Joe Keery

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0:38Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. I was in this band called Post Animal. Right. and went back after shooting the first season that came out. We were playing shows and people started coming being like, Steve Arrington, oh my God, what's up? Hey, man. And so I realized really quickly, uh-oh, I'm about to be this guy for the rest of my life.

1:13Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now. Hey guys, it's Josh. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. We have a treat today for Stranger Things fans, for fans of Joe, the musical artist. Or Joe Keery, the Stranger Things actor. This is your place to be. Joe Keery on the podcast today. Hey, guys. Thanks, as always, for joining me on my little old podcast that could. We are celebrating Stranger Things again today. Of course, we recently had Winona on the show. We actually have one more, at least one more special Stranger Things episode coming up that's going to be really special.

1:53But today, a first-time guest, Joe Keery, someone who I've done a fair amount with over the years, but has never done the deep dive with me, and I'm so thrilled it happened finally. When we taped this, I just moderated a panel with basically most of the cast of Stranger Things the night before, so there's some context for you there. And don't worry about spoilers, by the way. This one really doesn't get into specific spoilers of Stranger Things 5, But it is a nice career conversation about Joe's arc as an actor and as a musical artist. You probably know that, especially in recent years, he's exploded as a musical artist.

2:34Joe, as in DJO. He's killing it. I mean, there's the acting and music, and they are both equally prolific for him right now. So I'm very happy for him. He's just also truly... When I do these Stranger Things events, I always feel like he is ballast for me. He's someone I can connect with. He's, I don't know, he's a steadying force in the universe and just a solid dude. So I'm very happy this one happened. talented in all aspects of his career and happy to celebrate all the good things that are happening for him. Without any further ado, let's get right to it, right guys? Let's just do it. This is my conversation with Joe Keery.

3:17Enjoy. Joe Keery, you're on the podcast finally. I don't know what took so long. How's it going, man? Good, man. How you doing? It's the second day I'm seeing you in a row. What a gift. We're both blessed. It's great. It's good to see you. it's good to see you buddy we had a great uh event last night correct me i'm wrong you're i know you're doing an event tonight but am i like one of the last like official stranger things interviews you'll have ever done in support of the show yes yeah definitely okay i think this is my last today's but yeah my last day of press yeah so let it all hang out everything you wanted to say about your cast members there you go let it go you know it's fun i kind of do wish that we could do the um last bit of press after the show is out i know you could actually talk about all the things that you know people are going to want to talk about once the show's done you're what i'm doing i'm talking to matt and ross right after the finale so you're welcome to hop on you should call me in if they if they want to phone a friend i'll be around that is kind of cool that you're doing that i'm glad that you're doing that because yeah it's gonna yeah there's a lot to talk about and there's a lot to unpack.

4:21I mean, the first four are obviously loaded with stuff, but the last, there's a lot to talk about, I guess. Yes, so I gather. Over the years, look, you've done a lot of press. Obviously, you've done this solo stuff, but you've done a lot of your press with Gaten or Maya or Charlie and Talia. What was the difference in kind of vibe between those folks? Was a Gaten pairing much different than a Maya? They have much different vibes, I would imagine. What was the press tour like when you're doing something with Gaten versus Amaya or Charlie, et cetera? Great question. Well, Charlie and Natalia, we're like the OG kind of crew.

5:01You know, the three of us were really like the teen cast to start. So we've got kind of like, I don't know, working with them and hanging out with them and doing press with them reminds me of being 23, 24 years old. And then really like working with Gaten and doing press with, He's so quick and so funny and like it brings like a real levity. And it's just like, you know, we're not goofing around, but it is. We just did Good Morning America and it feels like, you know, you're just hanging out with Gaten. It makes everything. The stakes are very low. So it's really nice. Right. And then Maya is just like so eloquent, man.

5:39I mean, last night her talking about kind of how she sees her character this season where she's sort of like brought Robin. And it's like such beautiful answers, you know? I know. So it's always kind of like inspire to be with her and feel like, oh, wow, that's really thoughtful and really poignant. It was fun to see some of the things that kind of sparked all of you guys when we were all talking last night. Like one of them was, and Matt and Ross kind of said this to me afterwards, like as soon as you brought up how long the shoot was, we knew it was going to set them all off. Because it's like, I mean, it was a thing.

6:12It is a thing. It's obviously like, obviously no one is going to say this was not a huge blessing in all of your lives. This changed all of your lives. But it's also like a real thing that the length of these shoots impacted your lives. And it was something to manage. Is that fair to say? Like, I mean, give me a sense of the last few years of, especially as new acting opportunities came up, the music career really was taking off. Was it a bit of a balancing act? Was it frustrating at times to kind of show how do I figure this all out and honor, obviously, my bread and butter, which is Stranger Things?

6:47Yeah, definitely. And that's very important to me the whole time. Like, that is the thing that has given you all these opportunities. So it's really important to honor that, I think. And I'm just such a fan of the brothers. You know, they were able to do this kind of incredible thing, you know. So rare. It's like an original idea. They kind of two unknown guys and they just did this thing. So I, apart from just like respecting them and really looking up to them, I also just, yeah, as a friend, I'm just like, yeah, it's cool to be friends with two people who are so motivated. But yeah, it's difficult to balance.

7:24That's for sure. But I guess my life just kind of shifted around it. I mean, but since really the beginning, because your life changes when you're in something that, you know, of gains notoriety anyways right so yeah i i just had for the last 10 years a great amount of time in atlanta and i like built a community of friends down there and had a whole thing going on whole life going on down there which was kind of an added element of um sadness at the end because i was saying goodbye to all these people and right um not really sure when i was going to see them either. So not only is it like the onscreen, it's the character, it's the whole experience, but it's like kind of life of it all down there.

8:10Um, yeah, but it can be, yeah, it can be difficult to, um, balance, I guess, like, you know, it is that conundrum, right? Cause it's like, suddenly you get this exposure and opportunities start to come to you. And then it's like, wait, I actually have to turn down. I'm not, I'm literally just not available for some of these opportunities that I probably would have killed for prior to the show. Of course. Yeah, of course. It's just sort of like the way that the universe works is the way that I think about it. Like I got lucky enough to do this thing that popped off so hard kind of early on and me kind of getting out there really only about two years into kind of professionally doing it out of school.

8:49Right. And so, yeah, that comes with, you know, ups and downs, I guess, but to me the ups far outweigh the downs. And it's kind of just a challenge to sort of force people to maybe think about me in a different way, which is another kind of interesting challenge, which I'm now sort of approaching.

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12:39I mean, we're going to get to the whole music side in a bit, but like must make the, especially the last few years so rewarding that like you've been able to really stake out this whole other identity. I mean, and you know, you're a smart guy, you know, like at first when you start to like, you know, music has always been a part of your life, but when you really start to like go, you go after this kind of new identity and you know, some people are going to just think, oh, it's the stranger things guy. This is, this is just the guy just, this is a fun little hobby for him. right to now as we sit here today we could only talk about the music career and it would be like the fans would be perfectly happy and you have a huge fan base there so it's i mean where you sit today it's got to be like you know a lot different than it was probably even six or seven years ago where it was a little more tenuous of what else was happening yeah definitely yeah i think you're kind of like it's funny when i first got on the show i definitely had the thought of like wow oh my gosh um i had done one season of the show and i think i had just been kind of like promoted to sears regular for the second season i remember kind of thinking like oh my gosh like i feel like i'm going to be able to maybe like kind of pick and choose and do sort of whatever i want you know right and that i don't think that ever really is the case you know i at least i feel like i i don't know you're always kind of still fighting for that next thing um and i think kind of that's the way that it should be um yeah and i definitely feel like i i have the most success at things that i really do enjoy and so the music side was a thing that i just really enjoyed doing and just kept doing it because it was really fun and it was a really nice kind of companion to you know on set kind of tied up sort of don't have control of your time right and you can really make use of that time, that downtime.

14:28I'm kind of a busy body and a little bit of a workaholic. So it's nice to be able to like, okay, well, I'm here for five days. I got nothing to do. Let's work on that stuff. You know, other fun stuff to work on. I know the nature of like a lot of the press you guys have been doing like the last few months is obviously so much looking back, looking back at clips, looking back at arcs, et cetera. But it must have afforded you to an opportunity to kind of take stock of like, I don't know, hopefully stuff you're proud of from the show specifically, whether it's arcs, relationships, specific scenes, what has jumped out at you as you've kind of like, people like me have forced you to look back at the work.

15:04Like, what are you honestly proud of? Or I don't know, take some, yeah, take some enjoyment out of revisiting back through the last 10 years. It's a great question.

15:18Maybe, I'm probably most proud of the fact that the, you know the cast is actually still as close as we all are almost closer i think now than maybe we were halfway through um yeah and to be like genuinely close and have deep friendships with these people that we shared this experience it's kind of you know fused us all together in this cool way. And I got to watch a lot of them grow up. And so that's been super special and important for me. But I'm giving you dispensation. I'm giving you dispensation. Think about scenes that you've gotten a chance to act opposite your friends, opposite Maya, Charlie, etc.

16:06There's got to be some moments, whether you can take yourself out of the equation. Like what are just like scenes from a creative standpoint that you think like your your collaborator the duffers maybe even your yourself you're proud of specifically scenes i guess the ones that i've i mean i love all that underwater stuff but that's like kind of i kind of i'm split down the middle i'm kind of that's like a filmmaking the filmmaking side of me that like enjoys that yeah um and being a part of like this massive squad of people who are you know making kind of these incredible shots happen love that in terms of like i think i'm most proud maybe of like the stuff that i did with gaten i guess in season two um and it just felt like i really knew how to handle the ground ball that was hit to me and was working with this like incredible kid um and to me that that is maybe what i'll look back on and be like that that was the moment where i feel like that like unlocked the character a little bit more for me i feel like i had like a strong sense of who the character was based off of who he was to this other person sure um and just i'm also a fan of like movies with kind of an odd couple and they certainly fit the bill there you know two characters who should not work out that do and kind of bicker and you know have fun together um yeah that makes me sad that like maybe i won't ever work with him again you know which could be the case because we played these two iconic characters together it would take a while i've made jokes with gaten that we got to do some like we should do like waiting for godot or something totally there's so many two handers out there you You could literally do the odd couple in 30 years.

18:03Yeah, there you go. Do you remember the first time you saw the Scoops Ahoy costume? And do you have any regrets that you didn't give any strong notes on what you'd like changed? A part of the show is also just kind of like signing over to like, well, they're doing whatever they want to do. It feels good in a way, just like to have faith in the brothers. I mean, I definitely throughout that season was like, I think I'd like take the smock part off. So the brothers as we would shoot, they'd be like, you know, we're going out of the base, like the Russian base. Don't you think you take the smock thing off?

18:42No, I don't think so. He keeps the smock on. So like I literally wore that thing all year, I think for for 99 percent of that season. But on the other hand, it's a great Halloween costume for people. So that's kind of cool. that's a one and done the wedding officiating thing i mean because i know that was for a friend but like yeah you've i mean you've unlocked so many you know fantasies for people now like oh he's available he will do this for a price yeah it would have to be i don't think i yeah no i think it's a one and done sort of thing maybe unless my i don't know it would it would be a special occasion.

19:23In your heart of hearts, do you truly believe you know, you're a smart guy, you know as well as I do reboots, sequels are the coin of the realm. Do you believe you've played Steve for the last time? As far as I know, yes. I mean, I don't know. You think about people return to stuff when they're older, but I can't imagine for a very long time, I think. but it's like I think Charlie said it last time you kind of like shake hands with the character that you played and send them on their way. It's also like I've gotten a lot older and the part of me that kind of connected with that character has also changed and each time you know we did the first season get a little older and then you come back and do the second season get a little older come back and do the third get a little a little older.

20:18And, you know, distance is widening each time a little bit. Yeah, definitely felt that way. It was kind of coming back for this one. It was like maybe sort of the hardest in a way. And also just because of the scale of the show, it was like, we're going, we're in it. And it's like, you know, there's a lot less time. Yeah. You're not easing back in. It's high intensity right from the, yeah, totally. Sort of. They're not going to be. you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of things going on. There's a lot of needles to thread. Yeah. So, um, yeah, there's only so much time, I guess. One of my favorite things, uh, about my association and covering this show over the years is it's brought me close to the unicorn that is Winona Ryder.

21:05Um, how would you just, how would you describe Winona Ryder to an alien? How do we, how do we even approximate the uniqueness, the specialness of one Winona Ryder? She is definitely a unicorn, isn't she? You must've, You grew up with watching her movies and stuff, I'm sure. She was, I mean, not to make it weird, she was my childhood crush. And now she's like an acquaintance. It's bizarre to me. Yeah, she's like a deep fan too, which I did not. Oh my God. I don't know. She's like such a star that maybe I thought she's like a movie star. I don't know. And not that she's not, but she's such a deep, real fan of things.

21:41And like such a nerd, I guess. Movie nerd and music nerd. She knows so much about music. And, you know, I feel like I can always count on her to text me at some random time some amazing picture from her past with like a blurb and a crazy story about Tom Petty or, you know, hanging with Stevie Nicks. They're just like she's got all these amazing stories. and um yeah so i can't believe yeah i still kind of it's lost on me a little bit that she's in the show that i've worked with her well let's talk about that because this gives me a good segue into your own like growing up and your own interests as a pop culture nut or obsessive give me a sense okay so who was joe as a kid what were the posters on the wall let's let's start like on film and tv we can talk music too but i want to share like a sense of what your where you were definitely huge like fantasy sci-fi uh lord of the rings you know it was growing up as that was coming out so that was huge um like warhammer 40k and like lord of the rings little figures those were huge with my friends so though um you know who's still into that do you know that henry cavill is like the biggest warhammer yeah i saw this yeah like for real yeah it's i mean it's a it's a very complicated hobby i feel like as i've gotten older i'm like i don't know if i have something has to give yeah something's gotta give um so or the rings was that like an annual is that like extended editions like the whole thing except i think the the theatrical release of the of the fellowship is still my favorite one that's like just like lean and great and um reminds me also of like a very specific time But like all those movies, like Star Wars, the original Star Wars, I was a huge fan of those.

23:39Indiana Jones, love kind of like adventure movies as a little kid. Right. And also was growing up at the time Harry Potter was coming out. So I was a huge fan of those movies as well. So I did love kind of these like big epic stories, which is kind of odd really that I ended up being in something that is kind of, you know, an homage to a lot of those things. Totally. yeah I've heard you mentioned Star Wars before so it was mostly even though you grew up probably more with prequels I would imagine than the original like so you were but you you kind of your love is goes back to the the OGs like what's your OGs yeah those were the ones that my like my parents showed me um got it and I had the VHS tapes of those ones and you know like the remastered or whatever and then for music I guess it was like the first CD I got was a Boston you know more album love that album but I had like a nice ACDC live at Donington poster amazing like how the West was one Led Zeppelin poster formative concerts do you remember first concerts you went to uh yeah i went to the two that i really remember i went to bruce springsteen with my family at the tweeter center in massachusetts and there's like a big lawn and he played it was like this blue grass era so it was amazing but he played for three hours so at the end of it i was like oh my god we gotta get out that's a short show for bruce i mean yeah i know and then when i was uh i got into jamie cullum is his name he's a piano player okay um this kid in school introduced me to him and i went with him down to like somewhere in boston we like drove down after school one day um but yeah those were two concerts that were kind of like my first experience but um to be honest with you like i wasn't like a total music head really yeah actually i was kind of you know i like enjoyed it i enjoyed listening to music but i wasn't like seeing a bunch of live shows.

25:52I lived in such a small town that nobody was coming through and to drive to Boston to see anything is like 45 to an hour. And so it was a whole event to really do that. I was really kind of isolated in this kind of small town. So did when you went to school in Chicago, obviously huge cultural oasis like comedy, theater, music, did that kind of blow your mind and kind of open your brain a bit? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So what were you diving into? Whether it was at school or just like with friends, what were you becoming passionate about when you were at DePaul? I was like deep in this theater school.

26:35And it's such like a tight, tight community. And your whole life really revolves around the happenings at school, socially. um and so all throughout school i'd say i was like really deeply tied into that and you know you're working on when you're like a freshman you're like on the crew for these shows and then you're you know i would like go back home for the summer and then i guess like slowly as i sort of you know met more people in chicago i kind of started to become aware of like the music scene that was going on at the time which was like twin peaks were really big at the time i think like um this was before Whitney, I think this band, the Smith Westerns were this, uh, kind of playing around town and kind of started becoming aware that, oh, there's like young people like doing really interesting stuff.

27:24Um, and then also seeing theater, a bunch of theater, um, obviously Steppenwolf was there and the Goodman theater and a bunch of different theaters, uh, Red Orchid. Sure. Yeah. One of my, my spirit animals, Michael Shannon keeps going back to Chicago. did you see him back in the day in Chicago ever? Yeah, definitely. I forget what the show is, but he would be walking around. You'd see him every once in a while. His mentor, there was a casting director who was a teacher at the school named Jane Brody. And she had a lot of great stories about him and about how unorthodox he was as a student. And it was really cool to hear about him as this kind of rare, kind of unicorn sort of guy.

28:07so were you getting some validation back then like were you were you getting a sense from your experiences there on the stage that like this might actually pan out there might be a career for me whether it's in theater or tv or film you know you go through and you try to get good parts when you're in school but you're competing with you know a very small pool yeah

28:32um i i was hopeful i don't know i was it's hard for me to even remember it to be honest I feel like there's like a line in the sand sort of in my mind, which is like before and after Stranger Things, which is like this thing that struck out of the cannon. Yeah, totally. I know. And beforehand, I'm like, was I just like stupidly confident to pursue this? Like, because it very easily could have gone any other way. But no, I think where the arrogance and stupidity of youth serves you, serves all of us. It's good to have a little bit of that when you're 20 to 22. And then it slowly kind of like wears off a little bit too.

29:06you know the older you get um but no it's really I just liked it a lot and I you know I had some luck like as I was graduating there's like a showcase and you go to New York and you go to LA and I was like maybe I'll I don't know maybe I'd move but got uh some representation in Chicago which was great so I stayed there and you know like they've got tv shows like Chicago Fire I I booked a two spot thing and commercials. And slowly you're like, okay, like I'm working my day job and getting some, that was validation for sure. I was like, okay, I'm like. You're booking something. You're getting some real stuff.

29:46Booking stuff. Yeah. But I wasn't like sure how, what the next level was, you know, do you have to move somewhere else or do you have to stay here? Like not a lot of stuff comes through Chicago. if they're casting like a lead thing they usually kind of will either do that yeah I mean even now it's like you know hard so so were you in LA New York Chicago when Stranger Things came around like where were you Chicago you're in Chicago still so were you and as you look back were you getting big I mean were there close calls on something that in retrospect could have changed the career in a significant way before stranger things yes there was one uh i flew to new york to audition for this movie called the intern it's nancy myers film yes we got exactly i flew to the i flew to new york it was very exciting oh my god was i excited um like sent in a tape or whatever like oh it'd be great if you fly so flew myself to new york like went to i mean i've thought of this and forever, stayed, I don't know where I stayed.

30:49I think I stayed with like a friend who was on Broadway at the time, like slept on his floor and sat in the waiting room, was waiting for, you know, to tape. And I remember Robert De Niro like walked through this because he was reading with someone else. They were, you know, doing some other thing. It was the intern, by the way, you were right. I was wrong. The answer is correct. Yes. anyways um flew back found out that i didn't got it but was kind of like okay like i got far on that like i actually was you know i was in did you read with nancy myers with de niro with anne hathaway any of them no no i read i think i read with nancy myers okay um and it was exciting yeah it was like a very exciting uh moment and then found out that i didn't get it.