Oh, friends, We've got a big announcement.
This is so exciting.
I feel like we've gone too long without really dishing any hot goss and I yeah, like we owe it to the listeners today to just break them off a juicy piece of goss.
I love it served piping hot.
He wants to be the one to open this gift.
Go on, Sophia, I see your excited smile.
I was about to be like, we all look so excited about it. Guys, really, not only has it been too long since we had, as Rob said, hot goss for you, but we feel like it's been too long since we've all been on stage with you.
So we've made some very exciting plans, and we hope that you'll all make those plans with us. We're going to be in Wilmington at Trick.
And we will be performing a three person production of The Emperor's New Clothes. It'll be four hours of very confusing acting. Now what we'd be doing there. We will be a recording our finale episode live with all of you.
Guys.
It makes me emotional.
You said finale in my heart like broke.
That's the bitter part.
The sweet part is that we get to share it with all the fans.
Yeah, that's true, That's true.
That's what makes it so special.
We love you, guys, We love all the support that you've brought to us over the years, not just for Drama Queens, but Winter Hill in general. I mean, you've been with us on this ride for so long, so we really want to celebrate the end of this part of Drama Queens with you, and we just hope that you'll that you'll come out. So we've had some more details here.
Yes, we will be there. Thanks to our friends who organize the most wonderful conventions that let us all come home. We will be doing a live show at the next convention on Saturday, November first. It'll be at seven pm, and as Joy mentioned, we're doing this at trick Feels correct.
Listen and it starts at seven. Who knows when it's good end Because all three of us love to talk.
We can get we can get it, we can get a little along with it, you know what I mean. And it's going to be fun and none of us want this to end, so maybe we just pull an all nighter. I don't know, is what.
I'm lock in.
I'll lock in, Oh my God, Yes, so fun. And it's exciting too, because getting to do this on a convention weekend means we get to be together. It means so many of our other castmates will be there. It means so many of you are already coming to Wilmington. So if you're on the fence, get off it and book a ticket and come and join us.
Get off your fence already, Get off that fence.
Here's where you're gonna get your tickets.
It's ot H merch dot com slash Events o t H Merch m e r c H dot com slash Events.
There's all sorts of tickets and packages and things, and yeah, maybe it turns into a lock in.
Are you a fancy listener?
Guess what?
There are VIP packages just for you.
Rob, you don't say, oh I do. So that's the finale.
It's just using.
Fun energy we're gonna be bringing to Wilmington.
What if we whispered the entire finale, if we just did.
This we did, we say, everyone get your snacks out now, because we don't want any crinkling of paper.
It's lulla by time. Yes, guys, we don't know what's gonna happen, but we know it's gonna be great.
It's gonna be great.
Get your tickets now, all right, SOF and I are going to go into this episode. Rob's on set. He's gonna run back out. We love you, We're gonna miss see you on this one. But well, thanks for talking yea.
I love you guys. By good luck out there. Okay, let's do it.
First of all, you don't know me.
We all about that high school drama, Girl Drama, Girl, all about them.
High school queens. We'll take you for a ride and our comic girl.
Shared for the right teams Drama, Queens Girl.
Fashion, which your tough girl, you could sit with us, Girl Drama, Queens Drama, queise Drama, Queens Drama, Drawn the Queens Drama Queens.
Hi. Everyone, we're.
Season finale, Yes, yes, season season We're not there yet. I am starting to like get that feeling though, that I had at the end of production where I'm like, no, I'm not ready.
I know, I know this was This was emotional for me to watch and also strange because I knew it. I know it's not the end. But as a viewer back then, like and as an actor on the show, we didn't.
Know, we didn't know thought that this was going to be it. We should also probably mention it's not that we're not leaving any room for Rob to talk.
He's not here today.
He is filming a movie at the moment. We're very excited for him, but it also feels really weird to not have him to talk about the episode with because it is the season finale.
I know, and he had so much great stuff in this season. Well, he'll just have to wag in on the next one at the beginning of season nine. But for now, we've got episode twenty two, This is My House, This is My Home, which aired in May twenty eleven.
The synopsis reads, as Brooke and Haley prepare to reopen Karen's cafe, Oh my god, it makes me so emotional. Mayvan and Clay hit the road looking for new prospective clients. Meanwhile, Chase leaves for the Air Force, leaving a disappointed Alex and Chuck behind, and Mouth and Millicent begin their new morning show together.
I loved this morning show, love it so much, so so much.
It's the best.
I'm so it was such a great idea that I wish they had come up with it sooner. Because I feel like we could have done so much an entire I mean, they could have done a spin off, to be honest, there was just so much material that could have been done. But I love the two of them the Treill Morning Show. We've been waiting so eight years for this to happen.
Yes, and they're just so good together. And I think the way that we've seen them growing as a couple but also as these unlikely business partners in a way through the end of this season and that gorgeous crescendo moment where she turns the mic over to him at the end of the last episode and everyone obviously sobbed and on the fly.
He just has these perfectly poetic, such beautiful things to say, and he pulled it off that it didn't feel scripted or planned, just flowed from who Marvin is.
I loved it.
It felt so nice. It was such a highlight moment for me of the episode, you know, watching Lee and Lisa together and it does they just feel like they're in this perfect spot. I want this morning show in real life.
Yes, Yes, And it feels you know you said this in the previous podcast, that all of our characters feel settled now, And I see that with Mouth and Milly, that they brought us to that point where finally, after everything they've been through individually and together, they're finally just settled in with each other. That when she gets this opportunity to do a job somewhere else, it's almost not even surprising that she comes back. She's just like, you know, no,
you're my person. This is where I want to be. When am I climbing a ladder that I never even tried to be on in the first place?
Like what for what?
I just want to be with you? And that's the beauty of what life is about. And so much of what our show is about is appreciating what you have in your own backyard. And we're living in a modern culture, especially in America, where we're just trying to climb ladders all the time, and at some point it's like, can we just enjoy what we have? Like what's wrong with that? Can that just be meaningful enough?
Yeah? So, like where you live, be with your people, you know, And it's really nice too. I'm enjoying that. We are starting to see Jamie step into his young boyhood in a way that feels reminiscent of the stories when we first met our characters Hayley and Lucas and Peyton and Nathan and Brooke, and they would talk about growing up in Tree Hill. They would talk about building igloos at eight and you know, playing basketball with the
other kids and all of these things. We're seeing Jamie enter into that, you know, seven year old range and he's doing the things his parents did when when they were little, and it's really it's a it's a full circle.
Is he only seven? Gosh? I feel like he seems like he's.
Eleven, like ten or eleven? Now did they say he was seven? Oh my gosh, he seems so much older to me.
I don't.
I just remember the drama of liking somebody at that age. Yeah, like that it made it feel like ten or eleven, I don't think. Yeah. Because also Nathan lets him go for a walk by himself in the neighborhood.
So he might be approaching ten. So yeah, really the ages that you've heard us tell stories about each other, and I just I don't know, it's so sweet seeing him in that space and also using his voiceover more and more ever since the Baseball episode opening on him talking about being raised in a magic time by musicians in a web of magic. Like it's just it's every bit of the nostalgia that we need after eight seasons.
Yeah, yeah, they really brought it, brought it full circle.
Brook's also grown a lot.
I feel like, just in between these last two episodes, I mean, it was Puerto Rico and then the next thing we know, she's seven months pregnant.
Is that right?
So that was the really interesting thing about this episode is that we start moving through the pregnancy, and after every commercial break we skip, So it's you see two months on the wall, and then they trace three, and then you see four, and then they're tracing five. And so we used this episode thinking it would be the series finale to cover the ten months of her pregnancy, so you see almost the whole year go by in
the episode. Yeah, which is why in the beginning she's like, I think I'm showing and he's like, you're skinny, and she's made. And then later later he says, you know, when he's tracing the five month belly, he goes, look how bad you are.
It's so sweet.
I really love I love watching Broke and Julian too. They've gotten to a point where they're settled and where they even without the pregnancy, they would have been okay, and so it just feels like a bonus.
Yeah.
Do you remember how you had to wear a big pregnancy belly. I guess you had to wear lots of different paths in that were they uncomfortable.
It was interesting trying to figure it out, you know, how to tell the story of a pregnancy in one episode, let alone a pregnancy with twins. Yeah, so we basically had raw of all the different sized bumps. And then I remember even when we did the scene where I think I'm showing and I'm like, look, I chugged too, like two or three bottles of water to just to get my bladder, and then like we're trying to shoot the scene and I'm desperate. I desperately had to pee.
Oh no, you know, but.
It didn't make sense to be like are you showing? Are you not? Did you eat a burrito? Like you wouldn't do a fake belly for that, but alone a prosthetic one with me lifting up my shirt. So that
was a lot of water. And then I remember they started putting me in padded bras and then we started to go up in the belly size, and then the twin bellies are really big and they sort of sit differently, so then I would then I would start when I was doing those scenes, like keeping bowls of snacks on fake belly and using it as like a little table for my cheese. It's on my pret sauce, which was great.
It's great, like, oh, this is kind of cool. This is like one of the only perks I think the girls get.
Yeah, you only had to wear those pads, like, uh, we had one it was one offs and it was one episode, and there was multiple at different times. Oh man, when Haley was pregnant with Jamie, I had to be in that stink and pregnancy belly for so many episodes.
It's hot. It was hot for me.
That's what people don't realize. They're made of a really dense foam and like a pillow, they're but worse like dense squishy, yeah, mattress poper foam. Yes, kind of like that, and they're hot. And then when we did the scene where we're doing the ultrasound and we discover its twins, we had to do the prosthetic right, and so then it all gets glued to your belly and it's just oh, you're just covered in like plastic and glue and stick,
and oh it was terrible. It was disgusting, but so cute in the episode.
Yes it worked, it was great. But speaking of the doctor or you know, finding out being in the hospital, finding out the doctor who helps you, it is this same doctor that was like helping Nathan with his back. I know, Goes, I've only been doing.
This for thirty five years, and I'm like, I thought you were an orthopedic specialist.
What, yeah, guess not. That was That was a really funny fumble. I'm so surprised that nobody. Nobody got that.
Yeah, I was a little bit when he came on screen. I went, oh, interesting, interesting, likely right, all.
Of this stuff in Karen's Cafe was great. And I remember I think I was actually still of aired in May. I had either just had Maria or I was still pregnant, because I think I was still pregnant in the Puerto Rico episode, which is why I couldn't go.
Well Puerto Rico at the end of the season, remember, which was when that was the whole thing. We you left. We basically shot everything in eight twenty and then in the finale that you weren't in. And then we went to Puerto Rico at the very end of the season, at the end of April. It was the last thing we shot was Puerto Rico, and then everybody went home.
I don't know, I looked still pregnant, but also when you actually have a baby, you still look pregnant for a good couple of months after.
Yeah, And that was also one of the really surreal things, which always is obviously about when an actor has to play a pregnancy but obviously isn't pregnant. It was very surreal to just be like adding the belly and the boobs to brook but you know, I wasn't pregnant. I wasn't gaining weight in you know, my arms and my face and my lips and all the day it happened
to women and you had just had a baby. And I remember there would be days where we'd be on set together and just be like, this is so ridiculous.
Like this is real, realistic.
Well, look, there are women in the world who managed to carry their babies like basketballs and they drop them and their bodies kind of bounce back. I mean, that's God bless them. I don't think that's the majority, but it happens, so Brooke gets to be one of those people.
Well blessed for her.
I don't think those are, but yeah, I remember.
I think I was still pregnant in Puerto rican when you guys went to Puerto Rico. But yeah, it was so nice to see and I was so grateful on set that they were keeping me in one location, but to see Karen's Cafe coming back, and I wish we had been able to get Moira back for the last episode in some way, just to sort of give us her Karen's Cafe blessing. I did feel like we missed that, especially since we got Dan. But I was so happy to see us go back to Karen's Cafe revital like that.
That felt as much as we had grown to love close Over Bros. To see that that's going to have a new iteration in some other way and that Karen's Cafe gets to be alive again made me happy.
You have you been there in town recently to the spot?
Yeah, last time I was in Wilmington, we drove by. It's like a it's an outdoor store.
Now.
Yeah, I think it's like a sports kind of like an ri sports I know makes me sense, though I really wish it was still Karen's.
I do too, But it was really sweet I think for us to have that, especially because there's been so much focus, you know on will Brook get to start a family, Haley and Nathan having just had another baby, this project for us as friends with our kids and knowing that you know, they'll get to play on that roof, just like I talked about and all these things. It it feels like a homecoming and a next chapter at the same time. And knowing that we thought this would
be the series finale. I just think it's exactly the right decision.
Yeah, would you do that with your friend? Like what would you want to open? Is there a business you'd want to open with your friends? If you got to a place where you're like, you know what, I'm settling here.
This is it.
I want to open up this thing, and like your friends get to come work there and hang with their kids, and what would you want to do.
So one of my best friends and I talk about this all the time. We really want to open like a gorgeous sandwich shop with great coffee that's also an antique store.
Yes, this is like my dream. I wanted Anthropology to have a coffee shop in it all the time.
They never do. But this is better because there's food.
We want to do, like a great long meal lunch spot where every every gorgeous thing in the restaurant is also for sale, so we can rotate things through all the time.
And is that ABC in New York? Have you been to the ABC?
There's like, yeah, ABC has their furniture store and then their.
Kitchen, but they're separate. I don't know which.
Came first, but yeah, they are separate. I mean because one had to have a you know, a kitchen in it.
Yeah, but it's great.
I love it.
I love that spot that there's two restaurants now it's they cover an entire block.
I think.
So now you can go to one one on the other side on one side, and one on the other side, and then they've got that whole store you can shop in.
But I like this idea. Where would you do it?
I mean, we'd probably do it here.
We do it in New York, Yeah, in the city, or a little like place outside of the city somewhere.
I mean, you know, my favorite part of Brooklyn has been on my vision board forever. So if eventually that becomes possible, that would be a dream. Yeah, and then we'd be you know, she and I would be neighbors anyway, which would be so fun. But I don't know, you know, it also feels like the sort of thing that would potentially, you know, depending on the neighborhood and the walkability, do really well in la It could be a vibe in Chicago. I don't know.
It makes me think of Lily's Market, the Little Market member downtown. It was, yeah, yes, she used to have back when we were renting videos at Blockbuster. Still she had a video rental wall and a clothing rack, and a cheese refrigerator and wine local wines, and it was just all these random things and I loved that place. I'm so sad that they closed it.
But she was this.
Young, she was probably in her mid twenties and she had opened up this store. It did really well for a while. It was downtown, right on the water in Wilmington, the little market. Her name was Lily, Lily.
I loved that.
That's been a little fantasy of mine one day to just do something like that.
I just think it's so cool. My girlfriend Lauren did something similar in Chicago. She has this great shop called Rider and it's vintage furniture, like incredible vintage furniture, art apothecary, Candle's jewelry, Knew, like every kind of cool thing you could want she has in one store. And she's an interior designer.
Oh my gosh, I'm gonna be in Chicago next weekend.
Oh my god, I'll say, Oh, it's the best.
Yeah.
Yeah, And we we did my apartment there together, and then we were literally planning on launching design services as a duo, and then COVID hit and like everything shifted and she wound up moving to France for two years and like, but it was this moment in time. We were about to do an apartment together in one of the Emes buildings there. We were so excited and then you know, the world had other plans. Yeah, but it's just still something I think I have an itch for.
I would show up for your shop, whatever it is. I would love to see whenever he carried. That would be really fun.
I would love it.
Okay, we have to talk about speaking of Karen's Cafe Monomena.
What was the deal?
What in the world?
Why I remember us all being so confused, even James, and credit to him, he committed so hard to that he learned it. He was like a good sport about it. But it was so bizarre. It felt like knowing everything that we know, it felt to me like some sort of weird retaliation against him for something who knows what, but by the showrunner that like just whatever, for whatever reason, and James got on his bad side for a minute and just decided to write this ridiculous scene.
Like I don't know.
I just could not wrap my brain around why in the world this happened me neither.
It felt really strange. It was it was it felt like another toaster strude al moment, yes where I was like, why keep wanting us to do this stuff? It's like the high five, the toaster pastry, the monomena. I'm like, what is this?
I don't know.
It was so strange, and it wasn't just like fifteen seconds of it. It was the entire song. I just remember all of us being so confused. Even on the day we were shooting. We were there on set and James is doing it and I was like, what what I think? He was just like, I don't know, let's just get it over with like fine.
I just yeah, I just don't get it. And it's weird, the sort of back and forth, you know, the stuff that you can feel there's weird energy underneath, and then the stuff that feels so pure, you know, as we're watching Brooke go through this pregnancy and her and Julian are so happy, and then the reviews come in for his movie, Oh that was so sweet, and they're so beautiful.
There's such beautiful moments in the last episode. In this episode, the writing really is phenomenal, and I'm just like, how does how does this all exist in the same episode? What's happening?
And of all the things that they had, all the material they had, like I would have taken two minutes of Mouth and Millie hands down over Nathan doing monomena, Like we already know he's a great dad.
We have no need.
It's not furthering the story anymore. It's not getting us anywhere. I just don't know why it was written.
It would have been just as easy to have him up on that stage with Lydia in that little baby born taking the mic and being like are you going to sing like your mom? Are you going to be a singer like your mom.
Yeah, and you watched it shot yeah, yeah, two.
Seconds a durable move on.
Maybe it was like one of those things like the doggying the Heart where it's so ridiculous that the hope was that it would get on the soup exactly, that it would get on the soup, that it would get like a little publicity for being so ridiculous. But at least then eyeballs. Then the name of the show is out there. I don't know.
I don't know.
I wish James was here, but he would still be classy about it even if he.
Was here, so he totally would be like, oh, it was fine.
Yeah, next, let's talk about something else.
Yeah.
I love that toad the Wet Sprocket song that they let me sing.
But why do they let me play guitar?
I am not a guitar player, Like I play enough to just sort of, you know, get across an idea something, But then you hire in real people. I have no I I'm watching that, like, why why did they let me actually play guitar? It's so bad? Why didn't they just bring.
Somebody else in? It was so mad?
But it was fun to sing that because I did love that song. I loved that song in high school.
I did too. I thought it was so good. It was a nice It did feel like a nice I don't know, throwback in a way. Yeah, and the sort of some of the music being a little older and then something's feeling really fresh. It just again it all, it all really feels like it's coming full circle, which is interesting because then we do thirteen more episodes.
Yeah, it's so strange.
Yeah, But I will say, speaking of the music, I was really glad we were back to Gavin for the theme song you too.
Oh.
I've been skipping the intro for so every weeks because.
I just can't. I can't either, I just can't do it. So it was really nice to have the song that we know and that imprinted on our show back.
It was like taking a deep breath of relief when I heard his voice come on.
Me too, like oh, thank god.
Yeah. And then I also really liked that when we got to Mouth and Millie in the morning and we had had this beautiful moment knowing that Julian's movie you Know is being so well reviewed. It's it all feels like this kind of ground swell of excitement and then it cuts to them and Alex's movie's coming out and they're getting to talk about it on the air, and then Janna's song is under it. Yeah, it all was just so great.
Is this a movie we watched him shoot? Or am I? Yeah?
This is his This is his Alex Duprey movie. We saw Sundance, but now it's coming out in theaters.
Oh okay, yeah, yeah, the Alex and Chase of it all. Let's talk about them. Realistic not realistic? Are you sad that he didn't choose Mia or she didn't choose him? I guess, I don't know.
I don't know.
I think I do really think that Jana and Steven are so great together and I just really enjoy watching them. And I think for Mia and Chase to have been together, she might have had to change her life in a way that I don't want her to. I don't want her to give up on touring and all the things, you know, despite how sweet they are together as well, Like there's something about the Alex and Chase that is sticky for a reason, and I think that they're sweet.
Scene I mean, him saying meet me right here a year from today was so lovely.
Yeah, it was. That was really sweet.
I don't know.
I still I still as much as they do have good cam Janna and Stephen are great. I don't like Alex. Oh, I just don't like Alex, right. I don't believe her that she's changed at ever. She's like Dan, she just is constantly. I don't know. This is a character who is who has more often than not looked out for themselves and adjusted their personality and her uh herself to
whatever it is that she actually wants to get. Rather than just maintaining a consistent personality, a consistent character like not character acting character, like a person, your your character within you, she hasn't maintained any consistency in that regard, and I just don't trust her and I don't like her.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everybody.
No, I mean listen, I think I get it, and I guess I'm part of me is like, oh do I am I personalizing that I like Jana, you know, to love Alex maybe a little. I don't know, but I think there's there is there's always we always have an ability to understand characters, you know, on shows. Sometimes I think even better than we understand people because we watch the characters, we watch them try to grow, we watch them fail, we see them in moments we don't see our friends or our family or whatever.
Yeah, that's a great point.
But I also hear, especially because we're watching episode to episode, like you've got a list, You've got a list of Alex's screw ups that you can't get over right there in your brain. And yeah, it's interesting.
Yeah, like if she, if she was remorseful, if we actually got to see some apologies and some real like growth and not just an apology, but actually like making real changes, I feel like maybe I could obviously I would make space, but.
I don't know. I just yeah. Yeah, But you're right that we.
Do watch characters differently than we watch each other because we know it's only for a limited time. You can watch every move, every detail, Yeah, unsupervised, and you know that you're being taught a lesson in some way, you're being told a story, and.
You understand they're shortcomings in ways that we often don't understand people's shortcomings in the world because we don't we don't really get to see people struggle the way we get to see our TV characters struggle.
Yeah, that's true. You're not there in private moments in real life, but a camera can follow a character into a private.
Exactly exactly, So I don't know. It's interesting. On the one hand, Yes, when you list Alex's discretions, I'm like, oh, But then I'm like, but she's trying so hard and she's growing and we're watching it happen, and yeah, it's interesting to kind of have the push and pull the character.
That would be.
So I want to start thinking about that with people in my real life, Like if there was a camera following them into private moments, what would that look like? Because I don't share mine very often. Like I don't often call a friend in a private moment because I don't know why. I don't know, I just don't. It's like I don't want to burden people or I don't want.
To like.
Be an interruption or an annoyance, and I know how neurotic I can be, and so I just want to deal with it on my own. Yeah, but if I had a friend who was in a private moment and reached out to me, I'd be I'm happy to I love that, Like I want to help and participate or just be a listening, ear or whatever. Why is it like so much harder to I don't know, to write out.
I did this the other night with my best girlfriend from junior high in high school. The thing going on said, hey, can you talk? Took us two nights to both have you know, be home across time zones and in the right moments. And we sat on the phone for two hours and she walked me through all these things that she has going on, and I I then obviously we
were just in conversation. I told her a bunch of things, and some of it she was like, wait, I didn't know this and I and it was exactly that realization. She was like, honey, pick up the phone. I'm always here, you know, to listen or whatever. And I just thought, yeah, I I don't know. I always worry that if I have something going on, I'm taking up someone else's time.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I never feel like anyone's taking up my time. It's an honor to be there.
Yeah.
So it is interesting that we it's interesting that we want to love people in ways we don't often let people love us.
Yeah.
And then yeah, absolutely, And then you know, I've got nothing to complain about if I feel like my you know, my friends don't know me as well as I want them to because I'm the one that's preventing that. Like I'm the one that's that's got the wall up, and it's just it's so hard to be it's so hard to be vulnerable. So maybe that's why we love our TV characters because we feel.
Like but also that's what I was just going to say. I think it's interesting when we look back at what rewatching this show has been, like, so much of what we enjoy about it is the way our characters communicate with each.
Other totally totally. I know, it's kind of I want that. I always I always like, I want that so bad, but it's hard.
It's just it's hard.
It's harder in real life, like when it's in a script, you can say something that is yeah, outrageous or offensive or whatever, and the other person is just like they'll just blow back up at you and you have it out and then they you know, you're fine. But in real life, everybody just keeps their mouth shut most of the time. They're like okay, and then they walk away and they're like, well now I know, and then they just never follow up. And never like you. I want
to be challenged. I want to be like engaged with in that way. But I don't know that I do that very often with people either, I will. It depends on how close we are, I guess I think that's part of it. It depends on how close you are with somebody. Maybe I don't know if that's making any sense. Maybe it's a ramble.
No, I mean I think it does, and I especially think I mean, listen, it can all depend right on what context. You know people, and you know how long you've been friends. But it's like, think about all the iterations over the last years we've been through with each other.
Yeah, you know.
And and there's always still a moment after however, many years at a time where you're like, we can still go this deep though, right, like are we going to challenge each other on this thing? Are we gonna? And I don't know, Maybe it's just very human to be a little scared. Yeah, but like you push through it, Yeah you have to, or.
You just won't.
Like there's just no way to give and receive love for real, because there's no actual safety there. You don't know for sure if it's safe because you never actually pushed to find out, but I love that to bring
it full circle. I think the thing that connects me about that with our show is that we in a way, I think we're able to model that for so many and like the having that modeled, even for me as a person, having that model by performing that with other characters in a weird meta sort of way really was helpful and informative, and I think one of the things that made people love our show so much and makes all of these moments in this last episode feel like
such a payoff because everybody's been through all those private moments with us and they feel it too.
I think so too. And you know what it really I'm realizing in real time as we're talking about it, not on camera, but on set, there is an expectation that you won't rock the boat, oh totally. You have to keep it pushing, you have to keep it professional.
So you do learn, especially young and especially when you grew up on those set like ours, where things were changing all the time and no one was really talking about a lot of it, you kind of learn to just show up and be good and you're on eggshells a little about like are we going to acknowledge this, are we not We're not okay, We're just going to
do the work today. And so I actually think being a young actor who works as regularly as we were all working at the time, you can learn to not ever bring anything up.
Yeah, you learn to just process things on your own because it's too risky. You risk it's too risky the tayos or piece of an entire production.
Yep, and it might waste people's time and whatever. So you just keep everything at work for work. But then you don't really learn to talk to each other in the ways that people who don't have to perform on set do. And so I think it's also really interesting
for us. You know, you learn in therapy that you carry all your younger versions of yourself in you, right, So in a really interesting way as adults, we are learning some of the quiet that we learned in real time when we were filming the show, and we're learning it watching how well we could communicate on camera in
the ways we were never encouraged to off camera. And yeah, because on camera, off camera after the show rapped, Yeah, you know, because on camera there's no stakes, there's no real stakes you can play with the emotion of feeling uncertain, but you know for sure, like I'm gonna put this.
This scene away and go home and have a real life how the episode's going to end, right, right, Whereas in real life you don't know.
You don't know anything.
Yeah, so you just have to.
Yeah. I think that's a really fair point. And we learned a lot of that and we've had to we have to. I'm still unlearning that.
I mean me too, But I really think about, like think about the way all of our friendships changed after the show finally wrapped. Yeah, you know, like things got deeper for people after everybody got to like take a
b and then reunite in real life. And so it's interesting to me now it's almost like the third point of the triangle, Like we did it and we learned to be quiet, and we learned to perform above all else, and then we got a break and then we all got to reconnect in real life, and now our real life and our performance we're tying them together and going, oh my god, which is why doing this podcast is kind of like doing therapy for us.
Yes, a thousand percent.
And you know the weird thing is too, that's such a messes with your mind that when you're on a set for that long and doing that performative communication. As you're talking about, we learned how to connect with each other as a sort of surface version of each other because you couldn't go so deep as to rock the boat. So we had to sort of construct these ideas about who each other were and relate to that in order
to keep the peace. And so there was like an element of knowing each other but also not not also the real depth. Yeah, so then it's like getting to know someone that you're supposed to have actually, like, we've known each other for twenty years, but how much of each other have we known for twenty years?
Exactly?
Trying to dive back and figure out, like, what are the pieces here that are missing to fill in the whole picture.
Yeah, you start to be like, oh, there's holes in this puzzle.
Yeah.
And I also think, I mean, you know, we talked in the last episode with Alison about how much she enjoyed reading your book, Like, I don't think it's an accident that you know, off camera, you and I have been able to share so much about recovering from narcissistic relationships. Yeah, because when you learn to keep the piece and not even make space for what pieces might be missing from your puzzle because you got to get through the things you don't know how to turn that off.
Yeah, just become second nature.
Yes, And it's really interesting when you when you look back and you go, oh, yeah, in hindsight, I see all these things, but at the time, I just didn't see them. I literally couldn't be conscious of this because I'm used to not acknowledging this. I'm used to not acknowledging anything in the corner over there that I don't even know that. I don't look in the corner anymore.
Yeah, I'm always moving out of a way. Oh yeah, I don't even know that I'm not looking. You know, it's a whole other level. It's a whole other level. I just it's one of the things that makes me. I'm so grateful for our show. I'm also you know, there are everybody has life experiences where it's packed full of things that you're so grateful for, and then you also realized you've learned so many lessons from because there
were a lot of bad things in it too. But you know, overall, I'm so grateful that we got to have the experience that we did me too.
We also think, you know, and I know we've said this before, but the cool thing about the rewatch and the time we get to spend and I don't just mean us as hosts, I mean all of us, like going to our conventions and doing this podcast together and having all the friends on it all the time. Yeah, it it really does. I don't know, it just it gives you something back. And for me, and I know this is really common. You know, you go through you can go through a hard thing and you kind of
lose certain memories. Like when you've been through a you know, a trauma or whatever, that thing becomes the biggest thing in your rear view mirror in certain ways in your brain. And what I've loved about this journey is that it's kind of right size to that stuff. It's shrunken it down to only take up the amount of space, you know, the least amount of space it should actually less space than it used to, less space than it did at
the time, And it feels like it's increased. It feels like it's blown up the balloons of all our good memories to be bigger. Yeah, and I don't know that we would have had that otherwise.
Yeah, I think so too. I think there's a key in that of learning to appreciate suffering, which is hard because of course, in a perfect world, we don't want to suffer. We don't want anyone else to suffer. It's
terrible to feel it. But when you appreciate what we're able to, what we're able to siphon out of those experiences that feel so difficult at the time, then you can put things in their proper place and you're able to appreciate all of the good things that came out of it, rather than just focused being focused perpetually on I shouldn't have had to go through that, and that was suffering, and I you know, because everybody's going to suffer at some in some capacity.
Well.
And the thing is, to your point, you wouldn't wish it on anyone, including yourself. But if it's happened, being furious that it happened instead of analyzing what you learned from it, it's like you it's like picking your scab off instead of letting it heal. Yeah, And I really think it's the best. The best outcome is when you can say, yeah, I wouldn't have wished this on myself or anyone else. But here's what I learned, here's what we learned.
Here's what we made you know, And you can take the positive memories and those can be the ones that you construct the new reality out of it. Yeah, that's kind of a weird way of saying it, because i'd obviously reality's reality. We're not making our own. But there is something in our bodies about how we relate to
things that we've been through. So if you can reconnect your body to thinking of times when you experience suffering to the positive moments that were in between all those difficult times, then I feel like that's a huge win. That's like a major way that you can win over difficult circumstances.
Totally, totally. Oh and it's just it's all so cool. It's like, I don't think it's an accident that this episode feels like this full circle of essentially the decade of our lives, and then it's making us very reflective in real time. It's like, oh, yeah, it's doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
I think we were feeling a lot of that as actors too, as it came to an end because we weren't sure what was going to happen, and it really did feel like, Okay, this isn't like season four or five, like this is really We're at eight now. I think we might be done. So yeah, it's yeah, listeners. I think that's why the reflection is coming in so much, because this is how we felt the end of it. Like, what do we do with all this? Should we do a quick listener question before we wrap up?
All right? What do we have?
Lauren?
She's saying, why do all the kids have their mother's maiden names as their first names? James, Davis Sawyer? Where did the name Jude come from? Did you guys get to have any input in the kids' names?
Whoa whoa? Whoa? Lauren?
There's so many questions, just one of the time. Please kidding, We're kidding. I don't know why did they I guess it was just a kind of a cute little Tree Hill thing, little Tree Hill trademark.
Yeah, I think because there were so many nicknames with our last names. You know, you were always called Hailey, James and it was P. Sawyer and B. Davis, and it was a way to keep those names in the running. And then I know that Jude was a reference to you know, the famous Beatles song Hey Jude, and because it was adjacent to Julian, So since Davis would have Brooks last name, Jude was almost like a Julian junior.
Yeah that makes sense.
But no, we never got input on the names.
Definitely not No, I was a writer's room only.
Well should we spin a wheel?
That's been a wheel?
Oh?
I wish Rob was here. This is fun. I know this is perfect.
After the last episode all on miss Lauren, who's most likely to send a naughty text to the wrong person?
I mean, clearly it's miss Lauren.
Yeah, by the way, we have our answer.
Yeah, obviously, I don't know for all of us, who's who's clumsy enough to do that. I am neurotic about sending text messages and making sure it's the right person because I've messed up before.
And no, yeah, I don't.
I don't do that. I don't.
Yeah.
I also just don't trust devices, like, yeah, no, that's not.
Happening even Oh, I just mean even like a like an actual text message, not.
Oh I know, but I'm like, you know it says a naughty text. I'm like I was doing that. Does anyone pay attention to the internet, Like, come on, guys, no, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, thank you.
I don't know.
I don't know who would I'm trying to think in real life, but who would actually Probably Paul, one of our.
Producers, just said, obviously nanny Debb.
Oh.
Yes, yeah.
I could see Barbara doing that, like accidentally sending one to one of her one of her girls or something.
Instead of her cute boyfriend boyfriend.
Embarrassing, but you know, her daughters are so cool. They have such a great relationship. They'd be like, uh, wrong number, mom.
They'd be like hot though, yeah, taking tips from mom. I love it.
Well, what's coming up next?
Self?
I can't believe it? Next episode? Season nine, episode one? Know this we've noticed.
All right, friends, We'll see you soon. Thanks for joining us with for all of this so far up through season eight, and we'll see you next time.
See you soon, Hey.
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to.
Leave us a review. You can also follow us on Instagram at drama queens oth.
Or email us at drama Queens at iHeartRadio dot com.
See you next time.
We all about that high school drama Girl, Drama Girl, all about them.
High school queens Forever. We'll take you for a ride at our comic Girl Sharing for the right teams.
Drama queens, my gol up girl fashion
With your tough girl, you could sit with us Girl Drama Queens, Drama Queens, Drama Queens, Drama, Drama Queens, Drama Queens