Call It what It Is with Jessica Capshaw and Camil Luddington, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello Call.
It crew, and welcome to another episode. This one's got a little holiday, a little holiday feel into it.
A little holiday shimmy, a little shimmy shake Yeah, a little sparkle sparkle le tie joy.
Who do we have on to talk about? One of my favorite things? You guys, I'm addicted. You probably already noticed to holiday movies, and we're gonna be talking about one today.
We're gonna be talking about holiday movies. We're gonna be talking about all of our favorite Grey's Anatomy episodes and how Gray's Anatomy has done what it does so well for so long with an actor. First he was an actor on the show, and then he ended up becoming a writer and simultaneously became a fan favorite, also as an actor on a little show called Scandal. Yeah, I am so excited to bring on Dan Bukatinski. Yes, I am.
Hi. Hello, it's been too long.
It's been too long.
We're talking about Grayson Aatama.
You guys, everyone, Dan was a writer and you acted on the show too.
You're on our show I.
Acted on the show before your character.
I acted on the show season seven, no season six, I can't remember.
I came season five, so maybe right after that.
I did an episode, and then two years later I joined the writing staff part time while I was acting on Scandal.
Okay, and I just feel like we need to just give this due respect. So we're talking to Dan Bukatinsky, who, honestly, I think I just knew of you because you are one of the people that I would describe as multifaceted, multi connected, and ubiquitous. It's sort of like Dan's everywhere, Like of course he is. He's of course, he's next to you in line, you know, grabbing a juice. Of course,
he's on set with you and now a writer. Of course, he's at the fabulous party with his husband, having a fabulous time with their beautiful children.
Like you just were everywhere.
So then when you came to the show and then we're acting, and then we were so excited to have you around. But then you got to become an actor a writer, I was like, I didn't even know that you also wrote, So now you're writing and acting, and I would just be so excited when you came to set because we don't always get the writers on set because you guys have to go to your room and make the magic. But you were always, i think, an acter favorite for set visits and being on set patrol.
I feel like that's why they sent Dan out.
Yeah.
Yeah, because you wanted to Yeah, because you wanted to do with you. Yeah, spilling the tea, coming up with all our ideas and thoughts about all the shenanigans that were happening in the world.
Yeah. Yeah, the lost of shenanigans, both on set and off. But I also loved Look, I'm an actor first, writer second, but I've been writing for twenty five years, and the opportunity to be on set and produce episodes either that I was part of writing or that were other writers' stuff, but to connect with the actors talk about the work, but also gossip about everything else.
Yes, you know, we all have mutual friends. Camilla.
I think I think I was there at the season that introduced your character.
You were, Yes, you.
Were definitely there that season, so I just knew you. Was like, yes, you were there, That's what I'm saying. Good Jazz like for me, you were og like you were one well We were one of the original writers. You were there and then they stole you.
Scandal stilly scandal stall.
Well, but I'm telling you writing on Gray's Anatomy for hyper kondriac was such a bad idea. You know that every morning is and that this is not that you asked. But I'll just tell you very quickly. We were a writer on Gray's Anatomy. Every morning, six in the morning, you were at least back then, you would receive an
email called the Morning Medical. And the Morning Medical was like the researchers would find some incredible, real story of something that happened to someone for real somewhere you.
Know you hadn't even yet imagined could happen, and put on your worry list yet.
No, and I had little thing.
You just had to add it.
And so many of you were pediatric are you.
I don't remember what your specialties are as the doctors that you are on the show, but so many were pediatric surgeons, so so many of the stories were pediatric in nature. So all I would do is wake up in a fit of anxiety, like, oh my god, now I have that to worry about.
Yeah, yeah, that was That was pretty much me. You can blame me for that. That was me back in the day in Pedes and I it had the opposite effect for me when the stories would come up because I knew they were because because by the time they got to us they were fiction, I could just say, this is made up.
I didn't know you.
I would just ignore the fact that it had come from a real story, and I was right, this is fake blood, and this is a fa this is an actor playing a sick child, and so this is.
All make believe. I recently, like last year, I think I did two episodes of Chicago med as you know, as somebody coming in through the er covered in blood, and I was just it was such an acid flashback to being on set of Grays and knowing how the donuts are made, but then from a completely different point of view. It was very interesting.
Is there an episode that comes top of mind for you that you loved so much being a part.
Of on Grays?
Yeah, there are a bunch. I mean, there's one that I was involved in.
My favorite that includes me.
Oh my god, it doesn't Dan, it doesn't have to include Jess.
There were so many twenty fourth season times, the two fifty episodes that I.
Was trying to help him narrow it down. Camilla, I know, so if she just thought of me, if you focused on looking at my face, damp.
Listen, you know I love you and you know where you were one of my favorites. Both of you were. I mean, Camilla, I was just meeting for the first time and you were like deer in headlights the whole first the whole first season, you were sort of like, Okay.
It was a lot.
It's a lot that that set is is not you know, it didn't like her huge, Yeah, Jessica didn't like me.
It was a huge ensemble.
And you guys were so well established. It was an intimidating and to be the new intern class and our and our our fandom have very strong feelings about new people on our show, you got to really win them over.
You have to earn their trust.
You knew who intimidated me the most was working with Chandra. And Sandra Chandra did not ever intimidate me. She was so yummy to me.
Well she is.
She's the nicest and the yummiest, but she's so good. Oh and like so she would say her lines and I wouldn't even know she was acting yet like i'd, oh, we're starting, Like she's that good. I think I was just intimid by by yeah, just yeah, she's just And also she you know, as I've said this before, but
you know, Schandra knows everything. She knows she knows her lines, she knows your lines, she knows where the props should be, she knows the orientation of the story where you are in it, and so she just I was intimidated by the fact that she knew it all. And Sandra, oh, kind of the same way. Like Sandra's such a deep
she analyzes each script and she's got it all. Like I mean, looking at her script was like a piece of art and also like a journal, like it was so deeply like personal, and she just is the hardest worker. And I so, I mean, I mean intimidated or inspired, I guess, I guess.
Both Sandra and I were in a movie together ten years earlier called Under the Tuscan Son. We had no scenes together in the movie, but we became best friends. So then I was writing on Grays and we had a shorthand. But her script was like dog hair, yeah on every other page, with like thoughts, and it was intimidating like as a writer even just to be like, all right that you're asking really good questions and we need to answer them.
Yeah, yeah, she really am.
I think it helped me to be coming from both points of view. I mean, I didn't love you know how I wound up on a medical show given my feelings about medicine in general. It was just crazy. And then I wound up writing the most ridiculous episode based on a true story about a magician who sawed his assistant in half as part of the show, but actually sawed her in half.
We're either of you in that episode.
Yeah, I was there. I don't know what I was doing.
I didn't deal with that medical if I would.
The medical medical medical.
Are you telling me that you did Scandal before you came to Grace.
No, No, it was simultaneous.
What happened. I did the first season of Scandal three episodes, and I took a meeting with Betsy and Shanda and Joan and Tony, the showrunners at the time, and they were like, we want you to write on the writing staff, and I was like, I'm excited about that, but if there's any chance that this character is going to come back on Scandal, I certainly don't want to shoot myself in the foot, Yeah, and take this job and not be able to do that, and she can.
I guess what came next. You became like a fan favorite on Scandal. Isn't that what happened next?
No, what happened next is Sean has said, we know where to find you if you're at Gray, so I'll know where to find you.
That's literally what she said.
Oh so she just occupied you don't worry about it.
If you're going to consult on I was consulting anyway. It was like, technically a consultant is like three days a week, but you can work as many days. You know, you work half days or full days or five days, and then you miss two days the next week. If you're going to be consulting on Gray's, we'll know where to find you. And season two they used me again.
And season two is when the show really exploded. The audience really connected to it, the whole live tweet movement at the beginning of season two, which got people to watch appointment TV Thursday nights for and I remember the fall of that year of season two, something had changed. I would be walking in New York and I felt a visceral change that had I could not have predicted. It was just like people were watching the show, and people really responded to this kind of normal guy who
this monster Jeff Perry's character was married to. So I did both, and I just I bounced back and forth all the time, and my character would get two scenes in an episode and I'd shoot them out and then I'd be at grace the rest of the time.
That's so you were, do you remember.
I remember the.
Tgit happening right where the line up was all Shonda, and that is just that whole thing explode.
I mean that exploded.
It did.
It took on a life of its own.
And Scott Foley had been on our show, and he was on that show. And I knew Carrie from like early days, meeting her when we were all starting out, and I just knew her to be such a kind and wonderful person. And then and I remember when you guys started doing the live tweeting because we weren't doing it, and we were like and then and then I had to and you could see what was happening, and and then I also remember, I remember and I'm sure that I attacked you with questions because I like, what is
going on over there? Because the skin everyone in the scandal cast was like they were the happiest, most hard working family, just family, and and it was so it was I mean believing me. There was a moment where I was like, this can't be true. This is too much, is too much. I can't handle this, this is too much nice, too much. I just love my job. I just love my job so much. I love working twenty
four hours a day. But it was actually true. And I remember asking and like really really like putting people's feet to the fire, like ones that I had real relationships. I'd like pick them off from the pack and be like, so really tell me what's up, Like you don't really like them that much, right, And they'd all be like, I love them, I love them, And I was like, okay, great.
This is amazing.
Was weird. It was weird. It was a it was a kind of kool aid. I mean, I don't really understand. I credit I always say this, I credit carry with it because you really do. It does start there, always, yeah, and then how that trickles down and the culture that starts to form, and everybody was really grateful for their
jobs and the writing. The writing was really good and the scenes that we got to do, and everybody was very very close, even people who you know, Josh Molina was a total prankster and he would come to set like armed to create problems in a joking way, and even he got and he's really cynical, and even he got sucked into the cult of Yeah, and we're all still very close.
I know.
I was want to say, you can tell it's real because years later you're not having to do a pressed war together and like bullshit, it like you guys really do still love each other. I mean, I saw Carrie's picture for Halloween and she's like she did the challenges for Halloween with the boys. It's so like it's you guys are still so close.
We're very very close. And I'm close to people who I never had a scene with in thirty episodes like I did. I did thirty episodes of Scandal and not one time was ion screen with Katie Lowe's and he was one of my closest friends.
She's great, she's great, she's great. Well you, I mean, you all got very lucky because for different reasons, when we would do crossovers, or we would do press, or we would do like the big photo shoots or whatever. I mean again, it just every single person in your cast was so welcoming, so kind. I remember the very
very the most. The strongest note that I felt being around you all was that everyone seemed so grateful and everyone was a grown up, right, Like everybody had been on others shows, done to the things, and then they'd come to this show like knowing who they were and being really grateful for their job, knowing what it takes to make a show a hit, which is no small feat.
You hit it on the head. I mean, that's one hundred percent what it is. I was in my forties when I got that gig, and I had been in LA for twenty years trying to have that kind of like trying to get a break like that. I was just a guest star, by the way, for all twenty nine episodes, but I was so grateful for getting to do that material. Jeff Perry had been on Grey's Anatomy and he had been on series before, but was really grateful to get to dive into that kind of material.
Everybody was a grown up and Grays forty seven years ago when it started, you know, they were everybody. Everybody as you know, and even Familie when you started, like the whole premise of the show were interns. It's like, you're getting people in their twenties, and how how a twenty seven year old is going to react to their first big series regular role as opposed to a thirty seven year old those supposed.
To a forty seven year old. Is it's just different.
And you know there's been so much turnover, but what do you credit the longevity of Grays too? Not that I'm allowed to ask any questions, but I do want you know.
This is an equal opportunity streaming.
I think, you know streaming really I came on it in season nine, right, and I think it just is one of those shows that exploded and hit the other generations a couple I want to say, around season eleven or twelve was when I started to notice like, oh, it's really it's really getting in fact, our numbers came in today and we're in the top ten of streaming. Still, I think it's just hitting new generations.
You're right, Hitting a new generation is the key, because after ten seasons, suddenly the nine year olds who are now nineteen who want to binge Gray's Anatomy are your new fans.
For the next twenty years exactly. It will live on forever.
Well, so that's sort of more the business part of it. But I will that the magic of Grey's Anatomy is is is. I was a fan first because I wasn't
on it, but I appointment television did. I watched it on Sunday when it first came out on Sunday nights, and then I got to be on it, and now I am not on it, but I watch it from afar, and I think that the magic has always been this incredible circumstance of a world that has implicit incredibly high stakes because it's life or death every day, right, and then these wonderful actors, these grounded, real, like incredible casting by the way, speaking back, I mean when you say, Jeff,
I can't not think of Linda. So it's like the casting was always so phenomenal, these very grounded, very real actors. And then these high arching, crazy stories that were like again the Shondaland roller coaster, right, the kind of storylines that you see on soap operas, just like I mean, unbelievable like, no way it be her twin sister. But you're talking about sawing someone in half. That's a real story. We get to play with it.
Right, except what you're saying is totally true the balancing act of some crazy medical story that like where you're going to watch this group of people that you're already invested in, like replace the heart of this person and the hearts I mean, I used to love the episodes where the helicopter would land and somebody would hand the cooler with the organ and you'd run down the stairs and you'd be in the elevator with the organ of somebody who had to have that organ within the next
eight seconds. And yet you're in the elevator with your ex boyfriend and so suddenly that elevator ride, despite the medical tension and stakes.
And music playing that you can't hear.
How can you didn't call me back last night?
Like the really e Merging that level of intimate, romantic personal drama with real high stakes life or death drama is just genius.
Yeah, and we always have a new intern glass that turnover is like it just it's fresh for new stories and new love.
Interesting. Yeah, it's just it just works.
My secret dream as an actor and has been for Maybe it started around Grays. I want to wear a lab coat on a show so badly. I so badly wanted to be a visiting doctor who then comes back on Grays And of course, like my episode, I was the spouse of somebody in the hospital bed. I was like, how's that guy ever going to wind up? I was like, wait a minute, maybe he goes off to college, gets his medical degree, and he comes back in three years
and he's a doctor. But then I was on Scandal and got murdered horribly and there was no way that I was going to wind up in that world ever again. But it's there's something about playing somebody who can who can get to do the duality of a love story and the high stakes of life saving that's kind of aspirational.
We I don't know why you have decided that you couldn't come back on.
Our show because I played a character and like the super fans are going to be like, that's the husband of.
The option, the husband left and when God, his isn't the hole like in the world like you can't lay I mean, no, this can't be the rule, because we have meritiths you know, like we have people on both shows.
If you're listening, Dan needs the lab coat.
Dan wants to come in as a visiting dermatologist or visiting surgeon in the areas of.
Yeah, pitch it now, Dan there, I'm all for it.
Would I would love it with all my heart, especially to get to see you guys again.
Wait, just are you am?
I I'm not on it anymore, but were you?
Just? Weren't you? Just? Sorry?
Yes, I went yes, I mean, listen, it's always going to be I will always go back. Yes, I went back last year.
Okay, I thought so, and it was so much fun.
It was so much fun. And also I got to like rewrite my departure. I got to go back and have a wonderful time. And not that I love that, Yeah, I love that.
And you know, it's just I have such relationships like Kim Raver and I have been friends because I was a writing producer on a show called Lipstick Jungle that she was on on NBC in two thousand and eight, right, two thousand and eight, so four years.
Has also been everywhere. Kim's been on so.
Many everywhere, Yes, Kim's been everywhere.
I want to talk about I want to talk about this holiday movie that you've done. Okay, because well, first of all, I have eyeballs and ears, and so I've experienced like Lindsay Lohan, and I watched every single moment like her, all of all of her things. So she's in it. And then also Kristin Chenowith, who's just nice sister. Did you get to work with her?
Talk about suspension of disbelief. I play Christian's husband, and we don't have a great marriage. I'll just spoiler alert, but this is like a fun Christmas rom com that's got a little bit of meat. The Fokker's in it because it's all about this family Christmas reunion where the parents played by me and Kristin chenow With have our children grown children, come home with their boyfriend and girlfriend and it just so happens that their boyfriend and girlfriend
used to date and have the history. And that's Ian Harding and Lindsay Lohan. So the show is really about I didn't know this term until recently.
You know, meet cute, right. We used to write them asatomy.
This is a meat ugly apparently when two people, when two people have a history and they hate each other, and they were like, I never wanted to see you again, and they meet in a rom com it's called a meat ugly.
I've never heard that term.
Well, it looks like from the trailer that Kristin plays sort of a yeah, like a little she's a little grumpy, a little thorny, a little what does she She's got some rough edges.
She is not the nicest she she's not the nicest most welcoming to Lindsay Lohan. And a lot of the movie's tension has to do with Lindsay trying to stay in her good graces. That's a big premise of the movie. And as my wife, she definitely puts me in my place. You know, Listen, I bounce around in the movie. I appear here and there, and then I have this incredible scene with a huge secret of my own, which is not how which you think it is. It's not what it's not even what I thought it was going to
be when they it's a bigger secret than that. But but it's a very fun movie where everyone in it sort of is hanging on to something that you find out by the end.
Well, I cannot wait to watch it.
Well, this is wait. We have to say the name of it.
You don't even say the name of it.
Secret, Yes, secret on Netflix. I'm a sucker for Christmas movies. Dan, I're still gonna tell you.
And Lindsay Low.
We do have to talk about Lindsay for a second. She's having this renaissance. Yes, she looks incredible. I fully, I was always a fan of Lindsay. I'm so excited.
I feel like she's really back.
She's doing amazing work. She looks incredible. She's always been super talented her. I watched another Christmas movie of hers last year.
I like her voice. It's always like been kind of like that gravelly like.
Yeah, gravelly like smoky yea.
I wish I was cool like that.
I love it so much.
Jessica, you were in on Netflix Christmas movie Holiday with Kristen.
I was, and she was fantastic, so funny. She played my aunt Susan. She is such a hoot and holler. And she's coming on the show too. And she cracks me up because we became dear friends. And then when you're friends with Kristin Jenna with what ends up happening is she does not text as much as she sends me videos She sends me videos from all kinds of places. Some places you would not you would not think someone would send you a video from them, but she will send you a video from them.
I know what you're talking about.
Yeah, exactly. And she and she's always like, you're you're my sister, and we need, honey, we need to do a movie. Be together. We're gonna find something. That's how she talks to me, I know. And she'll tell me all about her day in detailed slab.
I get videos when when she's gone to sleep, she's gone to sleep and the lights are out and it's completely dark, and all I see are just like just the hints of two little eyes. Hi husband. Yeah, I'm so tired because she works. She works like nobody. But we got very close. She's got the biggest heart of anybody on the planet, and we had a great time.
We ad lived like crazy.
We really tried to feel what this completely dysfunctional marriage would really be like. And so there's little hints of that throughout the movie. We had a great time. Tim Meadows is in the movie as well. This hilarious John Rodnitski is in the movie. Has my son and it's it's really fun and Lindsay, I have to tell you I also a huge, huge fan when you see the work she did as a kid. Oh, I know, in the movie Trap.
I just watched it with Hayden.
I watch it. I think I've seen it five times.
I have two. But she's so talented, she's so innately talented, and so you know, now she's got a kid of her own, and she's really settled down, and it's really funny, and she was a delight.
And you know what I mean just naming it, talk about being a grown up. She's been through it, you know, And I don't. I don't know because I haven't been following the press that she's done. I don't know if she's speaking to it. But I remember the like the meltdown days when just things. I mean, she had such a huge level of fame and attention on her and she was just trying to live her life. And life can be real messy sometimes, and when.
We see our twenties, eighteen to twenty eight is not an easy decade. It's just not imagine the amount of scrutiny and having to answer to it and having it all played out publicly.
It's just not no, and you're usually not peaking then, like, that's not when we're not that's not when we're peaking.
Now, those are when you're in the trenches. You want to be able to make mistakes. You just need it, not on the cover of People magazine.
That's exactly right. You want to be able to make your mistakes and not. This is one of the reasons
I started this thing on Instagram. If you follow me on Instagram, I do this thing called Failure Fridays, which is all about this idea that you know, social media, since it's the beginning, has become the place for the humble brag, where you scroll all day long to see people with bodies better than yours, and cappuccinos that look better than yours, and the bread that's been baked better than yours, and awards and dresses and red carpets, and
it's also fabulous, and it's easy to compare and despair. But the truth is, if we were to use social media a little bit more, all of us as a universe, to also share in our setbacks, our humiliations, our embarrassments, and our failures, we would realize that the path to success is paved with failures and embarrassments and setbacks. And so I started this thing failure Friday, where I encourage peopeople to comment tell their story post hashtag failure Friday.
I have so many I'm so aware I start.
That is part of the problem.
Part of the problem is like, oh god, where I have my parenting fails, my relationship fails, my professional fails. But the truth is all of them are also surrounded by these moments of triumph. And we don't all only triumph and we don't all only fail. It's just we can't define ourselves wholly by one success or one failure. And so anyway, I'm encouraging people to embrace their setbacks
and then the comeback is so much more lovely. Like I think there's so much goodwill towards towards Lindsay, maybe because her setbacks were all so public.
I also think that if you're if you're if you're really paying attention and you're failing and you're succeeding and you're honest with yourself and you're naming it, you have a far better relationship with the success and with the failure. So you you you can have the median be really nice and static. Okay, like you're always going to go back to Okay, you're gonna you're gonna get really high
and you're gonna go really low. By the way, if you're not making mistakes, you're not trying, right, So you got to try and sometimes it'll work and sometimes it won't.
I mean, it's interesting. I don't know why, but to this morning, I was talking to a friend about that experiment they did with the with the Olympians, the study with the the those who win gold, silver, and bronze, and I don't know if you've seen it, but the greatest incidences of depression and suicide come from the silvers because they didn't they were they were just shy of being funds.
I've written pilots that have been so personal to me and have been like I put my blood, sweat and tears in them, and when they don't move forward, I'm like, oh my god, I'm never gonna what's the point, what's the point?
Oh my gosh. And the sadness, I mean, I literally go boneless on the floor. I had what happened maybe a year and a half ago, and it's the trailers are playing now and Camilla, how many times have I sent you like screenshots of like, Okay, I'm just gonna feel I'm gonna feel my feelings right now between me and the girl who got it. I'm real happy for her, but I'm all sad for me and all the things, right, And that's the thing. Also, it's like you want to recognize that you you were competitive, you.
Just didn't get it. You just didn't get it, because there's sometimes if you're like, well, I'm I lost, therefore I'm a loser. Therefore I'm not going to do this again. I'm not doing this again, Like you definitely won't get another opportunity if you don't do it again.
Yeah, right, Like you're dancing too, because I like this failure. Fridays is when you're scrolling right now, your own people are only posting the gold medal moments, right, and it's actually getting kind of boring.
Like in movies, you're rooting.
For Rocky, right, Like Rocky isn't isn't like at the top of his game, He's is How boring is that story you're rooting for? Like the growth of being a rock bottom and working your way up. I think it's so cool to I like the failure Fridays. I think that Jess and I have gotten. One of the things we've enjoyed about podcasting actually and doing this is that we've ended up sharing so much of our shit. Yeah, and it's been really therapeutic.
But listen, what you're doing.
You're creating something that's a conversation that allows for that to be part of it, so something successful can come out of the conversation around something.
Not so successful. It was very hard for me to do.
I'll be honest with you, Like many actors and certainly at my age, I'm very reluctant to let people think that I'm flawed. I mean, obviously we all are. What I'm saying, Like, I don't want people to see I wear spanks twenty four seven, Like I don't want to let my spanks out and let people see. And I had. I did one failure Friday where I was like challenging myself to do five pull ups and I didn't make it, and I showed it on camera, and it's really sad
and hilarious but really pathetic. But you know what, it's only motivating me to try to just get stronger and eventually I'll be.
Able to pull up up it.
I can do some I can do. I can do underhand hin ups, a lot of them, but the overhands hard.
Are you kidding? It's very hard? But you could start them with the little assist thing, the little rubber bands.
If you get them that, you know what I gotta I gotta start doing that.
Because, by the way, there's another lesson. Sometimes you just need.
Help, yes, yes, advocate.
Sometimes you can do the thing. You just need some help.
The thing.
You just need to ask for help.
And it's not embarrassing to ask for help. It's not gosh, no, my gosh.
I asked for help all the time my mother. I don't know how this is possible going. I actually don't have it on films, so I might need to have it on film. My mother can do a five minute plank?
What what?
Yeah?
No assist?
No assist. Evidently no assist.
Oh that's incredible. Yeah, he course eel.
I've gone back to the gym in the past, I probably about two and a half months ago, with like real regularity. I'm holding myself accountable, and my goal is I want to do a five minute plank. And I'm just going to tell you right now, I haven't been out for the past two and a half months, and I'm I'm only a minute and a half.
Yeah, but a minute and a half.
You only have three and a half to go, exactly.
You started with five to go three and a half.
And it's been like, it's been humbling, it's been all the things we're talking about. And obviously it's a silly example, but it's just, you know, the things that make you stronger but also remind you that you have room to grow and and a weakness that needs to be developed, and also inspiration and you have help and all the things. I love talking you.
I miss having you, and I like to tell your.
Mom that I say hello. I'm not going to get into it, but your mother was incredibly incredibly helpful to me. I don't I don't you know what. I can't talk about it because I don't want to get choked.
Up, but you'll start crying.
We had we had a particularly rough period with our You know, I'm the parents of teenagers now. They don't tell you what to expect when when you're expecting, is that eventually those babies are going to become teenagers. Don't listen to this.
Oh God, I know I'm listening so intently.
Dan, I'm like, tell me.
Do we had some challenges in the teenage years and and and you know, I've got we're two dads and navigating our daughter through those things. And your mom was incredibly helpful to me. So please just tell her I say hello, and I hold that very close to my heart. We love to talk about the unspeakable, which is.
Oh, we've talked about it. I know where you're going.
Anatomy of a lie.
Yeah, oh gosh, yes we can. We can out to just.
Tell you something I'm coming to you with. Like when I met my husband thirty years ago. He was taking care of a woman who was dying of cancer, who had lost all of her hair, and five of us came around, six of us galvanized around her for an entire year and took her to chemo and bought her everything and paid her rent and bathed her and I mean horrible things that we did.
And it was all a lie. Good night, everybody.
It was all I There's more than one person who would do that one.
This is my point, is I met I met you know obviously, when I came back to the writer. When I came back to the writer's room of Grace to visit all my buddies in the year that I she started on Grays the year after I left, maybe even.
My slot went to her.
And then I went into that right into that writer's room to say hi to Tia and the whole gang. And I met her and she was wearing a scarf on her head, and she obviously had lost had lost her hair, and she really she did a number. And I was riveted by that documentary. Obviously I have a connection you met her.
Was there any part of you that was like, she's a little she's a little odd.
No, well, yes, yeah, she was a little odd.
But never did you ever not believe? Did you?
I mean, that's what I was saying when we talked about it. I said, there was never a moment where I would have thought to say, it's.
A perfect crime. People asked us that all the time, like how did you guys all fall for it? I'm like, fall for it? When will you ever when someone tells you that they have been diagnosed with cancer, would you ever say to them prove it? Yeah?
I was a person if you make someone if you say that to someone.
Dan, did you find out did you find out the news that it was not true from the article or because of whispers.
I'm very good friends with Christa and a lot of the gang, the Old og Original Gray's Anatomy folk, so I think I heard it from them first, but it was it was around the time that the article was bubbling up, so I didn't hear it early. I heard it around the same time.
And you watched the documentary, and.
I watched the documentary, and you.
Watch all three parts.
I sure did, and I have to tell you, I'm it's so it's so much more disturbing than what we experienced because it goes so far beyond that the illness, like lying about the illness is like a fraction of what the larger story is. And it's extremely upsetting. Yeah, I and I and I to you, who had a very strong relationship, And I can only imagine, and I just know what. All I know is I can imagine because I experienced it also with somebody else.
That's insane that there's somebody else I did. We have talked about this a little on the pop before, but I said to Jess, it felt I went into the first episode.
Not knowing what it was like. It came out and I was like, nobody had talked.
To me about it, and I was like with my husband, I just watch the first one and it was like watching myself in a dateline episode. I had no idea how much I would be in it, and it was so jarring that I have not watched beyond. But it is interesting always to talk to other people. It's you know, it's not many of us that have were part of this insane story.
I have compassion for those with mental illness.
This particular one takes down so many people that I have a very hard time like drumming up the compassion only because I experienced it and I feel like nine months of my life my compassion for another individual was was squandered. But that said, much like Munchausen, where you are making yourself sick, actually making yourself sick in order to get cared for, the lying about events in your life, the lying about drama and or illness.
In order to bring people towards.
You, is a phenomenon that is far more common and what we think, and it's very upsetting.
You're talking and I was just reminded of something that I can't believe. I didn't talk about when we were
talking about liars maybe, I don't know. Six or seven years ago, Christopher got a message through some platform when he was honest about a young woman who was dealing with a disease that was going to that she was going to die, she was going to die soon, and her favorite show was Graise and she just wanted to talk to me, and so we got her number and I called her and I was on the phone with her for about forty five minutes because it wasn't just illness,
but there had also been there had been abuse, and there had been and forty five minutes of listening to her and listening to her, and then we went to get off the phone, and she was saying that she was meant to die any day like this was she was in hospice and it was happening, and she said, you know, if i'm here tomorrow, would you be able to talk to me one more time? And I said absolutely. So the next day I get messaged I'm still here, can you talk? I call her, We talk, and I
don't know what it was. At minute thirty two that just was like something, there's just something off, like I didn't know what it was, but it's just something that was off. And I ended it just like I had the day before, like I'm sending so much love and I'm so glad that I was able to be here for you. And I hung up and I called the person that in my life helps check on these kinds of things, and I said, I just have a feeling
that this something's not right. I'm going to give you the phone number, and I'm going to give you all the documentation of how this came to me and everything else. Full blown lie now.
But guess what she got to talk to jess A Capshaw.
Yeah, so bonkers, Dan, How did you find out that you're the person you were taking care of?
How did you find out that that was not true?
Not to plug something again, but I'm gonna plug something. Yeah. My book Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight? Is a story of how Don and I became parents. But chapter two, if you just listen to one chapter in the whole audiobook, chapter two, it tells you, tells you No, I'm not telling you to do that, because I'm going to tell you right now. But the chapter two tells the entire story of how I met my husband and the circumstances of meeting this person and how we to,
you know, and how it all played out. But in a nutshell, it's one of those things where as I was saying before, you never really want to check, because what kind of person would you be? The very things that don't feel right to you, you just swallow and you think, I guess this is what it's like to be with someone who has very little time left and as annoying as there be. And I mean, there were elements of this woman's life that were like, she's asking so much.
There's not one moment where.
She's ever like, guys, you go out, go to the movies, don't worry about me, Just have a good night out. I'll be fine. I'll see you tomorrow. Like it was never that, which I don't know, knock on wood, I've never had.
An illness like that.
But I know that I'm I know that I would want those around me who were spending time caring for me, who also I would love them enough. So there was an element about her that just bugged everybody. So six of us went to go see Manhattan Murder Mystery, which is all about people like it's like only merged in the building. Really the inspiration behind it, But it's all about this couple who live next door and they sort of uncover a mystery domestically in their own home. They're
not detectives. And we went to a restaurant afterwards, and I don't know how it happened, but we started talking and comparing notes about our this person's nurse that all of us have clearly met, and they're like, no, no, I never met her nurse. Well, you're paying her. How did you pay Tanya if you never met her. It's like I thought you were paying Tanya. So we started to compare notes on a bunch of things that didn't make sense. She had lost her sight in her right eye, but
she was always wiping both sides of her glasses. I don't know why I had to demonstrate that, and so we started to compare notes and then we were like, guys, this is horrible, but let's just like tonight, let's just do a little bit of like you call her mom and you find out whether she ever really played the violin, because she lied about about being a virtuoso violinist. That's
the other thing. They all have sort of delusions of grandeur, which is another thing that Elizabeth Finch had like there's this grandiosity that goes along with I mean the balls. It's crazy. But in one day, in a matter of eight hours, we were able to get confirmation that every single thing would been told was not true. And we confronted her and said, you can never you know, we can never speak to you again, and we put her
in jail. She went to jail, huh for two months because we made a case of all the money that we had paid to her, and she had extorted that money based on a fabrication. And there's there's a law depending on the city you're in, Like we were able to file charges in Hollywood, but we couldn't in Beverly Hills. So we filed charges that she had that we were the victims of fraud.
Yeah, oh my god, I have the cry.
This is give me he gbs that there are so.
Many you think it's just one person that's like this, and the fact that there's three stories happening.
It's just it's crazy and anyway, there's there's more to it than all that, but I'll spare it.
We should have had you on with a liar episode, Dan.
I know.
The deep line as they tell well.
There is a Christmas movie to lift our spirits.
There's a Christmas movie Lindsey lohand Kristin Shanna with Tim Meadows Ian Harding, Netflix, November twenty seventh. Really fun.
Oh my gosh, And we need to make Christmas movie to love. I'm such a nerd in our family. We print the holiday movie list and we laminate it and we put it on the coffee table.
By the family too, so we never are We're never.
Without an inspiration or idea of what to watch.
Well, this one's really unique.
It's not like your cookie cutter rom com, which is one thing I love about it.
I know, you know what, that's the most fun too. But they actually weirdly become like they become a new normal, and they'll become a classic. My eight year old, by the way, decorated her room for Christmas before Halloween, so we're really in the spirit.
Oh my god, I can't wait. Dan, this is like right up my alley. I love it so much. I live for all these movies. I cannot wait to watch.
Well, Dan, we love you.
Please come on again, Sue.
Whenever you ask you. First of all, you guys are stunning. You both look so beautiful.
We're on zoom and I know you're in your homes and whatever, but you both look so amazing.
I can't wait to see you in person.
Well, I don't have any of these awards that you have behind me, but.
I know, I know, I know, don't even talk about the award.
This is my zoom room.
But here that's talking about That's that's no I would have.
By the way, I'd have it even closer. Dan, they're too far away.
Little in fact, do you know that I haven't Emmy for what?
I'm not surprised.
Who did you steal it from?
The capsule?
Face was just like, I'm surprise.
Tell us, jess Jessica, what do you have a Emmy for?
I'm gonna surprise you even put it in the background of my saday. I'm just going to tell you I haven't Emmy and I'll tell you another episode for what.
I'm going to google.
I'm you guys check.
We will by Dan and make a lab coat please for stat Okay, Dan, Bye, sending you all the love.
Bye.
Wow.
He had a juicy story at the end.
We couldn't let it stop and he knows Finchy.
Oh, I know, well, we just we love Dan and we love a Christmas movie and it's he's part of the family forever. And I didn't know he knew your mommy too.
Well, she's another one. Just you don't know your mom, I know. Yeah, where are we gonna find her? If I had a dollar for every time someone came up to me and said, your mom did this, your mom did that, And I'm always it always makes me so so so proud. Yeah, of course it's been. It's been a delight to be with you and Dan. I'm not gonna watch that holiday movie.
Yeah, And truly, I am such a Lindsay Lowan fan, our little Syncred.
I'm rooting for Lindsay.
She doesn't even need rooting for her. She's already doing I know. No, she's back, she's back. I'm gonna go watch our little Secret and I'll see you later.
Okay, let's call it the end of the episode.