STAYING ALIVE: Will Arnett, Part 1!

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2:34Hey, SmartList listeners. It's John Gabrus, one of the hosts of Staying Alive, a health and wellness podcast hosted by the unhealthy and unwell. That's Adam Pally and I. And we've got Will Arnett on our pod today. We got to spend some QT interviewing our pod father, and we went deep with him about is this thing on Bradley Cooper eating right fitness sugar all the stuff we cover on our show. So please enjoy the first part of the interview with Will. And if you like what you hear, come on over to staying alive and hear the second half hit subscribe or follow while you're there. Hey, Will, thanks for thanks for doing this.

3:11Thank you. Gents. How you doing? dude you look you look awesome look at that facial hair really oh thanks yeah you got some you got tony stark sean yeah you got some sun and you got some iron man fucking uh yeah i was just shipwrecked you don't hear about it that often anymore about people being shipwrecked it's fucking old school but i knew i had to do staying alive so i paddled to shore to make sure i did this stupid fucking podcast with you. Yeah.

3:55I hope that the intro, are we allowed to play other artists' intro music or it just has to be ours? I think we should keep it to be just ours. Oh, okay. It would be cool if today we could play something from Bruce Springsteen because the boss is here. Yes, our boss is here. He does not like, we will learn that he does not like to be called the boss, but he is our pod father. He is the boss. Will Arnett on the podcast today. Big guest. So we're not going to go into a long, cold open because we don't want to turn off anyone who's here to hear Will and not understand that. It's for anyone new. Welcome.

4:32We hope that you can learn a little something about what it takes to stay alive as you get older and you don't necessarily play by the rules all the time. Yeah. Well, without further ado, I'm learning French. Will Arnett. Is that your next Duolingo? Trio lingo. No.

4:58The podcast lately, I've been feeling a little podcast burn lately. I've just stopped. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, yeah? I know, of course not. Advertisers, we love it. it's so i made a joke working your ass off i mean it's it's i i did this podcast with this guy in the uk he's so fun i mean it was i forget how long ago it was like uh whatever a couple months ago and uh do you know this dude romesh yeah he's so funny he's really really funny so this podcast and he asked me and i told him this like i have this controversial position i said And there's a direct relationship. Yeah. And I said, the more tattoos you are, the more you have, the more boring you are.

5:45Now, I was very clear. A, it's something that I've said to my friends with tattoos. I don't have any, that I've said to my friends with tattoos for years. And it's basically a bit, right? Yeah. When I say it, people are freaking out. And the comments and the thing. And then I'm like, what a boring response. If you're insulted by it, then you're proving my point. But the truth is, I don't have a point. I didn't even mean it because I have a million friends who are covered with tattoos. And people are insulted by it. It's insanity, man. Yeah, it's crazy when you realize that bullshit is news. Like, all of a sudden you're like, Will Arnett says they did have a guy on SmartList that they didn't air or whatever.

6:25This goes everywhere. And you're like, who is this matter to? It doesn't even matter to Will. It doesn't matter to me at all. It matters to podcast. Most of them are bits. Most of them are just to fuck around in the moment. Right. And then you're like, and then you hold it up. Let's read this back in court. So your theory on tattooing, it was not a theory. It's a bit. You said you like, you love to go swimming with bow legged women. Is that correct? It's like, I was quoting a fucking movie. I did. Anytime you get like, even do it. This is all a net loss. Like this can only hurt. this can only hurt that's why we are so thankful that you're coming on our podcast because it's only you're our boss it's just a fucking minefield of like that's a very loose yeah well if you're not our boss that means rich is our boss and that is a problem that is you're right by the way that's a problem for everybody if you prefer the term pod father we could do that too oh I like that You know what I wanted to ask you, Will?

7:35Please do about tattoos. Please do about tattoos. You're talking to guys who have matching tattoos. We are wildly boring. I can give a fuck about it. When I saw that, he was like, you know what? He's kind of right. I am a drag guy.

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9:28My head goes instantly to, because now you're like a dramatic leading man, is to, how are you thin? How are you looking like this? oh oh oh physically and physically oh yeah like how because because the our show is about staying alive like because we're too out of shape or better in shape now we're yeah we're doing pretty i don't know if it's the show or like dark medical revelations you guys look good yeah you guys look good we're a better place i'm like down 20 pounds uh you see wild yeah i'm under 300 for the first time in like 10 years it feels amazing yeah i might have to start buying new budgie smugglers.

10:19But like, so what are you doing to stay alive? Like, are you... Because I have a text exchange that you and I have that I found on my phone today from over the summer that I could read to you. That we might have to edit? I don't think we do. It's pretty... I don't think we do. It's pretty base, and it heads into the question. Starts with, Long Island, baby, where are you at? Headed to Ruby Rosa to eat my weight in red sauce. What are you doing? No can do on pizza, but let's hang out this week. Then I wrote back, what are you doing to keep that Walton Goggins physique?

11:04And then you wrote back, I start by not eating. Then I smoke a couple butts, repeat every day.

11:14and as always we are not doctors on this show do not take you're not someone who struggles who struggles with everything including the smoking yeah uh i'm blood type marinara at this point so i get it i get it i'm yeah it's it's that old school diet man of just right i look i look i think a lot of people i look like that dude who like now that i'm looking on the thing here i look like that dude who's like kind of tan and smokes butts and and uh drinks coffee yeah i became coffee place plays chess i became the guy that i used to go to my buddies hey look at that guy right we all do that's who i aspire to be look at me i look like fucking mark maron drowned in a pool yeah i look like an offensive lineman in court for a fucking diy

12:13I, uh, lock the gates. How come you didn't lock the gates? I drowned in the pool. Jesus Christ. Jesus. Um, I, you know what the truth is about? What are we? Uh, about 18 months ago. one of my agents was like hey you should go talk to this doctor like out of the blue not out of the blue out of the blue for you but that's something that was on the agent's mind nothing is ever out of the blue meanwhile like the CAA had a morning meeting about my weight and and they go and he goes you should go see this dude who's basically like a nutritionist and he's like what so I was so and that's a true story and I was like uh you know I think I always was able to stay thin and then I got over 50 and as you know like it just it gets hard when you're over 50 it's just and they're like sorry I'm gonna eat what I want but I'll just work out and then you just get massive so so so I was like what do I do so I went to see this guy and he helped me look at the stuff I was eating uh and he was like okay and like you know you tell him he's like how what do you you know you you tell him like it's not that bad and then you tell him he's like wow that's terrible and you're like oh shit really right the worst with those kind of situations is when you downplay what you're doing and they still say it's bad you're like yeah i have like two beers like a couple of nights a week and they're like that's really bad i'm like oh i was lying already that's a good i did that once years ago when i used to drink and this guy said i went to this doctor and i could tell and i go this is like early 90s and he goes uh how much do you drink and i said and I'm thinking like when is it going to be probably six drinks a week he's like that's a lot and I'm thinking motherfucker that's before I go out I have six drinks that's a day Adam and I are very adjusted to telling a doctor not cigarettes whenever they ask you to smoke I can't even do that anymore I've regressed so I can't even do that anymore now I'm lying about cigarettes to a doctor in New Zealand who's like filling out a physical I'm like sitting in like the in order to get to set they're like a doctor's gonna come in here you alright with that I'm like yeah whatever guy comes in he's like says he three to five drinks a day I was like I don't no I don't know I don't know I didn't even fill that out somebody else wrote that when they saw me it's metric down here right so yeah it's not actually the same amount yeah and a day you mean tomorrow because tomorrow is is our yesterday so yeah oh we're not doing time zones okay next thing i know he's like writing like psychopathic conversation borderline personality disorder yeah borderline um i i and so the truth is actually so i i uh i i cut it i ended up cutting up basically sugar uh which is my number one i think my number one addiction um because i won't because i'm not addicted to cigarettes and and um they're addicted to me cigarettes and i are synergistic we help each other they've never let me down they've never lied to me they always told me what they were going to do meanwhile they're like lying to you from the moment i know i uh i i was gonna say like sugar when you say no sugar like how strict are we talking are we talking like no like you go out to sushi you're doing sashimi yeah basically when i'm really doing it in uh so i go i eat oh god it's so boring but not on this podcast i know i know also we kind of live in the boring world so don't let it don't i got a bunch of tattoos man this is the shit i'm into right it's so good it's so good you're like i hated that this blurb went around and we've brought it up 11 times in one interview.

16:23No, I love it because it's so dumb because it was so meaningless. Ramesh is laughing himself. You know what I took from that clip? Ramesh is like, I have a lot of tattoos. Am I boring? And I wanted to be like, no, but the Apple Watch is making you boring. We should be. Tattoos are fine. It's the Apple Watch. So you cut out sugar. I basically like, was that difficult? Like, do you have any hat, anything that you did for yourself? Like any substitutes or anything like that, that we're like, dude, dude, I'm, I'm addicted to ice cream. I fucking love ice cream. Like my favorite sweet. It's my fucking favorite.

17:05So I'm like, like every day for me is like a nine year old's birthday party leading up to this. Every day you'd be like, what are you doing? And so, so I had to like go, so I had to go to answer your question. I couldn't, I didn't even go for sushi because I couldn't, I was too nervous that I wanted to eat the rice. Right. So then I just, so every day I'd wake up and, and eventually I started, I was doing like, I was doing like a little bit of oats and then some berries and whatever. And then like a little snack. And then lunch, I have a salad with chicken. And then at dinner, I have to have like 18 ounces of protein, fish or meat and some veggies.

17:43And then actually there's a crazy thing here. So I did that. And then eventually he, And I could have a cup of rice with lunch. And then like 45 days into it, he's like, now you've got to cut all the carbs. So now I have none. And I don't have a cheat day. I have a cheat meal once a week. Every seven days I have one cheat meal. Jesus. Yeah, and he's like, don't go downtown. Go uptown, meaning like don't eat a bunch of crap on your cheat meal. Don't go to like Taco Bell and McDonald's. Right. Have a nice dessert. Yeah, have a nice dessert that doesn't have like a bunch of preservatives in it. And so I've kind of stayed to that for the last year and a half.

18:17and I've had a couple times where I haven't been able to, but for the most part, I've stuck with it and exercised at the same time, and it's been pretty good. Here's a cool thing that he taught me. What kind of exercise are we doing? I just do, you know, street fighting mainly. A lot of street fighting. Yeah, your Kimbo slice in the backyards of Florida. It's hard to find a good gym. It's hard to find a good gym. It's easy to find a street fight.

18:48I'm doing, you know, I do pretty light in terms of the gym, pretty light. I was doing this thing where I was like, and I do, I don't do it as much anymore just because of time or whatever. But I was doing this boxing thing called Fight Camp and Thoreau turned me on to it. And it's like you get like a, it's almost like Peloton for boxing. I look like the loser boxer of all time. Oh, I'm the worst in there. I'm the worst in there. But the cardio of it was really great. So I do that a couple days a week. I do these like sort of long walks and or hikes. And then I do stuff with like kettlebell. Pretty light stuff.

19:24You got a trainer? Are you doing this on your own? No, I do it on my own. I'm pretty consistent. That's cool. Yeah. And so that's been good. He taught me this really cool thing, which is he's like 40 minutes before you go to bed, before you're going to go to sleep, eat like a cup of berries or a sorbet. and he gave me a couple brands so that you get that spike of natural sugar and then you'll crash and you'll go into a sleep better and you'll sleep better. And God damn it, he was right. Oh, and there's probably the psychological element of like, now I get to have my treat. And then it's like, a little treat and then you're going to bed and like, oh, that's a real interesting wind down.

20:09Pretty insane, pretty insane. my version of that is i switch from a joint and a bourbon to a joint and a chamomile tea oh that's that has been and i'm out on my balcony sipping tea and having an indica and i'm like i'm gonna sleep like a baby and it's so much better for me than two two fingers of fucking uh basil hayden's two fingers well i mean much like much like my only fans i prefer a little more than two fingers well i mean alcohol is the big alcohol is the big thing that like uh i mean It's the saboteur of your health. It's like you let it in. It's the A1 killer. It's trash. And it's for a lot of different reasons.

20:49And yeah, I don't drink. I'm so happy that I don't for myriad reasons. But one of them is, you know, every time there's a new study that comes out, which is like every four hours. Every four hours, Huberman's making a fucking proclamation about, I can't believe we ever drank alcohol. You're like, oh, come on, man. Yeah. and I just think oh thank god I don't and I do feel better as a result of it and you can't do it as you get older too like you just can't like your body can't do it it takes more and more of a toll on you every year I want to quit smoking butts I really do and I don't smoke as much as I used to are you sinning?

21:29yeah I mean I just put one out I just stubbed one out that's the level I have a problem sinning I can't do it I can't so many of my friends are zinning so my friends are zinning and still blasting cigs which is like I'm like yeah that's me I don't do it at the same time at the same time I've got people who are telling me that nicotine is actually like a nootropic and it's like it is like a performance enhancer we actually just had Huberman on on the podcast and I gotta say he was pretty great and I ended up being fascinated with everything he was saying and I didn't want it to end and I was like and then what if I do this and what if I like I was like the little kid you know yeah and he talked about nicotine and how great it is yeah i just look like i have nine zins in my mouth at all yeah will's hitting the five milli uh what do they call them the the uh five mil lip pillow or whatever i'm on the i'm on the three right now but i go back and forth between the three and the sixes and then and then and what does it do it's just like a pouch like a baseball player or is it like uh it where you swallow it no no you just put it you put it between your lip and your teeth it takes a second to get used to it's like these little pouches like this and i know for a fact based on experience that adam can't handle just packing a lip with something we we did we did recreational ketamine together and you're supposed to just put it in your lip and adam's like i chewed it and swallowed it i was like what the fuck you can't leave it there it's like a little kid i played baseball in high school and like swallowing sunflowers instantly as soon as that shit started like as soon as you go from sunflower seeds to like the first kid brings in chewing tobacco i was just like like i can't i can never pack a lip in high school i can't do it i i have a weird that's funny you're saying that i have a weird time off half the time when i would go to get it out of my lip i start to gag i don't know why something about that place.

23:23I also gag when I put my contact lenses. Well, I think you're supposed to put them in your eyes. Not the back of your throat. I have no gag reflex. Again, I'm sorry. That's for my OnlyFans. Clip that for my OnlyFans. Fuck, that's a great clip on its own. That's going to be the clip. It somehow gets credited to Will, unfortunately. It's like Will Arnett's got no way. Will Arnett says tattoos are bad. Again. Never live it down.

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25:12It does make you think about Tom Hanks. God, he's done so many different things. The dude's kind of unreal. I was just thinking about his run the other day It's unreal Right? His run from like Joe vs. the Volcano Maybe Splash is the original He made a few clunkers They never stuck They never stuck to him Yeah He made like 60 movies And he made like 30 really good movies So like half of them I'm gonna let him have I mean, mine is I made only clunkers. Dude, I was going to say, if you looked at my IMDb, my average, I'm batting 164 in the minors. Hanks also did like 10 years of dominating comedy and then switched to drama and then was the go-to drama guy for like another decade.

26:07Similar to you, Will. You're a little late, but a little late. I don't think I'm done. Brother Solomon. I don't think I'm dominating anything. i don't know dude i think it depends on how you look at it like this is your turn to hanks run it just a couple years later than he did we're just doing a few more terminals i decided to wait till i was 55 because i didn't want to embarrass anybody i love it when people people do say to me sometimes they're like do you ever think about doing like a drama like changing up and always like yeah yeah yeah i'm trying to do comedy all the time yeah what you got yeah like you know what you gotta do you gotta work with really good directors yeah okay yeah great i'm done i'm available i would love that have you showed them my extensive 20-year television career yeah because you could google me you got a number on them let me just you got a number on them it's like oh it'd be so cool if you worked with wes anderson you're like fuck yeah i would yeah it'd be fucking awesome it was cruel that that's the real like grown-up version of your aunt saying like have you you should do the conan o 'brien show you should do what he does you know and you're like yeah i would love you're right i should i should get on snl at 44 i could speed run my fucking uh speedball death i was gonna ask you about this press run that you that you've been doing because it's a dream of of mine as someone who's worked you know in comedy at the way you have for a long time to see you doing the like a like academy award run press tour where you're like in cool clothes and like you know what i mean and there's like pictures of you in a swimming pool with clothes on you know and there's like yeah you're sitting sitting cross-legged in like uh the w lobby with like a yes or something like and then there's like an interview with you and odessa zion together you're like you're doing it you know like how does that feel like do you ever does the comedian part of you ever because i consider you like a comedian you are one of the the you're a comedian like do you does that side of your brain ever click on while you're doing while you're doing it all while you're like wow this is new a gazillion percent and so what the difference is how do you do that well yeah i i spent a lot long time you know doing stuff and fucking around and what happens is by the end like when you do something with as part of that when you go and you do something like with ramish and i'm just dicking around it's so fun because then i just get to dick around which is why i say a bunch of stupid shit that i don't mean because you're just you're just having fun right yeah but a lot of those things you got to go and you know look the the movie we made this this movie is this thing on that, that Bradley and Mark Chaplin and I wrote and we worked on for, it took like from the time that we decided to start doing it until the time that it came out was, uh, like seven and a half years or something.

29:30Right. Jesus. Yeah. And so, so like we took it really seriously and we did it and it's a, and we spent a lot of time on it, obviously, and a lot of care. And so you come out with it. And then when they start to, you know, start thinking like, Hey, maybe this has a chance for people to recognize it for x y and z you want to give it the you you you're you're doing a bunch of different stuff and so you're you you want to speak very it's tough because you don't want for me i feel like man it's hard for me to be that earnest in a way yeah yeah that's what i mean comedy is not comedy is inherently like you want to undercut yourself and undercut the situation so frequently yeah yeah but then you but it's but you know what the same rules apply in that you just got to read the room, which is that these are people here who are appreciating it.

30:18And so that you, you do take it seriously. And I did take seriously doing the project itself and I do really like it and I am really proud of it. So then, but there were times when, yeah, where you just kind of like you, you, you fuck around, but, but a lot of the time, you know, the questions are different too. The questions are like, what, what, you know, why, why did you do this or what is the message or you know what was the process like and you're like well actually the process was pretty serious uh yeah it took a lot of preparation uh yeah to do those scenes took a lot of uh we workshop for a long time and you find yourself down this road and i did have a few times that there were some really cool interviewers who were like i see that you're struggling with taking talking about it in this serious way and i'm like well there's like the there's another layer to it too that you're a comedy guy doing serious interviews about a serious movie about comedy it's like it's like a quadruple 4d cake or some shit yeah man that's a thing yeah it's it's complicated and and uh and then but but at the same time and then what happens is it's very alluring because people do respond to it and they're like hey we really liked it and and we thought it was a great story.

31:33And you're like, you're kind of forced to put your guard down. It was tough for me to kind of talk about me and, or it in this way that, that didn't feel like I kept trying to, I was like catching myself. I didn't want to seem like I was being self aggrandizing. Do you know what I mean? Or this is the most understandable, like headspace to be. My therapist one time said to me, do you ever use positive self-talk with yourself? I was like, no, why? That would be corny. He's like, no, that is something you need to do. And I'm like, oh, fuck. I never like it's so easy to just downplay everything. But then when you're a part of something larger, like a piece of art that you're involved with other creatives that you're like, I can't go out here and downplay this because I worked hard.

32:17Other people worked hard. Yeah. My instinct is to like undercut myself for the sake of comedy and to not come across as like a guy who is too serious. What made it easy in certain ways was that the people I worked with, you know, A, Bradley, you know, he's... I got a billion questions. Yeah, he's an incredible filmmaker, right? I mean, and I've known him a long time. His capacity for all of it is so insane. And his concentration and his focus is so intense in the best way. and Laura Dern, who's one of our greats, you know, and she's just incredible. And so you kind of, you start to get in that, you know, I heard, but what's interesting is, so that part of it made it really easy.

33:04And then when you listen to that and the way they talk about it, you're like, okay, yeah, I can talk about this thing. And I did take it seriously. You know, what's weird is, you know, Pally, you were saying that like you go and you're doing these like screenings for the Academy and stuff. And of course, we didn't get any nominations for anything for our film. Not about that. I know. But what's weird is you get put in this place where you've got to go and do that. And then you're disappointed. And then you're like, I heard Ben Affleck talking about it, I think on Kimmel maybe or something recently.