Jay Ellis

0:00This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast, so why wait to find your new Fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look.

0:43Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Crocs store today. I read that book after season one of Insecure. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And I had heard about it quite a bit before, but I was like, I don't need to read no book about love. I'm a man. I'm a man. I don't do that.

1:13Jay Ellis, welcome to One Night Stand. We're so thrilled to have you here. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk about your list of books, but have you always been a big reader? I have always been a big reader, although it did not start out by choice. I'm an only child. And in the summers, my mother would make me do book reports every summer. So she would always, she chose the book up until a certain age. She chose the book. I had to read it. And then I had to write like a three page paper or a four page paper. Yeah, she was, she was, she's a, she's an avid reader. I love that. What kind of books did she choose for you?

1:50So I read a lot of biographies actually starting out. Like it was a lot of like, I remember reading about George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Kennedy. I read a lot of books that were all based in reality, obviously, but based in some point in history. And I think her whole thought was like, if we can, I guess what she was trying to teach me, I should actually ask her this. but if you if you can learn from these people's failures and successes and understand how they help shape the world then maybe you can take some of that into your own life I guess I don't know that's amazing I don't know and so you'd write you'd write these actual three-page yeah I'd have to write like a three-page multiple pair pre-chat GPT oh my god yeah I would have crushed but I also had to do it like and she made me like write it by hand oh wow which was also the thing and And then like if I would cross out too many times, I had to like rewrite the whole thing clean.

2:45She wouldn't let me use whiteout. She would literally make me rewrite the whole thing. Yeah. And so you got into reading through that. So I got into reading through that. And what I ultimately, what happened is like over time, I bounced around a lot in the summers as a kid. My parents had me as teenagers. They couldn't afford childcare. So they, both my grandparents, paternal and maternal, were retired. So they would send me to go be with them in the summers. And they actually lived like three or four streets away from each other. So I would just ping pong back and forth. And what I started to realize is I was in a place where I didn't know a lot of kids.

3:15And so the thing to fill my time was reading or if it was a crazy hot day in Sacramento, California or Stockton or Youngstown, Ohio or Tampa, Florida, like I could literally just sit and read all day long as long as I was quiet, didn't bother nobody. yeah i didn't have to get pushed outside if i didn't want to um and so i started to fall in love with just disappearing yeah in these stories and these characters and these people in these worlds and then that became you know when she started letting me choose my own books then that was fun like going to the library to choose the book that i was going to read for the summer was like a lot of fun and i used to beg her for it like i want to go to the library i want to library and it was yeah that's that's kind of how my foundation and reading began yeah and did you start reading fiction then when you started picking for yourself yeah I started reading fiction a lot I would read like horror a little bit like some R.L.

4:10Stine yeah I loved I love to be scared I love a good jump wow is that the same in like movies and tv as well do you like jump stuff oh yeah I don't like monsters and like I don't like that but I do like a good psychological thrill like I like to be like oh is that real oh my god yeah i love it interesting yeah it's fun keep you on your toes you know it's like you're alive yeah um that's fascinating and so what's your reading habits like now do you is there a particular time of day you like to read night oh yeah i do both actually um i will i will more listen yeah uh and do audio during the day same uh while like i always read before bed yeah always read before bed it's such a nice like no phone time yeah i think yeah And also, too, I feel like such a way to kind of again, I think if I go back to my childhood, the world kind of melts away, the day kind of melts away, the frustrations, the excitements, the work, whatever it may be, all kind of melts away.

5:04You get to disappear in this thing for a little bit and just have a moment to your to your point, like no phone, no device. And you just get to be fully present with this story and these characters. and so yeah and i also find like for some reason i feel like my brain is more open to receiving whatever thematically that i'm reading i get that that's interesting more like porous at that time that's interesting i know what you mean i like definitely it helps me i'm in a different mindset by that point and it helps like go in better yeah well you've chosen five incredible books for us to talk about and we also have your great book here as well which we'll get into but um perhaps we could start with the alchemist oh man a classic a classic um tell me about your love of that book i'm such a sucker i'm such a sucker it's just the it's the journey yeah it's the journey and i think like man how like it feels so cliche to say but like i don't know i i'm a big believer that everything that i've been through and in this book i think was really one of the first times where i started to realize like oh every kind of detour was really an experience for you and shaded the person you've become but also like for what i do as as an actor as a performer like i can bring that back into my world into my craft and use that and also it's still at some point i end up back on the road of life that i originally wanted to be on yeah even with all these little detours and so I don't know I just believe that every little thing that we soak up and experience that we have is is is for a reason yeah there's also a remarkable amount of like choice in the book that I think is really inspiring this idea that the like he chooses this path for himself yeah I think you from a young age we're told you could be anything you want to be you could be anything you want to be but then at a certain point it's like no you do this you do that you do this you do that yeah and like that kind of free will or choice kind of like drips away melts away rather And like, then you're like, oh, I guess this is the life I'm living.

7:07And this is the thing that I have to do. But I think in reality, you know, to your point, life is about choices. Like you are the creator of your reality. Right. And so it's the more you can stay in control of that, the more you can guide the journey and get to the destination that you're ultimately seeking, which to me, again, I think I really my mom actually gave me a copy of The Alchemist. man i must have been i was out of college i was living in la i must have been like mid-20s late 20s when she gave it to me and i remember being like oh this is cool but does she think i'm lost like why did she give me this but but like by the end of it i was like oh yeah i get it i get it and then when you live life i think and you go through a few things you're like oh yeah it makes sense totally it's the journey and you get to choose yeah have you had any experience in your life where you feel like you have ended up in the right place but the journey at points you were like what am i doing oh all the time yeah all the time all the time but i think that to me that's part of it is like i think you can only know where you're going so much but like you know i think of like what was a voyage across sea like at some point like Like you couldn't control, you knew the direction you wanted to go, but you couldn't control the winds.

8:29You couldn't control the storms. You couldn't control all of it. But you may very well still end up at your destination. Or maybe you're just a few nautical miles off your destination, but you can get there. You can still get there, right? And so I think in that horrible example, I think like I have experienced a lot of like forks in the road. And sometimes I chose the fork that kept me directly on the path. And sometimes I chose a bunch where I was like, what am I doing? How did I get here? and why. Interesting. And I think that that is, but that's a part of it. Like if I didn't go through that, then I wouldn't be sitting with you right now.

9:00You know what I mean? Like it all adds up in some way. It all comes together in some way. But I think all the time, I just did a play this summer and I was like, why am I in New York City doing a play? This is crazy. Who said yes to this? How did this happen? Why did I say yes to this? But I needed that experience. I wanted that experience. I sought for that experience and I got it. Yeah, that's amazing. And so as a result of that, do you feel like you don't really have like regrets in the sense because you're always like, it got me where I needed to go? I don't think I have regrets necessarily.

9:37I will say, I think there are moments where I could have been more present. And I do regret like not being as present in moments. I think that is where regret would live for me. I do think most of my choices personally, professionally, friendships, the world, all of the above, like I think they are there for a reason. Yeah. On this journey that I'm on and this path that I'm on. But I think there's a few moments I can look back and be like, man, I wish I was a little more present there. Especially because like, you know, as an actor, it moves so fast. And sometimes it's like shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.

10:16and then you're gone and then you shoot shoot shoot again and then you're gone and then you're doing a press tour for something that you shot two years ago but you don't really remember it and it's like why don't i remember it oh yeah because i wasn't present in that moment right i even think about like when i was writing my book i feel like i had a few moments of that where i was just like i just got to get pages i just got to get pages yeah as opposed to like sitting with the discomfort of a specific story or not being able to write or whatever it may be and whatever growth could come out of that one of the things that i think comes up in your book quite a lot as well is that you know we like you say we we do have control over our own paths but sometimes people can say other people get in the way or like there are these like I felt so angry when I was reading I think I was listening to this particular chapter when you were talking about playing basketball and a coach was basically you were marking this player who was like a giant and was very skilled and at the end you like basically tell the coach to fuck off and he like benches you and he's like you're never gonna play again and I was like that's so unforgiving and awful And then as a result, you moved schools?

11:15I moved schools. The Yakima Terror is what I call that kid. He was from Yakima, Washington. It was an AAU tournament. We were in Denver, Colorado. And this kid had to be like 6 '8", 6 '9", 250, 60, 70 pounds. Like he was a man. He was a big boy. And we were the same age. And I could not guard this guy at all. And we were down a player already because one guy on our team had been hurt. And our coach just kept screaming, I'm the next tallest guy on the team. and I'm like five inches shorter than this guy and I'm the next and probably weigh easily 80 pounds less than 60 pounds less than him and our coach just keeps screaming for me to like get in front of him get in front of him I'm like this dude is manhandling me I can't yeah and I did tell him to fuck off and uh shout out to coach Sprague uh who I apologize now all these years later uh but he benched me and he was like you should transfer schools because you'll never play for me again and on one on one side i respect the fact that he just told me straight out and he was like hey man i'm giving you an option because you're just gonna sit on the other side i was a kid literally you're a kid like i you know i i was going into ninth grade i think i think i was in eighth going to ninth or ninth going into tenth and um yeah i was a kid i didn't know you know what i mean it's frustration that was coming out in that moment because it's funny i have a very similar memory of playing hockey and we were playing a rival school and they put me on man marking this player and I just remember them shouting Charlotte Cavita Cavita because her name was and I just she was just faster than me and I couldn't get there and I just remember the sheer frustration of like what part of you thinks that I don't want to be able to do this I of course want to be able to do it yeah oh it's tough it's tough but it was a lesson and I think like you know was it the way I needed to be taught that lesson no maybe not yeah but I can look back now and understand again i don't regret saying that to him because had i not i wouldn't have end up at the high school that i went to which is booker t washington high school where i got to be for a couple years which is this historic high school in the city where i'm from and and you know professional athletes and road scott like just brilliant minds and debaters and and musicians and just such a talented group of students that have come out of there thanks to that staff and those teachers.

13:38And I wouldn't have gotten that experience. And I got so many things from that. I got to go to an HBCU and see like a Battle of the Bands for the first time down in, you know, I got to see Gramblin and Southern. I got to see the two of them like do a Battle of the Bands. And that was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. And like the care and the passion and the precision in which each one of those kids had was then like oh I can I should have that kind of care about something that I love which was basketball and so that sent me back around to basketball so I do think that like why it may have not been the right way to get the lesson taught to me I did take something totally it's part of your personal legend now as they say in the alchemist yeah yeah it's on the ledger I hadn't read it before I think I was slightly put off by the sort of like self-help branding around it which always makes are you a self-help reader i read a lot of i don't know that i read self help a lot but i definitely read a lot of like thought yeah yeah thinking yeah which i guess probably falls under self-help to be quite honest i don't know i mean i think like one of the next books perhaps we can talk about is your book by bell hooks all about love because that strikes that is a thinking book but there obviously is instruction within it as well tell me about when you first read that book um yeah i read that book after season one of insecure oh interesting yeah yeah yeah yeah um and i think for me that was and i had heard about it quite a bit before but i was like i don't need to read no book about love i'm a man i'm a man i don't do that uh but but i think you know i think you go through life and you have these questions of who is an ideal partner for you.

15:23And you have these boxes that are like whatever. And then you're like, but you never think about your own thing. And you never think about like where your influences of this thing, this being that you are may have come from and how they influenced you. And I don't know, this book for me really just kind of opened my eyes. So like, you know, I think we were talking about this slightly earlier, but like meeting people where they are and loving them for who they are. And at a certain point, I just have to go, hey, you're you. Now I get to choose. do I love this you or do I distance myself from this you yeah and and if I love this you and if we're open and communicating and clearly communicating then we can maybe choose a path together exactly and I think that to me this I don't know that that it goes back to choice in a lot of ways right because like for I think so many of us think like it's just fate yes but like there's also some choice oh for sure right and there's also some self-reflecting that you have to do as you make the choices yeah and move forward and and that book was that for me yeah yeah did it change your work on insecurity 100 how so yeah 100 i was terrified to play that character i did not want to play lawrence uh let me back up i wanted to play lawrence yeah the emotional vulnerable kind of walled off side of lawrence that gets opened up in that show is what i was terrified to play because that just wasn't my walk in my journey at that time.

16:49Yeah. And I will say this book really helped me because I think what I started to realize was it made my choice of going through a breakup or being in love with someone, but not being with them, being hurt by them or being infatuated with someone else. It made me just kind of really think about his choices in a different way. It made me think about like what's under, why is he making those choices? Like what's under those choices and as this show progresses how can he course correct and make better choices and and communicate and you know meet ultimately isa where she is in life and be okay with where he's at and say this is me and like i understand that now i didn't then but i understand it now so i think it helped a lot in that way did someone recommend it to you or do you just like pick it up between seasons.

17:42I don't know if someone directly recommended it to me, but I know I just like heard about it for a long, yeah. I think it's one of those ones that like, if you read, you hear about. Oh, and that cover's so recognizable. Oh, it just jumps at you. And then like bell hooks as a name is also jumps at you. And so I think it was just one of those ones where like, it had been around the world in my ether for a while. And I was like, I'm gonna buy that. Yeah. Well, I mean, I loved that book. And I think it has, you know, so many interesting things to say about love and how we all sort of like want it but like sort of protect ourselves from it and feel scared of it is that something that you feel like you've had to wrestle with at points to make yourself more open to love yeah for sure i mean i think that's just part of the human journey maybe um and i definitely think in a world where like you know at least the time that i grew up in like you're not taught to use all your words so like feelings it's ick you know what I mean vulnerability ick like you're not we're not doing that and so I definitely think that like there's been some a lot of reading I will say that's like and and bell hooks is definitely one of those authors that has definitely helped me like realize that like oh I need to just be in the world and be open to what comes and like I know good from bad and I know a good situation and a bad situation and maybe i'll get burned but maybe that's also part of learning what i want in love or from a partner yeah and or maybe what i need to be aware of in my own choices that keeps sending me in that direction to get burned and so i think that like it's definitely work i will say insecure helped a lot insecure helped a lot as just as a character that dude helped a lot yeah because we would also end up in these conversations where like you know i was the one consistent male presence across the entire show lawrence was and had his own storyline and i'd be like nah lawrence is out here like yeah and he's just trying to get it and y 'all over here talking about he don't know like he know what he's doing like leave him he a grown man and they would be like no boo no no no no he's broken and he needs to figure out that he's broken i'd be like yeah but isa out there doing the same thing we didn't say she wasn't broke she's broken but she can realize she knows she's broken he knows she's broken he don't think he's broken and so i think that was just like all these conversations that we would have i will never forget still the you know the end of season one and did you know her cheating on him but him being vilified for how the season ended when he sleeps with tasha still to me is one of the craziest things on the planet It's still one where I'm like, for a very long time, I was like, you're crazy.

20:27Absolutely not. No, no. She is in the wrong. She did it. He didn't call her and say, I love you. I want to be back with you. He's like, we should talk. That's it. Women don't feel that way. Not all the time. Some do. Some don't. But it made me slowly start to come around to like, okay, we see things slightly differently. Yeah. All right. So like, how did we get there? Hey friends, Olivia from Oli. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where Oli comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health.

20:58Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on Oli.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling smart move another smart move getting 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 also think that show does such a good job of like especially with the ending that you know things can when i was younger i used to think if stuff went wrong or broke that was it it clearly wasn't the right one that was it so done on to the next thing and and actually and i think that's kind of what bell hooks gets out in her book as well where the a lot of these not every relationship needs to last forever for it to have been a great love and you know i think it both pieces of work do such a great job at advocating for the different types of form that loving relationships can take i do think you're right like one of the things that I remember taking away is like and I don't think she uses this exact phrase but a season and a reason and it's like I was always jealous of people who were like I'm still friends with my exes I'm like not me I don't know how y 'all do that yeah I don't know how y 'all do that and then some of it was like alright I can't we can't all be enemies like this can't be crazy especially if it was like no like crazy like egregious slights you know what I mean like you know nobody cheated on anybody and like but what i started to realize and and and and again like to your point bell talks about this like you can still have a great love and just because it ends does not mean that it wasn't still a great love it doesn't mean that like you can't still pull the joy from that time or that it was a waste of time exactly and i think like that's such a important lesson for us to like walk away with yeah and remember because like you you're gonna have so many different types of relationships each relationship obviously you'll have a different type of love and like they may be lifelong and they may be contracted for some reason but there's still something no matter how they end there's still something to take away from them completely and again to be less binary and yeah live in that gray area i think i took really took that away and found that really valuable yeah there's a lot in it in the book where bell hooks talks about masking amongst men and how they sort of like cope with feelings and stuff and i wondered if it shaped the way you felt about mikey because you know your book about your sort of did everyone have an imaginary friend or was it just me like you had this imaginary friend growing up and if it shaped the way you thought about that at all yeah it's interesting because i talk about in the book i talk about like we all wear masks right at some point in our life we all we all wear them whether it's with your partner whether it's at work whether it's with your parents like we all wear them and it's like when do you take those masks off and who's under those masks and mikey in a lot of ways for me as a kid was like i got to wear a lot of different masks because of mikey yeah he was a mask in in in it's in himself but like i also got to try especially because i moved around so much so every time i moved i got to completely be a different person like if i didn't like who i was the previous school with the new school like out with the old out with the old and with the new like i was the best basketball player on the planet i never touched a basketball like i like I went to one school and we were living in Austin, Texas, and I went to a school where about 85 % of the student body spoke Spanish as a first language.

24:42Wow. And English as a second language. And what they would do was all the kids who were in third grade, fourth grade, whatever grade you were in, they would group all the English first kids together. and you sat in one classroom the entire day and the teachers would alternate and come around to you while all the kids who spoke Spanish as a first language would move around the school normally through different classes. Well, my whole thing was like, I'm going to be, my middle name is Ramon and we are from Florida. I have a bad joke that my grandmother had an affair with a Puerto Rican man. Hopefully she will never see this.

25:21but uh uh i decided that i was gonna be ramon the latin lover at school and so i literally like for a whole summer like listened to you like watched univision would listen to like spanish radio like got a book from the library to like try to learn spanish and my whole thing was if i could get through my bus ride if i can get through my bus ride breakfast at school lunch i could fool everybody i could make them think that i spoke spanish fluently it was a disaster it felt very it's failed literally all my first bus ride like i didn't even get to school before kids were like yo you don't speak spanish bro like stop it now like this is trash who are you and uh ramon died that day uh but uh but it was a mask yeah and i you know you get to wear them and again i think we have them as adults and we don't realize and at a certain point like those masks you know hopefully they get chipped away or you decide to remove them and, and you get to be, and sometimes they're also protecting.

26:20Oh, for sure. You know what I mean? Like if you use the, they are protecting. And I think you need them for that. Yeah. And then there's also times where they're not protecting. They're just protecting something that you actually should be okay with opening up a little bit and pulling them down. But, but yeah, I think it's interesting. Like I wasn't thinking about this book as I wrote, but I definitely think like how she talks about masking, especially with men. Yeah. is it interesting now looking back at my book and looking back with my relationship with Mikey yeah yeah I mean I was in awe of how much detail you had in the book but also as a kid for Mikey in terms of like I think when I got to the section where you were talking about how you went swimming but like Mikey didn't like swimming all this stuff and I mean tell me about like how all these characteristics developed and did you remember them all or did your mom help you remember Yeah, I didn't remember everything.

27:08I had to ask for a lot of help. Yeah. And I have a family who loves to make fun of me. Still to this day. All good families do. Yeah, they still love to make fun of me. I think it's just a real good like, oh, you think you up there? Come back down here. Like literally, are you high and mighty? Come back down there. No, but I grew up with a bunch of cousins, a couple aunts, a couple uncles, and then both my maternal and paternal grandparents. And so I was able to call on everyone and my parents, obviously, for what I couldn't remember. So I would start to remember a story like a family reunion.

27:42And I remember my perspective of it. And I would go through and I would write that story of what I remembered. And then I would call one of my cousins who was at that family reunion with me. And I'd be like, hey, you remember when we went to Stockton for family reunion and blah, blah, blah. And then she would give me and I'd be like, do you remember that one time where this thing happened near the basketball court? yeah I kind of remember that like I think yeah and I was sitting over by the and then like the rest of the picture would kind of get filled in and I called my grandmother and then I called my other grandmother and I called my parents and my mom is also like my mom is like the Ellis Island of our Ellis family yeah uh she has pictures on both sides of our family forever wow and so I I could literally go through and just look at pictures of my childhood and like remember a birthday party.

28:30Like see the picture and be like, oh, my God, I remember that birthday party. I had a cookie monster cake for that birthday party. Like I could immediately remember something. So that was also really cool. So I wrote at home when I was writing. I had my three middle school yearbooks with me. My fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade yearbooks sitting next to me. And then I had pictures and I would tack them up on the tack board that's around my computer. around my desk and I would tack them up. And as I would finish a story, I would move those to the side and then I would tack up new pictures from a story.

29:05And then that was kind of my process as I wrote like story by story and detail by detail. I think the more I remembered Mikey, the more things came back to me about what he looked like and how he spoke and how he moved and his sense of humor and his jokes. And really at the end of the day, like it was my own subconscious right so like it's sitting in there somewhere exactly um but yeah did you have any instances where you because i've had conversations with family i'll be like would you remember that and they're like that's not how it happened oh my god and you're like oh oh my god so many yeah so many so many so many yeah i definitely think uh one of my cousins who were very close in age we spent a lot of summers together i remember calling her and i was like do you remember the time where you guys locked me in a bedroom and you guys made fun of me and you told me that because I had an imaginary friend she's like that's not what happened what actually happened was and then she actually explained the story to me that all the cousins knew I had an imaginary friend but my one of my great aunts with foster kids and one of the foster kids that she had Damon also had an imaginary friend and they locked me in the room with him because they wanted me to see what he was seen and i was like i can't see his imaginary friend that's not how it works and so anyway so like but like that was an instance for example where like i only remembered such a small part of that story but really it was this whole other thing that was happening and she painted that in for me i love that's those scenes of you and damon when you talk about i think it was when you're in the garden and you sort of like gradually move toward each other move toward each other yeah no words no words no words you just play a little bit closer and a little bit closer and then a little bit closer which is such a kid thing to do it's such a kid thing to do i mean it's kind of what adults are like in workplaces a little bit as well like you're sort of like yeah yeah and then you're finally like hey what you doing yeah exactly like start to talk a little bit you're like oh you're cool okay yeah i read somewhere that you said your daughter has an imaginary friend oh my god jack jack does jack jack has actually kind of disappeared lately you know when Jack disappeared when when my son came because I have two kids and when my son is a little over a year old now and Jack slowly started to disappear last summer when my when the baby was born crazy right yeah crazy and you ask her about it like is Jack still around or you just kind of I haven't asked I actually have not she used to do this thing where she used to talk about cousins and she'd be like I have 21 cousins and I'd be like do you and they're all gonna come stay with me and I'd be like okay okay did grandma tell you that like who because you have a big family so I'm gonna tell you that customs are coming yeah um but over time it became jack and you know there's been some you know some incident there's been like painting the floor as opposed to painting paper i'm why i'm not sure jack would want to do that um but he did and uh a few other things along the way but then jack literally as our son came jack slowly started to disappear so like now that she has yeah he's still a baby obviously like you know can't speak yet yeah she's got someone to blame she's got someone to like yeah play with and blame and and kind of you know love squeeze to death because she loves him so much um it's been fun though oh i love that Yeah, that's lovely.

32:31Talking of someone else, Barack Obama, with his book, which I just, I'd like obviously listened to the speech and read sections of it, but I'd never read it cover to cover. But The Audacity of Hope, I think I was just struck, especially compared to where we are now, at like his ability to like drag nuance into everything. But tell me about your love of that book. It's the first time where I was like, I'm gonna read a book by a politician. Like, I will say that. Like, it was the first time I was like, oh, this is interesting. Okay, cool. Who's this dude from Chicago? okay okay um but i think when the ideals of a world that you grew up with start to shake off and reality starts to become of like what we're in i don't know it struck me the title even struck me is like it's crazy to believe in hope like it's crazy at times right to believe in hope like in the world we're in right now it's kind of crazy to believe in hope and i remember like listening to a speech and i remember going like i want to know more about this like young senator from illinois and i think i might have read his first book his memoir his memoir i think i read that first and then read audacity and just remember being like oh yeah we can we can all find a way to coexist together and just be good to people and want the best and want our environment to last and our children to have and yeah our differences to be like yo i love that you got an accent like i i's dope like you know what i mean like we can do we can just yeah there is a world in which we can do that and it doesn't have to put us against each other or make someone less than yeah and i don't know it was just a reminder that for me it was just a reminder of like the hope in humanity yeah it's just a reminder of humanity for me he truly is like a once in a generation politician reading that book just the the amount of vision and because obviously now it's like 20 years old as a book but crazy which is crazy but and it's sort of startling in some ways the way that how how much of what he's describing feels like evergreen problems and how you know much more for i would say the political system has become since he wrote it but um he i just i mean his ability to sort of sell people without sell people on ideas without having to lurch to these extremes and like i it's just it's so incredible but i think that's the simplicity to me the simplicity of it is also the power of it yes because it's actually wildly simple like all the things that he talks about to your point like all the ideas that they're wildly simple it's not like they're like oh i don't understand that that's crazy it's actually very like cut and dry yeah and i think that that is another thing that appealed to me is like sometimes i think uh we're shot tons of information to be confused yeah or it's or it's oh you won't understand it it's too murky it's too many layers to it and it's and you're like all right cool yeah but it's like no there's actually some very basic things that like if we always keep people in mind and wanting the best for people then we know how to achieve and we know how to like tick these boxes to make the world a better place and to make everyone feel represented and safe and healthy and a lot with all these different educated and all these things and like rising tide raises all boats at all times yeah and and i don't it's weird that we like go through these cyclical things where like people just forget that in time exactly it's such a weird thing it really is and he is i just it's so like there's nothing polarizing in that book in the sense of when you think about that's the chief word that you hear people describe politics as polarizing polarizing and it's just it's so yeah it's so singular in that way and you i read that you uh went to the white house and did some work with his uh initiative my brother's keeper right Tell me about that experience.

36:29Yeah, I got to host the last and moderate the last My Brother's Keeper, which is one of his initiatives that he created while he was in the White House. I got to go to the White House for literally it was the last, I mean, that was in January. So it was just before. Oh, really? Yeah. Post-election, man. It was post-election. It was either December or January. It was December because the Christmas party was after that and I did not go. Thanks for not inviting me. um uh nah but i uh i got to go to the white house and that was really remarkable and it was cool to like go sit in this room and see all these young boys who look like a young me that i then go write about a few years later and from all over the country who are all like dressed in like suits and you know they got their ties and you know they're gonna spend a week bopping around the white house and the eisenhower building and all are in the capital and all around dc and learning about government but also learning about like you know responsibility and and authenticity and identity and i don't know it was really it was really really cool it was a it was an honor yeah to be able to do that and then i got like a tour like a back tour at a white house which was super super my god like what kind of stuff like like i got to go down to where the situation room is uh i got to go i didn't get to go in the oval office but i got to go like the like you know the windows that are behind i got to go like look through the windows i'm like oh that's a family picture uh and then um i went into the i really wanted to see the kitchen because i was like i was like what does the kitchen of the white house look like like how massive of like is are we talking like an industrial kitchen which it is because they obviously have like parties for yeah dinners for tons of people um got to see that got to see all of the the different room didn't see any of the bedrooms yeah but got to see all of the the main rooms downstairs which was really really cool wow yeah incredible that was really really cool did you meet any of the family were they there no none of them were there he actually was i met him he was in the white house uh i did not meet any of the family i've since met them all yeah i didn't meet anyone else there on that trip except for him because he came in to talk to the to the kids amazing while i was there yeah i love um michelle obama's podcast with her brother yeah it's great and the sort of like bantering and and the the vibe it's um i also i i the last section i read was in the obama book was about family and when obama's describing his um meeting michelle and the sort of like the i don't i don't know i just think he's so beautifully captures that sort of thing that happens when you meet someone and and you have your path that you think you're going on and he describes her like the glint in her eye when she's like oh this might knock me off course and which i think is just so beautifully put i think it's great it's fun because like that i love that story because also too like you see these two like forces that like are like literally on their own path and then all of a sudden like collide and then you're like well where is it going to go?

39:37What's going to happen now? Yeah. And it's really beautiful. Like, it's really beautiful. It is. Yeah. And in that same story, he talks about how he was feeling a bit conflicted about the fact that he'd taken this internship at a law firm after his three years of community work and how he was wondering if am I compromising too much? Have you ever felt that in your own life where you're sort of like balancing that like idealism and pragmatism? I don't know. I mean, I sometimes I think like, should I work more? Am I not working enough? Sometimes I think that. Yeah. I think a why is really important, which I think ultimately is what he kind of gets to and like why he settles in what he the direction that he goes.

40:14Because his why was still his why in his community work and his why in going to do this internship and ultimately but going into like the why is the same all the way across. Right. And I think if you for me anyway, I think when I am very locked into my why, why am I writing this book? Why am I choosing this project? Why am I doing this film? then all of the things align yeah they feel like they align or even if they don't align they feel like i may not see yeah i may not be able to like see where exactly it's going to take me but i have a feeling that like i'm doing it because of this reason and of this why so like i'm good with wherever it goes yeah and i don't know i think that's hard i mean i'm definitely definitely at times for sure been like oh do i need to do this job why am i doing this job should i do this job I've definitely had that feeling before yeah where I've questioned work before tell me about the book so when did you decide to write it and why what was your why for that yeah I decided it's interesting so in the pandemic um we obviously couldn't go on sets because they were they were all closed um Hollywood was pretty much shut down um as the world was and so I started thinking about like we were going back and forth to my parents house my parents live in LA we're going back and forth to my parents' house a bunch.

41:33And my mom was at the time kind of putting all these pictures together and this big thing. And I started looking at them. And that got me thinking about my childhood, which then got me thinking about my imaginary friends. And then I told a couple stories on my Instagram about my imaginary friend. And they kind of blew up. Yeah. And people started like commenting about their imaginary friend or they wish they had one or their sister had one or their kid has one. And so I did another one. And then like it was the same response. And I did another one. And it kind of went away. and I went back to work.

42:03And for like the next year and a half, two years, I just kept thinking, no, it's probably the next year, actually. I just kept thinking to myself, I really, actually it wasn't even a year because that was in March. And by August of 2020, I had met with my editor. So that was in March, April of 2020. And by August of 2020, I had met with Nicole, my editor over at One World. And I just couldn't let it go. I was just like, oh man, I got all these crazy stories from growing up. and this imaginary friend who was there for so much of it I just want to start writing these stories so I actually did not know what I was doing and I actually just started writing and writing and writing I was writing stories and I wrote what I thought was five chapters and now after writing a book it was at best half a chapter at best half a chapter Nicole was like I have some next yeah but i i wrote this all and then i sent it to someone i was working with at the time and i was like hey could you take a look at this like i think i have a book i don't know but i think it's a book and then they were like i don't know what this is but i'm gonna send it to a book agent and they sent it over to albert my book agent and uh he called me literally the next day oh wow and he was like you have a really fast new yorker you have a book here's what you're gonna do i'm gonna tell you what to do and you're gonna do that and then we're gonna do this and you're gonna rewrite this and you're gonna rewrite that and then you're gonna put it together and you're going to send it to me and then I'm going to look at it one more time and then we're going to go do it again and like really really fast really really fast that's not his voice but that's how fast he talks yeah uh and so I followed Albert's instructions and it was fun because he gave me so many ideas in terms of where I could go with like a book proposal and how I could have fun with it and so I did and I put together this book proposal took a few pieces of the writing that I had already done it's like a sample sent that out and all of a sudden I was writing a book it's amazing yeah would you ever want to adapt it into a tv show or movie yeah that would be fun i think it would be amazing it'd be fun i'm gonna do a one-man show next year oh cool yeah based off the book um yeah so that'll be a lot of fun yeah i'm super excited about that we're gonna i'm gonna do it in uh the well i think the fall of 26 but at the apollo next year oh amazing um so that'll be fun and then maybe a show yeah yeah i i definitely think like i've especially now that I've had some distance from it.

44:18Now there's been, you know, a little bit of time. I loved Everybody Hates Chris growing up. And it reminds me of that. Did you ever watch Moonboy? No. Do you know Moonboy? No. Chris O'Dowd did a show called Moonboy about his childhood imaginary friend, essentially, that pretty much, I think he's Irish. Okay. I think, but it pretty much just aired where he is from. Yeah. And maybe all over the UK. But I just remember watching that and I was like, oh this is a cool show I would do it like this and like my my version would look like this and that was years ago and then everybody hates Chris is something that always jumped out to me because kind of the voiceover that Chris Rock uses as he tells these stories and narrates these stories to me is like oh that's Mikey yeah like that would be Mikey but he would just be personified um but I thought about it yeah I just haven't done it but I thought about it I think it I think it would be great and i think um i also love drop dead forever growing up horrible movie but loved it but i think it's not horrible but yeah yeah it's for kids but you've also done such a great job of my every the this book is obviously about your experience but it tells you so much of like as a british person about america and all of these different cities in america and places and what was happening in these periods like culturally politically historic like it was it's it's so such a like insight into a period as well you know it's obviously it's based in like a 10 year time span through my childhood but even for me as I was writing it to understand my childhood I needed to understand the world that I was in yeah and how those cities the country the world were all kind of infiltrating into my thoughts and my beliefs and my reactions and so you know I went back and like I would literally go back for every single year that I wrote I would go back and like Wikipedia every event that happened in that year and like did I remember them did I not remember them did they jump out at me like for some reason I don't remember what year it was but the Ili and Gonzalez story has always jumped out to me it was this little boy from Cuba who was born in Miami but there was the question of like do you deport the parents or do you keep the parents here because he was born here or he was here on U.S.

46:23soil so do the parents get to be here with him I don't think he was born here but he was here on U.S. soil do the parents get to be with him or not be with him and for whatever reason that story is stuck in my head that was in the 90s so like forever but like just little things like that and then that made me think about while I'm writing in a particular year I just want to know what happened in that year and did it affect me in some way yeah like I remember the Oklahoma City bombing in sixth or seventh grade I think I was in seventh grade and I remember um us getting under our desk wow and then after realizing there was no threat in Tulsa which was about an hour away from the Oklahoma city, a little over an hour away from Oklahoma city, we then had a moment of silence, but none of us understood what was happening because we didn't have televisions.

47:09We didn't have phones. We didn't. So none of us knew what was happening in the moment. And so just little things like that, where it's like the nuances of the city, the community, the churches, the schools, the people were all so kind of shaded by the larger world that we were living in and how we were processing that world. Well, one of your other books, Chain Gang All Stars, which I am, this is the only book I didn't completely finish. And I was going to, sometimes if I don't do that, I like Google the plot, but I so want to, I'd like, didn't Google it cause I want to read it to find out what happened.

47:47But it's so good. Chain Gang is fun. Chain Gang is like, I don't even know how to explain it. He's brilliant. first of all but essentially you you all these prisoners are essentially like fighting on like live streams for prizes gladiators like gladiators basically and i don't know he just does such a first of all his characters are brilliant they're all wildly different and in a weird way they are all someone you know yes yes which is really cool yeah so you can immediately even if you can't necessarily identify someone directly you can go like oh i kind of know a person like that right or i've been around or i've seen a person like that so that's interesting because it immediately it makes it very familiar very quickly um but i also think what's interesting is like the uh lens at which he talks about our incarceration system i think is also like doing it in a novel but and and obviously with lots of liberties but like when you really boil down to it i don't i don't know there's just again it's a fun read it's a fun fun read it's incredible and the footnotes and the fact that some of them, like so many of them are not fiction, like those little footnotes.

48:57And it's incredible in these characters. And yeah, it's incredibly sort of moving. And yeah, it is like a punch to the gut sometimes when you like go down to one of those footnotes and you're like, wait, what law? Yeah. Like, or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. But also again, but done in a way that's like so entertaining. entertaining oh totally you know what i mean like it's it never feels like it never feels like i'm shoving something he's he's not he's not actually it never like that's not what this book is but you are also learning while being fully entertained yeah which i think is like you know it's brilliant it's the medicine in the soup or whatever the vitamin and whatever however the saying goes like it's it's it's i don't know it's brilliant the stuff with the silencing as well and they the like um things on their wrists that mean that they can't make a noise and then like i've just not i think a few days ago i read the bit about emily the wife of one of the who who like is ostensibly against it but then just kind of ends up getting into it and then he has her like talking to herself when she's i was like that's such a like just oh it's just so beautifully executed to show that and it's funny because we've since met and have become friends and after i had read the book and i actually dm'd him and was like yo i love your book oh and i asked him if he would do um my very first book event was here in new york city and he actually was a part of it and it's funny because we came at each other i was like fan i was like yo i'm such a fan bro like your book is crazy like what and i read your previous book like and then he's like insecure and Top Gun and like Escape Room and the game.

50:46And like, we're talking about all this stuff. And I don't know, we sat down and we just started talking. I was like, man, what was your process? And he was like, I just wanted to go tell a story that was something that I kind of knew and felt familiar to me, but it was also something that at the same time could, you know, was not grounded in order for people to be able to kind of disappear in it. But in that disappearing in it, walk away with like, you feel so much, you feel so much yeah um i don't know it's just brilliant he's brilliant he's great you have an incredible chapter in your book in which you talk about an experience where like your school took a bunch of students down to a sort of a penal institution and i know that now i think you volunteer at inside out writers as well i'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that experience yeah i got a in eighth grade uh the security guard at our school who had a crush on my mom that was again that was one of the parts as well that i thought your book did so beautifully showing the way that these like bit park characters in life shape these like crazy experiences this is a dude who like paid no attention to him literally an entire school year paid no attention because i transferred in seventh grade to a new school for eighth grade paid no attention to this dude he was just like you know not he was there to keep us safe right he was there to make sure like you know if fights broke out he'd break them up and make sure that nobody was coming onto the campus that didn't need to be there or whatever but he had a crush on my mom and he would always try to holler at my mom every single time like she had to come to school for something and I'd be like bro like this is what are you doing man first of all my pops is in the house and he gonna come like he's gonna come down here you do not want to see him but also like this is crazy bro stop hitting on my mom like you're gonna be my stepdad like what are you doing and anyway he he had called my house a few times I will say I had gotten trouble earlier that year i had gotten uh i had gotten detained by the police for toilet papering someone's house in the middle of the night uh and we had curfew in the city that i lived in for for kids under 16 and so uh in lieu of juvenile hall i had to do a bunch of um uh i would call it volunteer work but It wasn't it was not volunteer.

53:02It was court mandated sessions of basically cleaning up debris on the side of the highway and in parks and whatever. And my school found out about it. And when the school found out, the security guard at the time had been planning with our principal a trip to one of the state penitentiaries in Oklahoma, McAllister, for 10 to 15 kids to go kind of uh i guess what you would call like at risk kids kids who would were in trouble uh or deemed in trouble by the school anyway problems by the school and we basically were all sent to mcallister on a on a field trip like everybody else got to go to like the museum and we went to a prison essentially it was scared straight if if you're familiar with mtv's horrible horrible idea of uh scaring young kids uh to be good uh that's essentially what they did to us but in it we go to mcallister and you meet all these guys who were in prison for completely different reasons but not only that they like stripped us down they put us in their thing they put us in the cuffs like they they walked us through as if we were inmates for the most part as if we were inmates you know do like cat calling and yelling and all this stuff and you're terrified because it's like it's wild they take you in like a cell and they show you like this is what it's gonna be like when you live here you're gonna be here with me like and i'm not the bitch so you're gonna be up there and i'm gonna be down here like whatever like whatever the like dynamic was and this this this one young man his name was dino he was a blood he was doing a life sentence uh for murder and he basically was like the one who was brought into our like little conference room to basically do the whole kind of talking to about staying out of trouble and this whole thing and he kind of gets in each one's each one of us he gets in our faces and he's like why are you here what you doing here and then you tell him and he's like you want to fucking be here with me is that what you want and you're like oh When you're 7-Eleven's hottest fire chicken sandwich, people think you're intense.