Welcome to desperately devoted.
Think of us as your favorite neighbors as we chat about life and relationships, all.
While we revisit the iconic show Desperate Housewives together.
I'm Terry Hatcher, I'm Andrea Bowen.
And I'm Emerson Tony.
Hey, guys, Hi, good to see you, Good to see you.
As always happy Thursday. I love our Thursday Bonus episodes. They're my favorite because we just I is it wrong to say, like we just get to be us because like we're also us in the other episode. Now I know anything about this because we're talking about what we really care about.
We're desperately devoted to diving into something that strays maybe a little from the path of the immediate episode a little bit.
We get to do that. I think of it as like our thursdates.
They're like our little You.
Really are the best at the word com I know that that has a word. When you do that. What's it called when you put two words together like.
That hanging fruit? I don't know. I don't think that's just fairly that impressive.
But okay, well we are here still talking about episode eleven. What was it called?
Move on?
I just you were telling her move on, mom, yeah, move along, move along, we only have twelve minutes.
No.
But one of the things that really caught my attention, just because I actually think it was you know, deeply emotional for the character, was when Gabby has to go be a car model in the mall because she's so you know, scraping the bottom of the barrel for trying to find money. And well, first of all, it made me think a lot of things, like has anybody had weird jobs, you know, or like jobs they were maybe not didn't love or were ashamed of. But also, I
think in a bigger way, I don't know. I've been reading this book Let Them by Mel Robbins, as has by the way, the rest of every world. It's only like the top rated book, the top rated podcast, the top rated everything. But for a while I sort of didn't really get it. And I think this is what a lot of people think. They think like let them, Like what, Okay, I'm just supposed to let everybody do
whatever and not care about it. But the follow up to the let them is let me, which is where so you let them do whatever, but then you let me do what I need to do, And it kind of For me, my own version of it is that let me part is feeling like it's giving me the control and the responsibility to react or behave the way I want to, and so you feel less victimized because you feel less like people are doing things to you
and more like you still have control of the situation. Anyway, it's somehow bled out to me with this storyline of like, why do we care so much about what people think about us? Why are we so ashamed, you know, by things we feel judged by others? I don't knowly it actually brought up a lot for me in a deep way. And yeah, so I don't know how about you guys. Well, I mean I am working.
I'm going to start more macro and then I'm going to get more micro into Gaping's storyline and back to maybe jobs that we have felt embarrassment around, but starting on the macro of why do we care so much about what people think about us? I this is something that I am in my twentieth year of life, really
working on being better about going. You know what, it is an illusion that we have control over everyone's perception of us, and a lot of people, some people, friends of friends, people we interact with maybe on a day that's like not our proudest day, they will have a singular experience or no experience, and are perfectly capable of making a judgment about who we may or may not
be that we aren't in control of. And I know I've spent a lot of my life being like, oh God, I just want I want everyone to know, like what my heart actually is and how.
I actually identify.
And recently I've been feeling like, you know what, life is too short for me to be putting energy towards that I know who I am and how I feel about myself when I look in the mirror, and if someone else doesn't share that view of me, it's not in my control and I don't need to internalize it. And I think that that I want to pass that to Gabby, the character in this scene, because our our lives are full of many different stages, and I am definitely someone who you know, working as a creative as
we all are working as a writer. I have a lot of friends who are artists, and sometimes they will say things like, oh, I feel like I was born to be a musician, Like I was like I'm here to like paint this painting like it's my calling, and that always makes me a little bit nervous. Honestly, when people identify their own self worth and individuality with their work and career. I mean, I love being a writer.
I think it is the biggest joy. I'm so grateful that I get to make a living by creating stories and spend my days doing that. But I always say that if tomorrow writing became inaccessible to me, I would be just as happy of a person doing some other job. And I know that I have the tools to find what that may be, and I think it can be a little bit of a slippery slope. I think a lot of Gabby's shame in this instance comes from she clearly identifies as not just.
A model, but a type of model.
That then she's imbuing with all these characteristics about what that says about who she is in the world. And I think that can be dangerous when we identify with our work too much.
I am so guilty of struggling with identity about my work and what it means to be an actor, because I don't really have memories that predate that being a part of my identity. I started so young that it is so in my it feels like it's cellular that I am an actor, I am a performer, you know, and that that is attached to my own self worth, but also how others view me. And so now that I've been in the industry for close to thirty years being a union member, I've really had to work on
separating those two things. That there is me as a person, as a human with a lot more to offer, and then there's me and what I choose to do and the fact that I have chosen a profession that is so unstable as we know, it goes up in waves throughout all the time. You can't be reliant on that as your sole source of confidence, you know, because it's just not sustainable. And over the years, you know, as an adult, transitioning from being a child actor into an
adult actor is a bumpy process. You go through years where people just only see you. I mean, people still see me, and I'm grateful in many ways, but just as Julie Meyer, you know, and so you go through this time period where things lean out and then you're having to think, like do I change careers? You know, sometimes you need to get work to pay bills and things like that, and there's all this shame and embarrassment.
Attached to it.
And so I have been so guilty of picking up different jobs and being worried about like what if someone watched Desperate Housewives or what if someone saw something else I had done and then they go, oh, why is she doing that? You know, which is like there should be none of that, all of that mental load happening in my brain. I should just be like, we all got to work, It's fine. And so, I mean, look,
it's for me. It's still very much a work in progress to separate those two things, like my occupation and who.
I feel like there was a level of where I used to frame it as like I'm going to put on the Terry Hatcher costume, you know, like like her. Do you say that? And I mean that really, I guess that's more. You know, it's like a crazy duality that I really feel like when I'm on a red carpet, when I'm doing an interview, even this podcast whatever, I'm
not full of shit. I mean, you've heard other people, like some of our guests that we've had, you know, like say that like my number one quality, You're not You're not there's no bullshit, like I'm not a faker, you know. But at the same time, the job, the fame, it calls for you to have a front over what might be going on inside. So there is there is
this duality that can feel hard. And I mean, at sixty one, I do feel like my sense of value all that, like the thing that you're saying you're still sort of working on, Andrew, and I totally get it, you know, like where you're saying you went from child actor to adult actor. I went from pretty to not pretty, you know. And and I mean people will say to me, you're still pretty whatever, but it's obviously I'm sixty one. I'm not a a an ingenue that's going to be
a male's lead in a movie, you know. Like like, so, I think I'm still waiting to get that part that allows me to use the experience in the body that I am now, which I'm looking forward to. I'm not shying away from it. I'm not scared of it. I hope it exists, Like I hope I either create it myself by producing it or writing it, or somebody you know, sees it in me and cast me. But it is interesting how you're doing this evolution in front of people.
I'm not in a forward facing profession like being an actor, but I still think growing up with you and seeing that and absorb that, and then also as a writer, you know, there are and some writers do this to varying degrees of success.
And I think having actors as parents kind of.
Media trained me for being good in the room.
But where you do.
You go in and you're pitching an idea, and you are you're yourself, but you're also a heightened version of the costume of Emerson, the smart writer who's intellectual but grounded and relatable and funny and charming and professional but
also your friend. And that's like the encompassing costume and I have had I think I really learned, and I will call it a skill because it is a skill professionally, but I think it's something I'm working on not kicking into in my personal life because it can also be not A good skill is the ability to bifurcate what is going on in Emerson, the internal world of Emerson as a person, and become Emerson the character of Emerson.
You know, I've had like full on dramatic breakups going on and then had to like walk into a big studio room and pitch a movie and turn all of that off.
Well, that was sort of like the first the first couple seasons of Housewives, you know, where I had a lot of dramatic stuff happening in my real life and had to show up on set, which I you know, I think I always did the work, but it's not. It's not as easy as it sounds to have like.
An ass it can be an asset as well, Like it's hard to figure out what things to allow to sort of one, sometimes you can't control it. Two sometimes you try so hard to control it that you lose part of the realness that can come from letting those things just be. You know, and I hear in both of what you're saying, this thing that we all clearly struggle with as human beings, which is like.
How do we show up?
How do we put our Terry Hatcher or Andrea Bowen, our Emerson Tenny costumes on? But also, you know, those costumes are authentic and they're real, and they're ever evolving and growing and breathing things. It's it's such a hard thing. I also feel like this is sort of tangentially related but might be interesting to some, which is that I find, and I wonder how you feel about this, Terry. I find as an actor, the hardest thing to portray, honestly
is embarrassment. I think it is such a hard emotion to accurately drum up because it's so we so are uncomfortable. That's the whole thing is we're uncomfortable when we experience it, and so manufacturing that can be really harder than like something super emotional or you know what I mean.
Do you think do you think Gabby in this scene that we're talking about is embarrassed or do you think she's a shame? Yeah? Or is it different?
Hmm?
Interesting?
I think maybe initially it's the embarrassment, like that's sitting up, but then if you unpack it, if she took time to go back, it's probably shame.
Yeah. Embarrassing is a secondary emotion to shame. Yeah.
Okay, so rapid fire. I mean, I know we're like, these are our little short bonus episodes. What is the most and now that we've unpacked that there's no such thing as an embarrassing job? What is the most embarrassing job you've ever had?
Okay, So I I've been an actor in my whole life, as we know, so most of my jobs have been work related, although I did have a stint where I was helping a friend. This is an embarrassing Okay, I'm just gonna say it's not embarrassing. It's just fascinating and interesting. I did have a friend. I do still have this friend. He's wonderful and I assisted him working at a pet crematory.
Oh so there's a lot.
There that's so embarrassing, Andrea, Now I'm just kidding.
Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. What's the biggest thing you learned from it?
That people? Pet people are wonderfully, wildly colorful. I will tell you that the first past pet that I reunited with their owner, you know, I wanted to be very delicate about it.
I was.
I was going to their home to give them their pet was named Liza Minelli, and so I had to figure out how to tell this person, you know, with a straight face, like I have here.
I have Liza Minnelli for you anyway, My gosh.
So you know, I just learned a little bit more about how colorful pet people are. I am one of them, so I get it. Those are my people.
Yeah, me too. I wouldn't say. I don't know if this is like embarrassing, but I was a waitress early on here in Los Angeles. I was actually also on a soap opera at the same time. I mean, talk about it, well, I'm now I have like other things coming through my head. What I was going to say is one time I was serving a pizza to a table and then I walked away and the manager pulled me over and she's like, I saw your thumb touched the crust of that pizza. Don't ever do that. And
I was like wow, Like she's like with binoculars. Oh, like like, uh, plus, my hands are clean. But okay. So I got like I got shamed by my manager when I was being a waitress for touching a piece of the food. I guess, well I got.
I got shamed by my boss when I was first back out in LA during COVID but we were shooting down in San Clemente and I got asked to drive at like one PM up to Los Angeles to pick up makeup and lighting and then back down to San Clemente. And they were doing all this construction on the freeway and it was like closed down to a single lane.
It took me like three hours to get back from LA because then it was in rush hour, like by the time I'd gotten up there and gotten the stuff, and he's coming back at like four or five o'clock. And I also, because they was so understaffed, had like been on doing all of the lunch orders and things. And I passed the baton to another PA. But I guess things got messed up. And obviously people take their lunches really seriously on low budget projects where everyone's exhausted.
And when I got back, my boss pulled me aside and he was like, I don't know if you're serious about wanting to work in this industry, but I know how long it takes to drive back from LA, and I know that you had to have been doing something else. I was a good PA, and I felt so like there was nothing.
I could do to prove him. She's had his belief about me, and I had to let it go. Yeah, and that is what you have to do. Let them. I'm gonna use Mel Robbins. We're gonna wrap it up with let them, and then I know you.
I got to read that book with the name of episode eleven. Just move on, Just.
Move on, everybody, move on, because it's almost the weekend, all right, Well, we'll hopefully see you next week.