And that's what you really missed with Jenna.
And Kevin An iHeartRadio podcast.
Welcome to you, and That's what you Really miss podcast.
Kevin.
It's such a special day.
We have an icon, legend, film TV superstar Stephen Tablowski. Oh, Sandy Ryerson.
No introduction. Sandy Ryerson has the craziest stories to share with us. Also about his Glee audition. I cannot even it's it's so it's so it sounds so far fetched that you're like, that can't be real, But it's real.
Leah has always had the craziest audition story, and I think now this week because yes we met, like it took this long to find someone else, but it is one of the craziest stories I've ever heard.
Oh my god.
So, without further ado, the amazing Stephen Tablowski.
Hello kids.
Oh we are in the presence of greatness.
What what? Oh I'm so happy?
What a joy?
It's it is such It's so good to be back in this corral again.
That's why we keep doing this. We can't get enough of it, you know, we just need to be around each other.
Oh wow, good to see you.
Good, Good to see you too, guys. Good to see Eachna.
Wow, thank you so much. Your voice just makes me feel like I know at home.
We're back.
You guys as everybody.
Thank you, thank you very much, Thank you God than what made you think of doing this Glee thing?
The fans wouldn't leave us alone. No, we were forced into it. They berated us and were like, fine, we'll.
Do it, yeah, relentless.
Yeah, but it's worked out. Yeah, we get to talk to people like you and reconnect. And because you know, you who has worked more than anybody I've ever met in my entire life. You've never stopped working. No, I don't know. Good for you and your health insurance.
Yep, I.
Don't know how you do it, how you have the time. And you're still so good in every single thing you do, up everything, everything you've worked with everyone.
Well yeah, well almost, but but that's because they cut me out of all the things I'm not good at, you know. That's it's that editing thing, you know, but it's and the things that you think are going to be great, you know, don't turn out to be great. And the things that you think are going to be like, oh well this is trouble like Lee, turn out to be like legend.
Yes, you know, and you.
Go like, well, what are we doing here? Not here?
Absolutely well, you're you're You're already a veteran of the of the screen when you joined onto Glee.
I'm just curious, though, what the journey was like to get you onto the show. Had you worked with Ryan? Was this an audition? What was this?
You will not believe the story. It is a ridiculously strange story. I had been horseback riding with my wife on an active volcano in Iceland and we were hit by a gigantic wind off the Atlantic Ocean that lifted me, this is all true, lifted me and the horse off the ground like a tornado carry us, dropped us on
the side of the mountain. My horse went crazy, started running like nuts through me, and the last thing I kind of remember was going sideways through the high grass on the side of the mountain, and they found me in a fetal position on the only dry piece of lava in this lava plane. The horseback riding team came, how does this get to Glee? I know you're thinking, how So I come back to America and the doctor tells me that I have a fatal injury and I
tell him words have a meaning means I'm dead. I'm not dead. He says, you want to know why you're alive. You're alive because most people have a cervical spine that curves like this, but yours is freakish and it's the opposite. So your neck just broke, but you didn't. You did not break your spinal cords. You could still walk and everything. But I had to be absent my poor wife. See, this is what happens when you make those wedding vows and listen in health. You don't know what that's going
to mean, and you sign on the dotted line. Annie had to do everything for me, She had to help me do everything. So anyway, the only thing I could do is sit out in my backyard for I think they say three months every bone takes three months to heal, something like that. Two and a half, three months, three months doing nothing. So I'm out there reading, doing nothing. And near the end of my three months, when I am still unable to do anything, I get a script
for this show called Lee. My first audition in a month's right months and I still have a broken neck. So I read the script and my first impression of Flee was Oh my god, and all I could say was so joyful. The script was so fun, so joyful, and I'm thinking, like, I call my I call my agent, my manager up and I said, I definitely want to meet Ryan and everybody on this and uh, absolutely no quick. And I'm thinking, like, how am I going to do that? Because I have a damn broken neck, and how much.
Longer do you have to like heal technically, like I.
Guess I would say I probably still have kind of like maybe three four weeks oft I still have. I still have a wild but we don't exactly know when Glee is going to start shooting, you know. So I think like, okay, now I can't drive, I can't do anything.
So my wife drives me over to the Glee audition and I get out and I have to have a pillow, you know, and I have to be very I go in and the waiting room you know where, yeah, where all the man The waiting room is absolutely empty, and I think, like this is so weird because everybody on earth is going to want to be on this show. So I sit on the little casting couch in there, and I think, you know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to lie. I'm gonna lie. And I take my neck brace off and I stuff it under the casting couch and I just sit there. I just sit there like this waiting. I said, I'm not because it's a buzzkill. It is a buzzkill when you go in on an audition and your horse let alone, you have fallen off a horse and you have a broken nare the producers just go like me, next thing, you know. So I'm sitting in there twenty minutes. Nothing's happening. This
is so weird. And then Ryan's assistant comes in and goes, Stephen, we are so sorry. It's the wrong day. Ryan is doing Niptock today and your audition is tomorrow. And I go like, oh my god. Now, so I said, now I need to tell you this. So my soul was overburdened. I said, let me tell you what happened. And I told him the whole story of me on the horse and the broken neck. And I pulled out the neck brace from underneath the thing and put it on, and put it on and said, this is what I was
going to do today. I was going to I was going to lie to everybody. And now You've given me a chance not to lie. And so I go back out to the car. My wife has to drive me home again and has to drive me out the next time.
Oh my god.
The next day, I'm out there and I am in the room. Now I'm in the room with Ryan and all the guy all the producers.
You have the neck brace on or no, I.
Have it on? And Ryan goes, you know, I heard a very interesting story about you from yesterday. I heard I said, yes, right, I was going to lie on the first date. And the thing is, guys, I love this show so much. I love the script so much. What I'm going to do right now, I'm going to take this neck brace off, and I'm going to do the scene and I'm going to sing a song. And if I can't do it, I'm not going to say word. I'm just gonna get my neck brace and walk out
of the room. No harm, no foul. But if I can do it, I will stay here and talk to you at the end and it won't be a problem. I will be able to do it. So I got up and I auditioned, I sang my song, and I sat there and then at the end everybody was kind of laughing, and they were going like, so, I guess you're okay, because I go, yes, I am fine, I am okay. And now I'm gonna put my neck brace on if you don't mind. And I put the neck
brace back on. And then I found out pretty much right away they didn't know when they were going to shoot. And uh and at that time, we were we were shooting at a school in Burbank. That yeah, we shot at the school in Burbank. And then also we went to that high school way the hell out in Long Features correct career and and uh and that was amazing. But but wow, So that was after I was supposedly healed, and that it was the broken neck story that probably got me on the glee.
That is that level of commitment. I've never been that committed to anything in my life. My ass had been like, you know what, I'm not going to make it in there. Good luck to you, good and this is why you've been in hundreds of things.
Broken neck.
That was it was just, it was just, it was it was a tripp and and uh, I remember going out to that place in Burbank. Now, I don't know if it freaked you guys out any But the thing that amazed me was going to that high school in Burbank where we shot the first the first kind of show and the and the musical number and all that stuff on that stage was they rebuilt that stage and auditorium exactly to scale. Unbelievably.
It was like, what what kind of budget is this?
It's nuts?
And we acquired a new sound stage at Paramount to build another replica of something we used to film, and is like, what that's happening here?
What what was your experience when we started doing it at the beginning and just rehearsing things. What what did you you feel like when when you were doing it? What was your experience?
I mean the beginning for us, like when we were doing the pilot was obviously as you know you were there so different than the rest of the show. But I think for us, because we were all so green, that it was more about we all bonded really, really hard, and then we had weeks of rehearsal and they were all trying to figure out what, Yeah, like what is the system, what is dance rehearsal? What are the recording sessions?
Like nobody really knew what was going on, but I remember like when you had someone like Ryan who so clearly was supported on every level, like by the network and studio where I mean, you can tell us if you felt this where on set it felt like he has as much time. I heard from somebody like, Oh, he wants this to be like three weeks or month
long to film this pilot, and that doesn't normally happen. No, and so no, knowing that, in the back of my head was like, and Ryan, we trust, so like if the execs and the big scary suits are saying he can have whatever he wants, then we just need to like trust that he knows what he's doing. And clearly, you know, they were right.
Yeah, we didn't really know what was what was to come, and we didn't know what the formula was going to be, so everybody was just kind of there together figuring it out, and we just remember hearing inklings of things.
We also didn't know like how the show was going to be received, if we.
Were going to get Greenland or not, and everybody just kept saying like, these executives don't usually show.
Up on set like this for a pilot.
These people don't usually start marketing for you know, during a pilot or start thinking and strategizing. So it sounded very promising to us and we were like, great, we just love to see each other again because I moved. I went back to New York after we finished filming
the pilot and waited for two months. But yeah, we were there for We came in for four weeks before we started filming and started rehearsing Don't Stop Believing and figuring out background vocals, figuring out our audition songs, the ones that aren't in the pilot, and so it was all just like a very collaborative process where Ryan would come in and say yes, no hate it, Yes, absolutely, that's right.
Change this. You know, he is so clear in his mind exactly what this.
Was going to be that like in Ryan, we trust.
Did you feel like for us when we found out that Jane was going to be in it and that you were going to be in it, people that we all knew that were fans of, like that felt like
a really big deal. Yeah, because people like the two of you, who are so good and have been in so many any great things that like, oh if they're a part of this, like if they think this is good, right, being like touch and yeah, very much so, and I felt like, oh, that's also really like I can brag about being on the same show as you or as you know, as Jane, because like everybody loves you. So it was one of those things like guess who else is in the show? Like how crazy is that?
Yeah, the thing I felt, you know, one of the benefits of always just trying to work and so like I did summer Stock outside of Woodstock, New York when I was twenty years old, and we had some very talented people from New York City that came out to do musicals there, and we had one week to rehearse a show and then you put it up and you do it for two weeks while you're rehearsing the next show, and everybody is working on their songs, everybody is working
on their dances, everybody is working on their speeches from Midsummer Night's Dream, walking Walking through the And that was the feeling I had of Glee at the beginning, working on that pipe. Everybody and every corner was working on everything they were doing, yes, because it was not like doing an LA show. It was not like doing it. It was like doing theater and doing New York Theater, Yes, not La Theater. It was like it was like everybody was working on their stuff every second.
You're so right, Ye're so right.
I never even thought about it because we were so used to it, like when we were at those schools. Even later on in the seasons, when you were filming at other high schools, we were if someone was filming in the auditorium, we were on the football field having dance or some other or somebody's being bussed off to go record. It never stopped. We were all just something was happening all the time.
And did you sing for your audition?
Oh? You know, I think I just did some stupid song I had just done in Talks and Box. Do you know that Fernanda and Sullivan musical, you know's the bag he can on the grid? I'll say, he cant that and close my eyes something like that, something that was not of Glee caliber, and and and the but it was, it was good enough.
It was perfect, Oh yeah for.
Me to be Sandy Ryerson. And but the thing was, there was no dead weight on that show. Everybody, nobody was lazy. Everybody was trying to do their best. And it's like a very rare time where you know, you experience everybody saying I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready, as opposed to could you give me another twenty minutes here having a nap in my dressing room, and I will, yeah, when I'm ready.
That's very true.
There's no time for naps now when you're all.
So excited because it even like, you know, I think it means a lot hearing someone like you who like read the script and you were excited from the moment you read it, where even with a broken neck, you're like, I got to figure out how to get in there, you know. I think if that doesn't convince you how we all felt about reading it, nothing will, because I think we all had a very similar, you know, reaction
to it. Because it's so rare you get to do something that piques your all your interests like this does, and that everybody is willing to just go one hundred percent from day one, even into the unknown whatever it is we're doing, and to.
Go full circle in terms of the circle of catastrophe. My last show on Klee, I had just finished having drum roll open heart surgery. Now three years after the broken neck, I had to have a triple bypassed open heart surgery. So anyway, the word kind of got out and different people reached out and gave me shows. And so the guy said, Lee said, We've written the show for you to do to make sure I kept my
insurance and that because I can do it. The show the last show I did, and I and was in detention hall and I said, whatever you people do, I've just had surgery. I'm cut in two. Yeah, I'm being held together by staples. Do not have me dance because I'm not a dancer anyway, And they had me dance in detention hall and so I'm like, you know, in front of the in front of the blackboard.
It was stop.
But I uh take my hat off to uh the guys at Community. They gave me a show and so sweet and Ryan gave me a show right after Community, and I'm going like, god, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you guys so much. It was wonderful.
It was one that's so great, Oh my gosh, because you're enjoyable work with you know what. Now, now, you did join a Fellas very early on in this in the series. What was that like for you? Were you excited to join af of fellas with those guys. What was that experience?
Like, I was working with some very talented people, and I remember, uh doing those dance rehearsals for a cafellas that was like really ridiculous, and doing it for Ryan. Yeah, you know, I was a particularly bad dancer, and and you know I was.
You weren't the only particularly bad dancer.
I was over ampt and and Ryan was just laughing his head off and he's going like, Okay, that's really terrible. Okay, that's really but you're right, You're right, you know he was like, yes, no, totally. But the guys could sing so well. I felt like, well, that's fine. All I have to do is kind of just blend in and kind of hide in it behind those guys.
Right.
That's when I met Josh.
Yes, and you gave us one of the most famous lines in ever.
Who says Josh and Josh and I this is this is not so. I meet Josh out in Pasadena or whatever, and he was saying like, I'm not used to acting and doing this kind of thing, and I'm kind of nervous about the camera, the whole camera thing. And I'm going like, you gotta be kidding. I said, you don't have to worry about the camera thing at all because he's so brilliant. And it's just like I said, you know, if you make any mistake of anything at all, they just do it again.
You know.
It's not like you know, you're you're juggling glass spheres or something.
He can perform live in front of an arena full of people.
But you know, wow, god, but he what what? What a guy? What a guy? That was? That was amazing? That was amazing.
Did you have any idea when you came on originally for the pilot, because Sandy Ryerson left quite the impression certainly? Did you know that you know if the show got picked up that Ryan and co. Wanted to have you back for more or was it sort of the show gets picked up and they're writing these episodes and like, hey, actually can you come back again and again and again?
Yeah? Well no, you know you never know that kind of stuff. So I I had at that point. I had had enough experience to know like, well, you do the pilot and that's great, and then if if you do other shows, that's even better. But but you never
know that kind of thing. And once once you shoot a pilot, A lot of other four verses enter into the creation of a series as to the direction they want to go with certain ideas and certain directions, and so certain characters are elevated, other characters vanished, new characters are created, and with glee. They certainly did that.
They did, oh they I.
Just was so happy that the number of times I as music teacher, you know, I got to sit in the audience and listen to everybody's sing Oh God, what a great group of people.
Truly.
Now, Sandy had some really insane moments, and I'm curious to hear if you are ever concerned by any of your storylines or any of the things that you did, like your doll your home of dolls.
In your robes and tea. I have to know, I just.
Find those things delightful, you know, I just find them so funny, and there's so much humor buried in that, you know, it's so funny. And they don't tell you that stuff beforehand, right because you know, if you're doing a character in a kind of Stanislavsky way, and they were saying, like, well, one thing you should know about who you are, you have a dollhouse at home, and you you you played with Dolph, you know you would kind of put something together, but in television they just
throw that at you as a surprise. But I was just I was kind of delighted by everything. And oh, I guess you and Jane to ask me. What Jane and I would do when we weren't shooting is we would sit outside the stage and tell each other theater stories, amazing about nightmares she went through and nightmares I went through, and it was also funny, and we just were sitting there just laughing, and then they call us on stage
and then you know, it's a whole other thing. And you know, one of the lasting impressions I have is Corey. You know Corey and who was absolutely one of my favorite people on the set, and always watching Corey working so hard to get his dance right and get his thing right, usually right outside my trailer. He was out there and he was working on things.
So yeah, yeah, everybody who comes on the show always like cannot help themselves. But you mentioned how kind Corey was, how hard of a worker he was, how he went out of his way to make them feel at home. He really was just our silent leader. Yeah, and like so beloved by everybody.
So beloved. And I'll tell you it was one of the in in a lot of businesses, you encounter a lot of tragedy, and in this particular business, you encounter so many people and you have no idea how many are living on the edge. But it was one one horrible piece of news that that so had me in tears because because he he was such a dear, dear, dear person, and.
Uh, I was I was just in Vancouver when I heard, and I'm thinking, like god, you mean he could have been right here and I didn't know it, you know, it was Yeah, it was terrible.
Yeah really, And it feels worse too when you know somebody that deeply you know how wonderful they are, that it's always just shocking.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it.
Makes no sense. But I love that like you, you, like so many others you know, echoed the same sentiments about him, because it's it's nice that we all get to share that and got to have that time with him and be able to like, you know, share those memories with other people because it's one of those things where like, no, he really was just the best, and everybody should should know that yeah, yeah, sweet wonderful guy.
Mm hmmm, very You've been in so many iconic things. I'm curious like when people approach you fans, is it for something? Is it is it more one thing than the other? Is it Glee? Is it Groundhog Day?
Like do you have one that's like I always get recognized or is it just that people know you because you've been in literally everything?
Yeah?
Now, now it kind of depends on cable because everybody watches, so I could tell recently everyone goes like, oh my god, Stu Begs Californication And I'm going like, why why is everybody coming up to me saying Stu Beggs? And then I'd look on my thing and it's back on cable again. Right in Californication. I was on the I was just in Dallas this weekend, and on the flight back, the guy said, you know, you were Jack Barker in Silicon Valley.
The guy next to me, I go, right, right, right, Then the guy crossway, No, it's Stu Beggs and then you leave, Oh it's Ned Ryerson. So it's like, now, after all this time, their favorite characters people have. That's funny and whether Bolberg's or one day at a time, their favorite characters, people.
Have and everything everything I've.
Reached kind of the point of saturation. And I'm lucky. I'm lucky in that a lot of the roles were in really good projects, cause you could have a lot of roles in really terrible projects. Something like Lee is a classic project, or certainly Goldberg's is amazing one day to time, I mean, lots of good projects. So that's but a lot of reason why that happened was location, location, location, So at Sony Studios, it is difficult to get the
approval of the boss. But when the president of Sony and the head casting at Sony go like you're okay, then everything that comes in at Sony it's it's less work for them to say, Stephen, as soon as you finish Goldbergs, why don't you run over there? And why don't you go over and do uh doctor that sense, do the Doctor Ken show. We'll get apart for you.
It just and they just keep you running around like they did in the thirties, you know, So you just go around and do like this show, this show, this show, all at the same state studio, and they arrange your scheduled where you do five different things. Wow, but that was just location. Look, it was just companion for them.
A very very talent.
They know who I am.
They know you're capable of right, right.
Right, kind of auditioned on screen for them a number of times, so.
You're right, and at that point they should be able to just be like, can you do this? You don't have to audition, come up just like you know, like you know what I could do. You've seen me and everything.
Yeah, it's well and also being on like for you know, most recently with Michael Hitchcock two on Nobody Wants This. It's like another really big hit that everybody's talking about, which is not always so common in this day and age because there's so much content now that for something to hit like that and for you to be on another show that's you know, wildly popular like that.
We had no idea what was going on because the show didn't have a title. It was called untitled Aaron Foster Project. And so so I'm going like okay, and then they always kept reading. So they My agent called me up and said, Stephen, you know they're doing this this show and they have a rabbi, and I think you have a scene. Could you go in and do a Rabbi scene for them? It's just I go sure, sure.
So they send me the stuff and I'm reading it and I'm going like, yeah, okay, well it's actually two scenes, but okay, two scenes in two days. Okay. And then they go like, oh, and you're on next week too, and I go, oh my god, okay, okay, well well that script yeah yeah, yeah, and wow. They had no title, and so we had no idea what this show was going to be like or whether it was good or
bad or indifferent. And after about three months or so after we had finished shooting it, my agent called up says, they finally have a title for it. I go, what nobody wants this? Could you have a worst title? I mean, can you imagine the critics going.
Like nobody right? You're giving it to them?
Silver.
It was great, really, it was.
I mean, we all, you know, Kristen played my daughter on another show, so there's all kinds of you know, she on Heroes, she was my daughter. That's where I met her, And I'm going like, what was the genetic disposition of my wife to where me and her created you? I mean, my God.
Is right before Glee and I remember when you got on like yes.
Jen, yeah, the whole thing.
But that show turned out to be nobody wants this is a fabs like a show. And I didn't know until I went into Looping. And you know, you go into Looping and they show you a bit of the scene and I'm watching, I'm.
Going, oh, this is good. Yeah, yeah, give me more. I'd like to see.
Yeah, you never know, you never know.
I think it's so impressive. And we've talked to some other actors who've been in a lot of shows and how like you just pop in for two scenes here, come back and you don't even know what the show is. But the skill to be able to do that, like the muscle, to be able to just like pop in do your thing that fits in the tone with that show is so impressive. And you continue to do that, you know.
You learn lessons along the way. One of the lessons Harold Ramos taught me on Groundhougs because I was a little nervous that I was overplaying the part a little bit, you know, overplaying it, and Harold Ramis is Stephen, you know, the Schlamiel and the Schlamazl.
And excuse me, he says, yeah, the Jewish.
Jewish comedy the Schlamiel and the Schlamazel. The Schlamiel is the guy who always spills the soup. He always is shaking, you know, yep, and always dropping the soda can. The Schlamazel is the guy who always gets stuff spilled on him. He says, So when you are in this scene in Groundhog Day, you are the Schlamiel. Bill is the Schlamazel. So Bill has to be the world. He has to play it straight. You could do whatever you want now.
When they call me in last second, it's usually for a comedy, And I think am I the Schlamiel or the Slamazel in terms of nobody wants this? I am the world, which is a much easier role to play. I mean, you just have to carry the weight of the normal into it to where the other people can play off of that. But brilliant, you just have this shorthand of going like what what am I on this show?
The vessel? Right right?
Yes, yes, wow, some good advice right there.
Well, because you've been on so many things, in so many things in your career is so wildly extensive, I'm curious like what it is now? What your mindset is when you're looking to work, now, are you just excited to work on anything? Are you looking for things specific? Or I'm just like what is it? When project come to you?
All right, I'm hoping it's a good show. First of all, like the script. I read the script, and if the script is good, I like it. That's another thing. And then then after you do it, you hope it's a good cast. So nobody wants this, right Craig. You know, I read the script, I go like, well, this is good, and then you see the cast you go, oh, well this is good. The same thing with Glee. You know, I read the script and I go like, I have
to be in the show. And then you say the people who were in it, and you'd be like, oh my god, yeah, yes, the most talented group of people in the world. You know, it is so amazing to act with you guys, and to watch everybody perform was amazing. So that's the first thing. It has to have a good script. And then if if the cast, especially if the cast is like again, I'll go back to the Glee cast that aren't afraid to work, and like I, nobody wants this. Everybody was eager to work, not happy
to be resting. Everybody's let's go, let's do this, Let's do this again, let's get everybody was happy to be engaged in the process of doing it.
That that energy is so necessary. Yeah, feed off each other's It feels like, I imagine it's reminiscent in a way of Summer Stock too. You're like, it's a minor miracle these things get made, yes, right, Like it takes everybody doing their little part in every single department to pull each other together at the end of the day to just get this thing done.
Yep, this horrible summer stock story. Horrible summer stock story. So I was playing bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream and my girlfriend from Texas came up and she ended up being an apprentice in the group of people, and we were falling in love, you know how that happens. And we were falling in love, and I was playing bottom, and I kept waking up. The schedule was so difficult. I kept waking up on stage in the middle of the night rehearsing, wearing some of my clothes, some of
my costume, and some of my pajamas. So I'd wake up at two or three in the morning on stage. The theater is completely dark, completely dark, and I am rehearsing bottoms dream or something. So I go to Beth and I said, look, I think I'm sleepwalking. Could you could you wake me up? I don't want to end up on stage again in the middle of the night with half my clothes on and half my clothes off, because that means I had to get out of the bed, go down to the bar, go down into the costume room,
put on my costume. But in my sleep I can't button buttons or do belts. And so I said, Baby, please just make sure I stay in bed tonight, please. So I wake up on stage. The clock on the side of the wall says three point thirty in the morning. I'm standing there in my bottom out that my pants are at my ankles because I can't fasten my pants. I have my doublet and of this, and Beth is sitting in the audience and she said, I said, Baby, this wasn't the deal.
The deal was.
Supposed to And she said I had to see it. I had to see if it was true, and I had to see when you woke up what you would do. And so it is true. You are sleep talking, you know, you know, it's just this is so it's all so crazy. It's also crazy.
Wow.
Wow did you start in theaters? Like, how did you get into that in the first place.
I got into theater because I was having a horrible experience in college. I had a teacher in college who was just trying to destroy me, an acting teacher. She was the new acting teacher, and she hated me. And so I grew up in a in an area of Dallas where I was used to believes as a child. I knew what they looked like and I knew how they act that.
Where Dallas are you from originally? Oh, Cliff, I'm from Plano.
Oh well you're from Plano.
I was from the east side. I was not from the west side.
In the old days, Plano where all the fancy people live. And now it's like Addison or North Addison or now people moved away because everybody moved to Plano because it was the Beverly Hills of Dallas, not when I was there. Yeah, but what was I talking about?
The teachers?
Terrible teachers.
Terrible teacher.
You know, when I was a sophomore is when you got brought into the professional Acting curriculum. She voted against me. So I was not in the professional acting curriculum, which means I could not take acting classes. I could take theater history, I could do all that other kind, but not acting classes. So I go like, okay, this is crazy. So what I did was I went to my theater
history teacher, who was understood and my junior year. I said, well, you may know I have this teacher that's and he goes, yes, yes, yes. I said, can I take the graduate exam now with you if you give it to me, because you had to have two parts, you had to have a written exam to graduate, and and I said, you have to give me the exam, but not tell anyone that you're giving it to me, and you keep the exam and if I need it my senior year, you'll bring it
to me. And so I took the exam like my junior year, my graduate exam, and sure enough, a week before the end of school my senior year, my advisor came and said, we're so sorry, you're not going to be able to graduate. Joan Potter has just given you a second unsatisfactory critique, so you won't be able to take the graduate exam and I said, well, I already took it, and he said, well, that's impossible, because we give it next week. See she was waiting to the
very end like a bully would do crazy. And I said, no, no, I took it last year with Tony Graham White, and theater has called him up. And so Hobb did. And Tony came up with a sealed envelope with my test in it, opened it up in front of hopgood created it. I made an a on it, and then Tony saluted me and walked out of the room. And I had gotten my equity when they stopped casting me at SMU in Anything. I got my equity card at the local Equity Theater in Dallas, and I was doing musicals in Dallas.
I did Jesus and Godspell, I did, I did all you know, and I was like a star. And that really made the teacher hate me. And when I did my first Broadway show in New York, she came backstage to my dressing rooms absolutely and said you're still no good. Well, you're still no good? And I said yeah, and you just paid one hundred and twenty dollars to see me.
Wow, what a beast, a beast, a miserable person.
I heard that that was just her. Oh and at the next school she went to, she did this, you know, yeah, fictions, bitter, bitter better.
Wow.
Yeah. So what I did was I always just went my own course. I got my equity card, I got my SAG card, and I just always just tried to work. Power is Yeah, you haven't stopped you Well yeah, not not not lately.
Well, it's weird out there.
It's weird.
It's a weird time. We I mean, we could talk to you all day.
I have a question for you before we forget to ask because I don't want and we always ask everybody on our show who has been a part of Glee in some respect, what is the feeling that Glee leaves you with?
Jay? Oh? Why still to this day, Still, to this day, I think of Glee and I'm filled with joy, both the process of working on it all you guys and everybody I met on Glee remarkable, remarkable people, Uh, Jane, Corey, Matt and everybody, just Leah, everybody. I just had such a great experience with everybody, and it was a unique experience, nothing like it before and nothing like it since. And uh that was that was my overall Wow.
It's a big statement that it's like nothing you've worked on, because you.
You know, well, it is joy always when I think of it.
Yeah, So we're sad we didn't get to work with you more. We loved watching.
Because you guys had talent. I was just doing.
Jokes, you guys know the fun yea, every time was like.
Oh ship double all the house of dolls, My goodness, Yeah, it was. No, it was always such a joy to see you pop on the screen and to rewatch it now and watch it and you're just so wonderful on the show, and seeing you continually working makes us so happy.
And to see you, you.
Know, sharing your talents with other shows and other uh, other people. It's just wonderful, so grateful that you came on and shared all those wild stories, and.
We were so lucky to have you, you know, to be on the same set, to be on the same show as you. It meant a lot to us, even if we didn't get to work together all the time. Yes, it means a lot to us that you're here now gracing us with your presence. So thank you so much for taking the time to reminisce.
Yeah, absolute pleasure. It's a joy to me to do it, to go back to Gleeville.
I know, I know.
It was so good to see Stephen, seriously, thank you so much.
Absolutely good joy, good to see you.
Good, good to see Stephen, thank you.
Oh my gosh what it's icon Jenna, And I mean.
Really like the resume is actually insane, and the experience he's had and still so joyful if you taking that one. So happy about the craft, so happy about the work he does and the way he approaches it. It's really inspiring for somebody you know, who's starting out or for us even, but it's I just still can't believe he was on our show, and how funny and brilliant is every time he stepped on the screen, like.
It was like surreal. Oh thank god, you know.
Thank god.
I love hearing all these stories too. One of the besides like doing the work of like being on a set talking to people who have worked a lot and hearing the stories and their experiences is just the greatest thing. Because it's a small industry and you are, you know, like the whole six degrees of separation with Kevin Bacon, it's like it's very much real and probably even less
for anybody you can imagine. And the stories that like we've gotten to here, and like the idea of he and Jane like swapping stories outside stages.
Just so cut the dream.
They also just He's just a joy, a pleasure to work with, Like everybody on that show is just happy to be there, willing to work, and like especially the adults were such becons for us to see how they handled being on set all the time, like Michael Malley and Romy and Jane and like everybody was just like, oh, this is how you do it. Like you you follow along with their manner and etiquette on set because they've been working forever. There's something that gets them, you know.
And it's not just talent, it's it's.
No and there's never any sort of pretense with them. They're now, they're grateful for the work, they care about it, they think deeply about it, and they're also just so much fun and joyful to be around.
I just want him to just tell his stories all the time.
I know.
Well, Steven Tailawski, we are so honored that you came on the show and talked about your Glee experience and your wild Glee audition. I can't. I also can't believe that he had to like audition at all, but like.
You know, I'm grateful it sounds was audition.
Yeah, with their broken neck, nobody is beating him.
How does he even have to audition for things?
That's the thing is, he's just offer John.
Yeah. I just sounds like he doesn't really have to audition for things.
No, no, no, not really, not really. Well anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed that. That's Stephen Tablowski, that's Sammy Ryerson.
Wow, and that is what you really missed. Thanks for listening, and follow us on Instagram at and that's what you really miss pod. Make sure to write us a review and leave us five stars. See you next time.