I'm simply not going to feel bad for you. Hey. Because you have been taught this lesson twice painfully. And if you have to learn it a third time. How many rock bottoms did you have? Okay, but no one was in support of it. No one was like encouraging me to hit another bottom. But we're compassionate. it. Okay. If you have one ear, thank God it'll be the right side that you're not getting shot on.

1:49:45No, this one, it would be it falling off. Right. And the camera's here. Oh, oh, oh. If you're picking an ear to lose, that is the correct ear to lose. Yeah. Well, you can shave that side of your head, too. Oh, and then it's just smooth. The whole thing's so smooth. Oh, it's a whole ear hole. And a shave side's in a ear hole. Okay, so you think no. I think no. I think you learned your, I think your ears said to you, hey, Monica, We don't want these up there. I know. But you think it's going to change the whole game, don't you? I do. Can't you do like clampy ones? Yeah. So this is the problem. So I have a cuff.

1:50:20Cuff, we call it. We call it a cuff. But all the, I keep buying cuffs. If you dare wear ear cuffs, cuffs wear ear hairs. I keep buying cuffs. Yeah. And they're all, my ear's small. Yeah. So they're always a little too big. And so they're not sitting where they need to sit on my ear. Why don't you pinch them? I try. It's, they're nice cuffs. Like you can't. You use pliers. Pliers. Monica, here's what you do. You get pliers. But before you get to pinching. Yeah. Put some duct tape on the inside of both the pliers so that they don't leave creases or marks on your earrings. So just put tape around the pliers and then just give them a pinch.

1:51:03I don't know how to do it. you don't know how to operate pliers. I'm not good at manual activity. Pay Aaron three grand. He'll come and fucking pinch this. I will. I'll trust him to do that. Aaron's going to be so rich at the end of this. I know. So, no, I have tried. And like some of them do squeeze, but then it still opens up and then it slides and I'm pissed. Yeah. You know, I'm meant to have some in there permanently for my look. You know, my look is meant for it. Okay. But my ears are saying no. What if you put a little piece of two-sided tape on the inside of the cuff? So that it sticks, yeah.

1:51:43Sounds cumbersome. It sounds uncomf. Could get irritated as well. Yeah, and I do think like, okay, so I have two, I have, you know, two piercings here. And I have two ears currently. And I have had two piercings for a long time. And then I have a third piercing. And the other day, I put three earrings on one side. And I could not get the earring into the third hole on my right side. You didn't try hard. No, I did. Because Lincoln puts the earring in my ear, and that hole was closed for 25 years. Yeah, but I don't know what to tell you. Do you want her to put it in? Sure. It's only a grand for her because she's a minor.

1:52:29She can try it. But no, I can tell like on this side, I was basically re I was re piercing it and it whatever. That was fine. And then I was trying so hard to re pierce on this side. But I think because the hole's a little close to the edge, it was not working. And that's fine. You know, whatever. And then that night I took out all the piercings and and other than just my original piercing. Everything was so inflamed. Money can't you can't. It's not an option for you. You have a lot of gifts. And of course, you're going to have some not gifts. And in this case, it's that you don't have that freedom.

1:53:08I'm not willing to live a life where I can't have two. Well, then you're just going to be impussed and inflamed. I know. Okay. I'm just telling you like. You're just warning me. Yeah. If you see some goo, like I'm choosing that. Yeah. Okay. But you're saying no to the piercings. Okay. Yeah. That's just my vote. I mean, you have. Watch him pick the middle-aneers. You better not. You should do it. Okay. Natalie has ear issues with her piercings, too. And you enjoy dealing with those? I know not to talk about it. That's fair. Farman is wiser than me. He's more like a 70-year-old grandpa. He learned to shut the fuck up better than me.

1:53:50But you also, to be fair, have had to cut the earrings out. Yeah. Which I like. Yeah, you enjoy that. So I'm kind of surprised you aren't for this. I'm actually working against my own self-interest here because it denies me the chance to be a hero. You love performing surgery. I mean, a hero. Hero. Yeah. Do you need me to nair anything? No, I'm good. Your arms or anything? Oh, I do. Okay. Do you want me to nair your forearms? I'm not nairing, but I am going to do a laser hair. Okay. On that removal. I don't have a razor hair. I don't have a hair removal. All right. Well, I guess let's do some facts.

1:54:21I have other things to say, but we'll be back. We'll be back. All right. Now, we start the episode off by talking about pumpkin spice. Oh, sure. What is it? And I'm here to tell you what's in pumpkin spice. Okay. Perfume. Nope. Okay. Typically includes cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves. Delicious. Okay, but Monty, don't you think that's the taste that you're tasting? I don't think pumpkin is real. I don't think it's in the mix. I think what you're tasting is like that combination of those very unique flavors. We've labeled pumpkin flavor. I don't think that's real. The name can be misleading as it does not contain pumpkin itself.

1:55:01Oh, wow. I didn't even. That was the last line. What is commonly used to flavor pumpkin-based desserts and drinks. I think that's what everyone thinks pumpkin tastes like. If you just take the inside of a pumpkin, you add those spices in. What you're tasting and what you come back for is that. The pumpkin is just like a vehicle, and I'd argue a poor one, for delivering this incredible alchemy of tastes. Wow. And perfumes. But, you know, it's a little. Like rest assured, there's no pumpkin in your pumpkin spice latte. There's pumpkin spice. But that's not, there's no pumpkin in it. You're right.

1:55:43Yeah. That was a cute mashup. Oh, yeah. Oh, pumpkin. There was a pumpkin, a little baby. A CC little baby. She looks so cute. She had a radical mohawk. Yeah, because her dad's a hairstylist, so he did her hair perfect. Oh, my God, was she cute. Oh, it was outrageous. Oh. Okay, okay. So when you buy pumpkin spice, the little container that says pumpkin spice, this is what you're getting. Yeah, you're not getting any pumpkin. And you could have called it carbuncle spice. No. You know what they should call it? And actually, this is appropriation. I'm going to say it. Ow, my head. Oh. Oh,

1:56:34what's in there? I'm sort of scab. Oh, that's scabby. From your hair towel? Maybe. Too damp. Too much moisture. I just pictured your room at night tropical when you're wearing your hair. Oh, my. Towel, because it just keeps all that moisture in your hair. And it somehow makes the whole room tropical. I don't sleep in it. Oh, you don't? Uh-uh. Uh-uh. What do you do? You just dry your hair with it? No. So after the shower, I tie it up, put it in its towel. And I like, you know, bop around for a while. Hours? Like an hour. Okay. Sometimes only 15 minutes. Okay. And then I take it out and then I sleep on a silk pillowcase that night.

1:57:20Oh, only that night? Yeah. Because why? If it's wet hair, I sleep with a silk pillowcase because silk pillowcases are notoriously better for your hair. I don't really necessarily think that. Might be a pumpkin spice latte thing. Yeah, it might be misleading. But I buy in when I'm trying to have that hair the next day. Yeah, you might as well do it. It's not going to make it worse. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, appropriation, because these are all the things in chai. Uh-huh, uh-huh. So I feel a little like. Just different doses. Yeah, probably. Dosages of those things. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It's a grievance.

1:58:03But I'll tell you, I guess, if you're talking about appropriation to chai, then yes, I think you have an argument. If you're saying appropriating the pumpkin, because there's really no pumpkin, but they're coasting on people's. I'm saying pumpkin spice is appropriating chai. I got you. Because I was going to say then, well, they're kind of lifting the image of the pumpkin. Sure. The pumpkin is winning. Yeah. The pumpkin's a big, dumb, ugly. No, it's. I love them. But you got to acknowledge. I love them. I love them. They're not uniform. They're always dented. They always look like they have a tumor somewhere.

1:58:39Yeah, not the ones I pick. They're an ugly offering and they're enormous. They have elephantitis. Yeah, yuck. Okay, how many tributaries flow into the Amazon? Oh God, there's got to be thousands. 1 ,100 tributaries, with 17 of them being longer than 1 ,500 kilometers, 930 miles. Whoa. Okay. Is Manhasset the name of a Native American tribe? That was his guess. Right. Or that it was a Native American word. Yeah. And he's right. Manhasset is named after the Native American word Manhanset, which means island neighborhood. This name comes from a tribe of Native Americans who lived in the area before European settlement and used the nearby bay for fishing and shellfishing.

1:59:32So then he was right in that Manhattan is also. I think you added Manhattan in there maybe. And it all sounds right. He's smarter than me. He was smart. Yeah, yeah. He was very smart. Is Manhasset exit 36 off Long Island? No, he's not smart. Thank God. Exit 36 on the Long Island Expressway is for Singerton Road. Manhasset is served by nearby exits such as exit 32 for Little Neck Parkway, which is west of Manhasset, and further east exits that lead into the area. The LIE. Isn't that what people say? Probably. Okay. How many people are descendants of Charlemagne? Okay. Okay. It's estimated that nearly everyone in Europe is descended from Charlemagne.

2:00:20What? And therefore related to him and each other. This is because Charlemagne had at least 20 children who established royal lines. And due to the large number of people in Europe, genealogies fold in on themselves, making it statistically certain that nearly all Europeans share common ancestors like Charlemagne. Whoa. Whoa. It's not that he fucked as much as Genghis Khan. Doesn't seem like that. Okay. Because now I looked up Genghis Khan. He had thousands of children. An estimated 16 million people are direct male line descendants of Genghis Khan. Direct. Which is about 0.5 % of the world's male's population.

2:00:59Pfft. Wow. This figure is based on studies of the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son. Millions of other people are likely descended from him through female ancestors, but this cannot be traced genetically using the same method. So it's double. It's not like he only had male offspring. I'm sure he had 50-50. It's insane. Yeah. Do you think I am a descendant of him? No, I don't. Do you think I'm a descendant of Charlemagne? Nope. I think you're a descendant of Sid Arthur. I'm more likely a descendant of Genghis Khan than Charlemagne, if we had to pick. On its, what do they say, prima facie?

2:01:35Yeah. Primafacia. Steven Dubner said that multiple times. Primafacia. Yeah. On the surface, that makes sense. But they both had empires. And I don't know which one spread closer to India or not, even though I did read the Genghis Khan book, which was great. Maybe I'm a descendant of both Charlemagne and Genghis Khan. Oh, double whammy. Secondhand smoke rates. I looked that up for fun. nothing related to the episode. Oh. I'm just kidding. Okay. I'm kidding. It came up. According to the CDC, secondhand smoke is responsible for an estimated 41 ,000 deaths per year in the United States. This includes 7 ,300 deaths from lung cancer, 33 ,900 deaths from heart disease, and 400 deaths from sudden infant death syndrome.

2:02:26Yeah, no one likes that last one. That's from living people who live with a smoker, I guess? Yeah. Ugh. You shouldn't have to do the time if you don't do the crime. I know, it's sad. I was inundated with secondhand smoke in my childhood. I know. Because my father smoked in the car with the windows up. And then my grandparents smoked and I was with them a ton. They both smoked. How long, did your dad smoke till the end of his life? He quit smoking, I want to say 10 years before he died. Okay, so mostly. Oh yeah. Yeah. And really voluminous levels of, he would go through these phases. Like, I remember my mom telling me this time when they were newly married and he had started this company selling door-to-door mini bikes.

2:03:09And he was like, it was all in. Yeah. And then the company collapsed and they couldn't deliver orders. And like, he was done. He didn't know what he was going to do. And she said that he sat in a Lazy Boy for like two months straight all day long every day and just chain smoked cigarettes. Smoked like five packs a day. And then one day he woke up and took a shower and put a suit on and went and got a job somewhere else. Wow. But he'd have these, yeah. Depressive. Even when he was healthy and sober, he still smoked like two and a half packs or more a day. That's a lot. As you know, my dad stopped smoking for me.

2:03:46How long did he smoke? Smoked a long time. Ten years or something? Because in India, they smoke a lot. They're four years old, you see? Yeah. He started as a baby boy. And then. They do, in Papua New Guinea, probably not anymore. but as recently as like 15 years ago. Kids. They wean children from breastfeeding with cigarettes. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. Wow. And no lung cancer. Really? Yeah. Well, on the ethnographies where they did chest x-rays, there was no lung cancer. That's strange. That's what all these people build their theory on that like it's really the chemicals that are in the American cigarettes.

2:04:20But I don't agree with that, but that's where it comes from. Huh. But yeah, yeah, he smoked a lot and then he had to quit for his little girl, girl no pit stops yeah no pit stops but it took him a couple tries does he desire it ever does he like see it in a movie ever I kind of want to bang a dart with a show come on when he's 80 he's not gonna he doesn't want to anymore he's no pit stop him and I sitting out on the porch of either his southern home or my southern home banging some camel lights just reminiscing I think he has like what you have with drinking like there's nothing about it that He doesn't even think about it.

2:04:59Yeah. He switched to get off of it. He switched to a pipe. That's silly. And then he had to get back on. He missed it. He had to get back on it. Yeah. No, but I think he got back on the pipe or something. And then he was done. And you know, when we say on the pipe, generally in the 80s, we're talking about the crack cocaine pipe. No, this wasn't like that. It's just weird for you to say my dad got back on the pipe. He sometimes talks about his pipe. Okay. Okay, now UNC, speaking of Southern homes, UNC is an incredibly hard school to get in out of state. Is it? Yes. And one of my best friends went there and it was like a big deal.

2:05:40Sure. Out of state students make up no more than 18 % of the first year undergraduate class at UNC Chapel Hill due to its UNC system policy. Hmm. And then I thought this is interesting. I wanted to look up hardest. Okay. United States public colleges ranked by lowest acceptance rate, but I wanted public colleges. Okay. I like this. I like this a lot. Fingers crossed. What do you? Well, I feel like Berkeley is going to be very high on that list. And that's what you want. Yeah. I want all the UCs to be high on the list. Yeah. Yeah. Well, congratulations. UCLA is number one. Oh, wow. I did not see this coming.

2:06:20This, This is a big, I'm proud of you for reading. If I were you, I would have saw that and be like, I didn't even see that. I'm going to keep going. I am a woman of integrity. Number one in the whole country. 9%. Oh. And, but we're out of state. Also, they've passed Berkeley. Because when I went there, it was Berkeley, then UCLA. Yeah. Out of state. It's really fucking hard. Yeah. Number two is the Naval Academy. Oh. Okay. I'm kind of surprised they count that, but sure. All right. Let's throw that out. That's bad. Yeah, I don't count that. Berkeley is next. Okay, number two. Then we got Air Force Academy.

2:07:02I also don't trust that. No, okay, so what's number three? Then we got Military Academy, no. Okay, although we want to say to our men and women in the service, obviously this is very important and we're grateful that it's so hard to get in. It's just not what we're meaning to do here. No, we want state colleges in the civilian world. So we got UCLA. So far all we got is UCLA and Berkeley. And guess what number three is? Well, you're smiling so big as if it's UGA, but it can't be. But it can't possibly be. I would say it's U of M. No, it's not. No. It's Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech. Okay, so you're feeling some pride.

2:07:38Yeah, because my dad went to Georgia Tech. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Just to remind people, you went to UGA, right? Oh my God. This weekend I got the cutest vintage Georgia Bulldog shirt. Oh, you did. It's so cute. I love it. I can't wait to wear it. Okay. Then we got UVA. University of Virginia. Okay. Then we got University of Michigan. Oh boy. Okay. So number five or six. Once we dump all those fucking military academies. Okay. If we're not counting military, we have. UCLA. Let's just remember the list. UCLA, Berkeley, Georgia Tech. UVA U of M Michigan number five okay and then UNC Chapel Hill okay this is a good day for me I also don't necessarily trust this because I am absolutely not on board with the next few well really quick what's the percentage at U of M and number five if UCLA was nine percent 18 so twice as hard we got some more UCs a little for the You know, this would guide my decision on what college I wanted to work at in the admissions department.

2:08:53I would not want to work at UCLA. So it means you have to sift through tens of thousands of applications to get down to your 9%. That's too much work. I want to go to a place with like a 78 % acceptance rate. Okay. So that I'm only reading an extra 30 some percent. How did you even get into that school if this is the way you think? I know. A corner cutter, a short cutter. Yeah. Yeah. UGA is on this list. It's on the second page. Okay. What number is it? It's not. It's not. Oh, we didn't get a number. No, we didn't. Okay. We also threw out some other numbers. Did they just list all the states? No.

2:09:32Oh, okay. There's a lot more. Okay. There's five pages. Is Penn not a public? Penn is private, I think. University of Pennsylvania, no? Private. That's private. That's why it's so expensive and like Wharton. Okay, Horton. Anyway, that was interesting. Wow. I feel really good now. I felt really good. Okay, I'm like, I just really resent. I want to be. You're making it so hard. You're making it so hard. Because you were a California resident. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want to. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. I just want to say that. Yeah, yeah. And you were a Georgia resident.

2:10:20I regret, you know, only because of this, I deeply regret not applying to some other schools. Yeah. I only did the one time. Yeah, like the joy you'd feel right now if you go like, well, I turned down UCLA. Out of state. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, though, if that would have been. How dare you? Well, Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica. We have the exact same IQ to the point. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm going to let that one just go away.

2:10:52Do you want to get into that one? I don't know that I have a higher or lower IQ than you, but what I maintain is that that wasn't an IQ test. That's just, okay. On our cognitive test, we scored to the point. Yes. I'm a tenth of a point. You can be smarter than me. I'm not saying I am. I'm just saying that wasn't an IQ test. Okay. Now, what was the other thing I was upset about? You made a lot of inflammatory statements really quickly. I can't get into UCLA. Oh, I do know. Okay, let's hear it. And it only got worse. Okay. I can answer if you would get in or not, because I know what the starting GPA was for freshmen at UCLA.

2:11:36You mean entering freshmen? Yes. Okay. I recall that you did have a 4.0, right? I graduated from Georgia with a— Not Georgia. Your high school. Yeah. I didn't have a 4.0. You didn't have a 4.0. No. Okay, great. And so—and nor did I. Yeah. But the starting average grade point for a freshman was 4.08. Yeah. The average person had gotten all A's and did some AP classes and got A's. Actually, I would—I need to go back. I need to know what my GPA was because I did get, I was in a lot of AP classes. So I got a lot of bonus. Sure. So I don't really remember. But let's just say I got a 4.08. Let's call Norma.

2:12:17That's a big thing to assume. That means you never, ever got a B. No, I got B. Yeah, yeah. I did not do well in physics. Okay. Or chemistry. Okay. I mean, and when I say did not do well, that means Bs. I never got below a B in anything. Right. And. Gym, how'd you do in gym? I did great. You got A's in gym? I'm a great athlete. Okay, okay. I did like 45 pull-ups. Oh, wow. I was so light back then. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I think those were the Bs, physics and chemistry. Okay, which is incredible. But I do think it would have ruled you out for admission. I don't know about that because. Okay, you're not ready to admit that.

2:13:02Yeah, it was probably the average entrance. So some people got in under that. And conversely, many people had 4.2s. Yeah, but some people had 3.8s. Yeah, if they had a 2 ,000 on their SAT or whatever the hell. No such thing. See. 1 ,800. 1 ,600. 1 ,600, okay. Which I also did not have. Right, okay. Okay, so. But you know what? I think my essay would have really been compelling. I tell myself that my essay is what got me in. And I would have got a diversity bump. Okay, now we're talking. You got a little pop. Diversity bump both as an Indian person and as a Southern girl. No, you don't get that.

2:13:49Yeah, you get that. No, they're not trying to make sure the people from the South. I think they want that. Okay. Maybe Southern Indian like Carola, but not Southern. I'm working on with two southern environments. Three. You think you have three? Okay. All right. Now, Alexander Technique. He talked about teacher, like a very prominent Alexander Technique teacher at UC, excuse me, at NYU. Not on the list because that is a private school. Mm-hmm. You can get in with like a 2.3, I think. And a 400 on your SAT. And I think it might be Mona Stiles because she taught the Alexander technique for decades before her passing in 2020 at the graduate acting program at NYU.

2:14:39I do think he said he. So, you know, I feel like he said he as well. He did. It might be. It might be. We don't need to know. It might be. We don't need to do that. We don't deal in hypotheticals here. Yeah. Tom Stoppard is Czechoslovakian. he got that right great and I guess I should read a Tom Stoppard play great plays I wonder when you when you come over to my new house if you'll be impressed by how smart I am because I have like so many plays oh wow yeah that I read and studied and you can flip through them and you can see my notes okay they'll be on display in your new house Yeah, right now they're like behind the couch.

2:15:28They're hard to see. But in my house, you're going to be able to see them better. And I think you're going to have a whole new opinion on whether or not I could get into UCLA. Okay. All right. TBD. Okay. Oh, I can't believe UCLA was number one. That really went my way. That's like a real blessing. You went to that school as an in-state resident. I mean, even worse, you want to keep piling on as a transfer student, which is also easy. I decided not to say that. Okay. You felt like that was punching down. I did feel like that was a little too much. Yeah. That's punching down. Well, that's it. All right.

2:16:07Billy. Well, that was lovely. Uncle baby Billy. Not uncle baby Billy, but you know. Billy Crudup. Billy Crudup. Uncle baby Billy Crudup. All right. Love you. Love you.

2:16:20Thank you.

2:16:50slash survey.