BONUS: “Remain: A Supernatural Love Story” (with Kal Penn)

0:02Welcome to Earsay, the iHeart and Audible audiobook club, where each episode we dive into a different audible title with your favorite podcast hosts and special guests. I'm Cal Penn, host of Here We Go Again. And I'm Ed Helms, host of Snafu. How you been? Uh, pretty great. Yeah? Yeah. Not to go right to the weather, but it's been raining for a week in Los Angeles, and I love it. So I was also going to do weather and say that when it's in the 40s, like it's been in New York, I feel colder than when it's in the 20s. Interesting. Which is a weird thing. I just like my nose is always cold for summer.

0:40It's a big nose, to be fair. A lot of heat dissipates from your nose. Is that? Yes, exactly. Yeah. Interesting.

0:54This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Are you a winter person? Like, I love being outside and doing stuff when it's warm and sunny, but there's something about when it's rainy or snowy or overcast where I feel like, ooh, I get to stay inside. And that makes me happy. And then I can listen to a great audiobook. What a nice segue. I am a fan of snow to answer your question, but that is a brilliant segue. Because when you and I first started doing the show, we promised that we'd be getting into really fun titles, push the limits of the audiobook format. But we're delivering on that promise today with a really unique title.

1:33This is the metaphysical romance slash thriller Remain, a supernatural love story co-authored by Nicholas Sparks, who also wrote A Walk to Remember in the Notebook, and M. Night Shyamalan, the director known for his twisting supernatural thrillers like The Sixth Sense and Signs. And for Remain, they teamed up on both. Sixth Sense. Hold on. Can we just talk about Sixth Sense for a second? Let's just do a whole, the whole podcast now is. Did anyone spoil that for you? No. Did they spoil it for you? Before you saw it? No. Thank God. I feel like that was one of those ones. I don't know if you remember when No Way Out came out, the Kevin Costner thriller from back in like the 90s, early 90s.

2:16There was this famous incident where Johnny Carson spoiled it. Oh, no. Because, by the way, he's Russian. And that's like the big reveal at the end of No Way Out, which is a phenomenal movie that I just spoiled for any. listeners. But yeah, Sixth Sense is one of the best twist endings in movie history. Sorry. I just had to get there. No, I'm glad you went there, and I'm glad that nobody spoiled it for either of us, because that was the whole enjoyment. So for Remain, these two teamed up on both the novel, which is out now, and a film, which comes out in 2026. The story follows architect Tate Donovan, who checks himself out of a Connecticut psychiatric facility after the death of his sister, and he takes a job designing a vacation home for a friend, renting an old house nearby.

3:06The atmosphere in this house is immediately spooky. Early in his stay, a young woman named Ren appears doing yoga and kind of behaving pretty much normally, and he's like, oh, I didn't realize there was someone else who was also going to be staying in this house. And then she vanishes in front of his eyes and Tate soon finds out that someone named Ren, ready, died in the house two years before. And he's pretty sure that this is her ghost who's trapped between the friendly daytime Ren and a very terrifying nighttime version. So Tate has heard before that the spirits of those who died with unresolved issues remain here.

3:49And Ed, while he is trying to unravel the mystery of what really happened to Ren, he's also falling in love with her. Get out of here. I'm saying. It's a ghost romance slash, oh, this is cool. It is. I'm very taken in by this, and I have to say, it's such a trope of ghost stories, but it's so good. The thing of, like, where you meet a character, and then someone else says, like, what? they've been dead for 10 years it's like always so chilling i love that my favorite one of those is large margin peewee's uh peewee's big event exactly yes what a perfect perfect use of that trope well cal this one's a doozy have fun with it take it away thanks man yeah it'll be great so here to talk about remain with me is an american journalist screenwriter and author of five books, most recently the gothic romance novel Immortality, A Love Story.

4:53She also writes and hosts Noble Blood, a historical weekly podcast for iHeartMedia about the dark side of monarchy, which is also known as Monarchy.

5:08Dana Schwartz, welcome to Earsay. It's a pleasure to have you join our club today. Thank you so much for having me. I love a book club. I love a book club and I love one that's like this. Are you generally a fan of like thrillers, mysteries, like ghost stories? What's your usual book club reading diet? it. This time of year, I do get into thrillers, mystery, horror books. I love horror books. I love Shirley Jackson. I want a book that's going to scare me, especially when right now we're recording this. I'm in Chicago and like the wind is whipping against the window and I'm like, this is the mood.

5:44Give me a cup of tea and a scary book and I'll be thrilled. I love the physical interaction with what you're reading. So like when my big nose and hands are cold because it's the end of November, like bring me something dark and I'll just totally immerse myself in it. That's great. That's it. I, the problem is I live in Los Angeles now. And so, so many times I'll be like wanting to get in a horror mood and it's like 75 degrees. So you need a book to really do a lot of the heavy lifting there. The atmosphere needs to be great. That's fair. Although it can get into the forties. Occasionally. On the rainier days, I'm trying to be generous.

6:24So this audiobook is the result of a very surprising collaboration between M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks. I'm a fan of both of them, obviously. How effectively do you think the book balances this healing love story with the aforementioned terrifying spooky elements? I loved that these two men collaborated. It made me so happy. Yeah, same. I will say when I first told people, I was like, oh, I'm listening to this book and it's like M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks. People were like, huh? Because I think that sometimes people only know M. Night Shyamalan as the sort of horror twist guy and they don't really pay attention to the way that his books also have very earnest emotional depth.

7:11They're about family a lot of the time. And I think people who haven't read Nicholas Sparks maybe only think of it as like, you know, surface level romance because they haven't read these books about like actual characters. So I think that they actually went really well together in a surprising way. It was delightful. Was there a part that you liked the best, like spooky versus the balance of like the love stuff? I go spooky. I like the ghost stuff. I like the problem solving, sort of like the detective when, not to jump ahead, but when we get sort of into detective mode, that's when I was clicking into gear.

7:50I'm like, grease up my Hercule Poirot mustache. Let's have some fun. You touched on like a thing that, so I've auditioned for a couple of M. Night Shyamalan movies. I obviously have not gotten them otherwise. Well, because he's always casting himself. That's the problem. No, his casts are always wonderful. But in reading his scripts, like, you know, because you read it a year, year and a half before you see it on screen. And the depth of characters, like you were saying, always really jumps out at me where everybody gives him the rightful credit for the spooky stuff and the twists. But when you're prepping a scene as an actor, it's all about character arc and grounding it somewhere.

8:25And all of that is there in a way that I think is not often recognized the way it should because he's phenomenal at building relationships and characters. I'm an M. Night Shyamalan defender. I feel like there was sort of that fallow period, and then maybe the visit came and people got back on board, but I just want to be on the record that I was on board the whole time. Good. Were there any of Shyamalan or Nick Sparks' previous works that this reminded you of? Ooh, you know what? I don't want to spoil The Notebook for anyone who hasn't read or seen The Notebook, But, you know, I will say like that is a book with a twist that like it unfolds over the course of the book.

9:08So I think if you haven't read The Notebook, you might have been surprised that Nicholas Sparks is also out here doing a twist. At the end of the audiobook, there is a very exclusive conversation between the authors. So if you're a nerd for process like I am, which clearly I guess we all are if we're listening to this podcast. But you find out that Nicholas Sparks is a total horror nerd and that Shyamalan wasn't going to direct the movie version of this at first, but decided he wanted to work on something earnest and healing like this. There are such little interesting tidbits of people's creative choices.

9:44I also, I don't know if you saw Knock at the Cabin, which is a very interesting movie. And it's based on a horror book. And again, it's so hard talking about M. Night Shyamalan movies and horror books because I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't read slash seen them. But I will say, if you haven't read the book, it's a different sort of twist and energy to the movie. And I think M. Night Shyamalan, in his adaptation of the book that became Knock at the Cabin, gets at this sort of like family tragedy drama where you are in a tight, enclosed space, like sort of a haunted house in a sense, and trying to figure out a mystery.

10:30That is one of the projects I auditioned for and loved the script and then obviously read the book before the audition, too. It was very cool to see that sequence of how something goes from literature to on the page and then what he does off the page. It's fascinating. I mean, I don't want to get too far away from the book, but I've written some books. I write screenplays a lot of the time. I really find it fun and interesting when an adaptation can actually be an adaptation, like its own work that stands on its own. And I think the strongest adaptations aren't the ones that are literal or like directly close to the source.

11:08Sometimes I see people on the Internet who are angry that like the movies based on books they love aren't exactly the same or don't have the exact same plot. And it's like, well, the book already exists. I mean, I agree with you 100 percent. I did the film adaptation of a wonderful book called The Namesake by Jumbo Lahiri years ago. She was and is one of my favorite authors before I had the chance to work on the film. And I thought, which was a nice compliment to Miranair's directing, there were people who were like, why did she skip full decades from the book? And I was like, because this can't be a nine hour movie.

11:42You have to pick and choose when you adapt. And so it's always also very cool to hear, like, not just when people are questioning why something was changed, but when like their favorite part of the book is not in the movie. I mean, it's amazing also now that you're in a Miranair movie who's now the queen mother of New York. Yeah, the first family, the first mom of New York. Yeah, it's insane. And as a New Yorker and somebody who's heavily biased, it is very cool. It's a very cool moment. Did you happen to look up who's playing who in the upcoming film version of this, or did you use your own imagination?

12:13I didn't. Has it been announced? Did I miss this? It has. Oh, tell me, please. Okay, so you had a clear picture of the characters before. Okay, so I will tell you, and then tell me if you think it fit who was in your head. So Tate, Jake Gyllenhaal. Yes. Okay, that's perfect. Yeah, perfect casting, right? Wren is Phoebe Dinever. Oh, from Bridgerton. She's great. Yes, Daphne and Bridgerton. Totally. And then Nash, going back to your earlier observation, Nash is played by M. Night Shyamalan. Yep, yep, he's doing it. He's doing it. I did not audition for this movie. Yeah, well, because he already cast it.

12:54Yeah, yeah, exactly. The emotional heart of the story lies in Tate's attempts to help Ren, and Ren exists in two forms, the beautiful, oblivious daytime Ren, and then the insanely terrifying nighttime Ren who repeatedly relives the trauma of her death. Why does Tate believe he must save Ren to save himself? I mean, I will say I personally wanted to shake Tate and just be like, you should have just listened to your sister. Your sister knew what she was talking about. I mean, she gave the best advice. And I think that Tate knows that he's someone who's kind of been selfish and in his head and getting over the grief of his sister and helping Ren is going to be the thing that kind of helps him be able to move on.

13:43Did the logic resonate with you? His logic? Well, okay. I don't know if this is what you're looking for in the answer, but I will say something that I picked up on is I also think he was fully helping her because she was pretty. Like, this is a hot girl doing yoga in, like, tight white yoga pants. And he's like, I don't know. For some reason, I just have to help her. And I'm like, yeah, all right. This is a great insight into like, oh, when the movie comes out, like just like checking that then being like, yeah, that's visually seeing that that might be what it was. I don't know that that's what I'm reading.

14:16One of my takeaways from this was like, you know, it's so overused, but truly everybody processes trauma and grief so completely differently. And I'm with you on the like, just wanting to shake him. And then in my head, I'm like, I guess you just process it in that way for yourself in a way that I maybe don't. And you know what I also respected with Tate is that he didn't, even though I, as the reader, like kind of knew, I'm like, this is a fictional book. So look, ghosts are real. That's a thing that's going to be happening. But he as a character obviously doesn't know that he's in a book. And so he really is, he makes sure, he does some problem solving in a way that felt very true to how a real person would act in this situation.

15:02So for the listener, Tate ultimately believes that Wren was murdered. He starts investigating the three potential suspects that are based on Wren's account of betrayals and heartbreak. There are no spoilers. One, her abusive husband Griffin, whom she was divorcing. Two, her business partner Nash, whom she was suing. And three, her friend Dax, who was obsessed with and stalking her. Sure. So Dana, did you prefer the grounded small town detective work through all this or the spooky supernatural scenario? Oh, that's a good question. I think I liked both. I liked the balance, but I thought that these characters were really well developed and grounded.

15:46Like, everyone felt really real. All of Tate's friends, like, his work as an architect, I thought was interesting. I mean, that's also part of it, is I'm, like, such a dork reading this book that I'm like, yeah, tell me about this 12-bedroom house you're building. Well, I mean, but that kind of stuff, to me, builds the full scope of who somebody is. Even if it looks like, oh, this is relevant or irrelevant to moving the plot along. Like, anything that really builds the lives of these people is very full. Like, I'm trying to think of a comp example when you're actually doing a movie. Like, the research that you put into your characters that nobody will ever see, right?

16:26Like, there's a casual mention that this dude's a doctor or an astronaut or whatever. And the movie's not even about that. Or the book's not even about that. The attention to detail that you put into that prep, which is what I like about books. Like, going back to the namesake, I remember my character's ATM password was in the book. Like it's little intimate details that you'll never see in a movie, totally irrelevant. But in a book or audio book, you get those little nuggets that just make you feel connected to them, I think. The mystery in the haunted house itself, deeply unsettling. Yeah. Which spooky scene or moment resonated with you the most in the audio format?

17:08oh okay you know that actual scene that did scare me as i was listening to it was the first bathroom scene i don't know if you remember but it's like he's not entirely convinced that ren isn't is supernatural at this point it's the first time we see night ren and it was so unexpected that there's such violence to that scene that like up until this point we've been having like a great time where like on you know this beautiful like tourist island biking around building a house talking about scones and then we just get this like pretty sudden scene of violence that i was like okay we're we're in the game right now um i don't disagree at all i've just found night right overall to be incredibly like the feeling of like when you get the chills for no reason Yeah.

17:59I felt like the lead up to that feeling, I didn't actually get the chills, but that like very unsettling feeling that lives in your skin was that for me. Yeah. Oh, God. And it's also like, to me, there's something so visceral about the fact that it was in a bathroom, like not to get all psycho, but like a bathroom is a very like vulnerable place. Like you're in the shot. It's a place that you want to be like private and alone. I mean, you're like literally naked sometimes. I think you're very unprotected. And so there is something to me very visceral about an act of violence there that I was like, oof.

18:34That's a great way to put it. And now I'm going to do the thing that you do when you're 12 years old and check behind the curtain every time you walk into the bathroom. Yeah, everyone. Yeah. All right, we're going to take a short break, but we will be right back.

18:55Okay, Dana, we're going to do a few quick fire questions now in a segment called Plot Twist. Oh, great. It should be fun. I like these questions. All right, ready? Tate believes that Wren beckoned him for help and that he had somehow done the same to Wren. Have you ever experienced a connection with someone in your life that felt preordained or guided by a mysterious force? Oh, God. I mean, I should say my husband that we met because it's just sort of that perfect timing that we met and came together. You know how we met? And this is, I'm not flirting, but I do have to say this. He invited me on his podcast.

19:37Oh, no way. And then we fell in love. How cool is that? That's how it happened. So your first convo was public. Our first convo was public. And a friend actually, as like a wedding gift, gave us like the USB of that actual conversation. What was the topic of the pod? He has a podcast called All Fantasy Everything. And they like fantasy draft sports style things that aren't sports. And I drafted and we were drafting non-Disney animated movies. And I am sort of like a movie snob. And like he's a comedian. All of his friends are comedians. like they don't take it seriously and I like I'm a very competitive person I was like I am doing this podcast and I'm here to win this non-winnable game um and I also think my flirting style was just like being mean to him and so I think listeners were just like even in the comments of that episode like on reddit people were like oh Dana's so mean to him like they did not get along and then we like immediately had chemistry and got married that's a great sentence my flirting style was just being mean to him.

20:43Yeah, that's what boys like, right? That's a cool answer to that. All right, back to this audiobook. So, before Tate's sister Sylvia died, she gave him cryptic guidance, urging him to strike up a conversation with a stranger, be open to the idea that it happened for a reason. If you could receive one prophetic message to guide your life, what kind of guidance would you seek. It could be from beyond, or it doesn't have to be. Well, see, this is the problem, because if I knew what type of guidance I needed, then I wouldn't need it. I need someone else to give me the guidance. Although I will say, not to shoehorn in a little personal anecdote again, I did get some guidance from you.

21:30From me? From you a lot, several years ago. I was, Fun fact, a presidential scholar when I was in high school and I flew to D.C. Whoa. And you gave a speech to all the little bright-eyed, bushy-tailed presidential scholars. You were probably in the Eisenhower building telling us, you know, the children are the future and to dream big. Oh, my God. Was it like 2010? It was 2011. Yeah. And so there was some advice I got. I got some advice from you, and now here I am. I would say all of my success, everything I've done up until this point, is probably thanks to that speech. I'll take it. That's definitely a lie.

22:15Because I remember we were not allowed to be creative or emotional in any speeches we gave as government employees, which was like the most ludicrous rule ever. No, we were—I will say for the kids, we were all— thrilled. We were all delighted. Well, then I feel good about that because that was one of those like, you're very excited just from the staff perspective. Like, oh, wow, you're serving your country. You're working in the White House. And by the way, we all know that you're an author, writer in your actual career that you're taking a break from for a year or two, but like, you're not allowed to use those skills here.

22:49I'm like, okay, great. Fine. But that's so funny. Okay. I'll take it. We were there. Yeah. The meeting of the minds again. And it's happened. Also, I am with you on the on the like, what would you want advice for is like at the highest level. It's just advice that you don't need. In my case, it's also like I am terrible at time management. So I don't even think I need some omniscient advice about it. I just need to like take a couple hours to read a book about it, about time management. Honestly, what I think the advice would be, and it's advice that I already know and I'm just not capable of doing, is just like, hey, spend less time on social media.

23:27It's not good for your brain. Like, read books. Getting rid of Twitter on my phone a couple years ago was the best decision. And then I have so many filters on my Instagram feed that it's mostly dog videos and stand-up comedians. But the stand-up comedians are, like, not political stand-up comedians, so it's kind of great. I'm not on Twitter anymore, and I was like, great, imagine how much time I'm going to get. And I just immediately replaced all that time with Instagram and TikTok. Okay, Ren loved cooking and teaches Tate how to make beef bourguignon. I can never say this word. Beef bourguignon.

24:04You have to say it like Julia Child. That's the way to do it. Yeah. Beef bourguignon. Yeah, nailed it. You're right. It works. Ren loved cooking and teaches Tate how to make beef bourguignon. I don't want to be rude because you are a professional actor, but your Julia Child is veering a little Kermit the Frog. A hundred percent is. Yeah. Yeah. Just because I feel like that's less offensive.

24:28Okay. Although Kermit does make a delicious beef organ. He probably does, yes. Yeah, he's good at everything. So Tate admitted he would probably look like, quote, an archaeologist lifting potato sacks if he tried to dance. And he, I mean, he even struggles with doing laundry. Yeah. What is your domestic strength and weakness? I don't want to brag, but I'm like, I bake a lot. I'm a really good baker. I'm in charge of the pies for Thanksgiving. I'm making two pies. I would say my weaknesses are like cleaning, like the deep cleaning. I can do the tidying, but I'm not good at like the, you know, knowing which chemicals, you know, to mix.

25:10I don't, you know, don't mix bleach or whatever, but I'm good at baking. I'm pretty good at cooking. What do you bake? What kind of pies? I'm making a pumpkin and I'm making, bear with me, a chocolate peacock pie. Ooh. Ooh. Going a little outside the box. That's hard. Going a little nuts. Yeah. Wow. We're going to try. We're going to see how it goes. I host a book club, an in-person book club with my friends in LA. And that is my, like, once a month, I will, you know, experiment with, like, three new baked goods. Oh, cool. And I kind of do think at this point more people are coming for the baked goods than the books.

25:42That's fun. Yeah. What about you? What are your, like, strengths, weaknesses? My weakness very easily is laundry, which is such a ludicrous thing to say because there are machines. They make machines for that now. Yeah. I don't, I'll never, it's not that my whites turn different colors. My issue is that a lot of stuff shrinks. So like even when I wash stuff on a delicate cycle, if it says you can wash it in a machine, and even when I just hang it up to like hang dry for some reason like things will shrink and I and that's because that's because I end up forgetting and putting it in the dryer I think you blame ghosts yes ghosts are the reason totally ghosts are the reason but on the plus um I'm a decent I'm a decent cook yeah what sort of things are you I'm a big Mexican fan I really like Like tacos, enchiladas.