I am all in again. Oh, let's just do I Am all in again with Scott Patterson and iHeartRadio Podcast. Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I Am all in Podcast, one of them productions. iHeartRadio, iHeart Media, iHeart podcasts. We are doing a one on one interview with a recap of season one, episode ten with none other than Sarah Wayne Colli's is this is this the cret CREC? Did I get it?
Nailed it? Nailed it.
I nailed it so happy I didn't even practice. Sarah is and you all know her. She's known for starring as Sarah Tankredi on on Fox's Prison Break, Grimes on AMC's The Walking Dead. You may have heard of these shows, and more recently, as Bertie Nicoletti in ABC's The Company You Keep. She's the creator and voice behind sci fi podcast Aftershock and co host with prison Breaking with Paul Adelstein,
a rewatch podcast for prison Break. With season two of prison Breaking on the way, Sarah continues to connect with audiences to orse work both on and off the screen. She has appeared as an extra in this episode of Gilmore Girls. Believe It or Not. We had the privilege of working with her it's an extra and in a very first what was not what's not true?
I've never been on Gilmour Girls.
You're not an extra in no, no, this is not you. It since the very first hospital scene you can be seen crossing cross the scene.
I've I've never done background work unless like I was shooting something else on the same lot. But no, as far as I.
Know, is that right.
I mean, you're welcome to show me the scene, but like, I've literally never done background work.
There's a you know, people, I even have it on my resume. I don't know how it got there that I did stunt work on a couple of things, and I never did any stunt work.
You know, I had for It took me like five years to get off of my IMDb pro.
It said that I had been in an underwear model.
For a long time because my first job was opposite Travis Fimmel, who was the Calvin Klein underwear model.
Oh was he?
And I think people just but it was like it was like forget. I would get auditions and I was like, Okay, so I think I know what you were expecting. I've got like a degree in women's studies. I'm like I never really took my clothes off it and people take pictures of me. But hey, no judgment to be boo did. It's hard to get those things off of your right off of your resume. By the way, I bet you would have been a terrific stump man. You would have killed it.
I'm sure you know. I'm I really feel like I'm doing that every day anyway.
So sorry to not have been in Gilmore Girls in Killore Girls.
This is not you. I have two pictures of you.
Wait, wait, show me the pictures.
There is a resemblance, is there. Maybe it's not from Gilmore Girls. Maybe I don't know. I don't know you well enough to know your profile with your hair pinned back, but it kind of looks.
Like you, I mean, honestly, Well.
Let's get to the bottom of this.
Well, because this was it was a WB show, right, Yeah, wasn't it?
Yeah? Here it is. Can you see it? Is that not you?
That's not me?
Okay, it's definitely not me, but I can see why somebody might think it was m That is wild.
Wait, well who okay, sorry, listen.
We really want you to be an extra Gilmore gross and the next iteration will you do you please come on and be an extra I am.
I am promising you right now that if you do another see another show of Gilmore Girls, I will cross as a doctor in the background of any scene where it's not appropriate.
That would be great. At least we would be telling a complete lie here. I'm so sorry, We're sorry, we're show.
Off the whole premise of this thing.
I think you're going to be eligible for some wonderful prizes as a result of our faux pas here.
Or possibly residuals. Do you know what, No, let's advise the story that is me and I would be grateful for whatever residual rate.
Background performers probably don't get it.
Prepare yourself to get a check that says one penny. Yeah, and we've all we've all gotten those.
Do you remember that that bar called Residuals on Ventura in Studio City where if you brought in a residual check for under a dollar, they would give you a free beer.
Oh, I heard, I heard about this place. I've never been. I've never been.
I went a couple of times with friends who you know you you do, like get your fifth residual check for like the one episode you did of numbers back in you know, is.
It still there? I don't know, because I could. I could roll in with a lot of checks.
Man, I honestly, I have not been in like ten years.
So sometimes you get the big ones something most of them are medium size, and then you get the tiny ones. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a lot like life.
Yeah it is that all right?
So you weren't so all of these questions are No, they're irrelevant. Now I can't ask you what it was like. You want to make it up? Yeah, pretend like you were an extra, and.
I will say, Okay, So here's where here's where I can hopefully come in with something that feels a little bit like a save. I have so many ties who I'm one degree of separation from, like half the cast of Gilmore Girls. I just directed Jared Padlechi okay and Fire Country. Paul Adelstein that I do the Prison Break Rewatch podcast with was married to Lisa, who Liza Sorry, who played Paris. I played myle event Emilia's sister. You
know what I mean? Like, right, Yeah, hit me with the questions and I'll answer them.
You were an extra on Gilmore Girls? What was it like?
For you, Sarah. You know, I have to say everybody was so nice. I didn't.
I was never treated like an extra.
I was. I was. Really it felt like I was just treated like one of the family.
No, that's how we do it, man, that's how we roll over there.
Did you shoot on the Warner Brothers lot?
Yeah, you were there. I was. I was.
I was. I was on the Warner Brothers lot. It was entirely possible that I was walking to ADR.
And that's snapped a picture and you were walking to ADR in a nurse nurse's uniform.
Well, I did play a doctor on prison Break, so it's possible that. And we did our post on We actually did our post on the Warner Brothers lot, so it's possible that I just kept on the stethoscope and the white coat all the way from where we filmed in Chicago.
All right, Since you were never an extra ever in your entire career, how long had you been in the entertainment industry when you stepped on set as an extra?
When I stepped on set as an.
Extra, how long you've been in it? Yeah?
Well this, let's see, this is the second season of your show, so this would have been what two thousand.
First season?
First season? So what's that?
Oh, it's two thousand, it's two thousand, two thousand. Well, by episode ten it was probably got oh we started shooting. Maybe it would have been earlier one.
Yeah, maybe it would have been earlier one.
Okay, yeah, so I was I got on a plane from.
Grad school in Denver, flew out to Los Angeles.
Who do it? So it would have been officially my first professional television appearance.
When you got the call that you never got, yes, you were going to be an extro on Gilmore Girls, How excited were you?
Thrilled beyond belief. I literally couldn't believe it was happening.
Because it didn't happen. It was hard to believe that it did.
But it was welfare. But it also, I mean, I gotta say, like, in all seriousness, it was a show that almost every woman I know was talking about because it was a show where women sounded like women, right. And in two thousand and one, there were not a lot of women writing for women. There were not a lot of women's showrunners who, if they wrote for women, wouldn't get rewritten by male showrunners. There were not a
lot of shows that routinely passed the Bechdel test. It was, and it wasn't until years later that I started to identify, like I even know what a showrunner was in two thousand and one, right, I've never done anything with theater, but it once I did the math and the tracking and went Amy Sherman, Palladino is doing something that really hadn't been done very much, if at all, which was right women, the way we talk for women, and an honor a very non traditional set of female relationships, which
is like, this is the woman who got pregnant super young at a time where we were just coming out of the era of like only terrible girls get pregnant in high school, you know what I mean? And like, here's a whole show basing like it was a kind of feminist revolution, which was a really exciting thing.
To see and to hear about. So when I got the call to be an extra.
I'm shrilled to be a part of the revolution.
It's what I'm saying, right, right, right, Oh.
Scott, I'm so sorry. I did not know that the whole premise of this interview was based on me having been in your show. I'm so sorry.
But you were on the show you were. Did you learn anything from your Gilmour from the Gilmore set that you still use today.
Yes, I learned that you have to talk very quickly certain kinds of shows that there was a because the same way, like okay, in two thousand and one, I was really in grad school the same way we were
learning the difference between Shakespeare, Shaw and Moliere. There is a difference between Amy's writing and Shanda's writing, which is don't think, talk and all of your thinking happens on the line, and these sort of more attenuated moody like you get a forty two page script and that's an entire episode, as opposed to you get a sixty page script and that shoots in forty two minutes, which is a totally different way of performing. So yeah, I learned a lot from that.
It was like Shakespeare, you just had to learn the lines, yeah, and then open your mouth, the words pour out, the meaning reveals itself. Yeah, that's what it was. That's right, that's what it was like.
And was that a new way of working for you?
No, because I've done Shakespeare before and I know it's really just about and it was similar because it had the same kind of emotional logic, so it was very easy to remember.
Oh cool.
Yeah, because when I first tackled Shakespeare, you know, you're always intimidated. But it's like, wait a minute, this is far easier than I realized it was going to be. And then after a couple of days you're like, wow, I've got almost half of this down now, So it's odd how quickly it comes. And this is the same.
This is the same. And when you trust the writer so much, you trust the writing so much, yeah, you don't have to think about how it could be better or what you know, or there's awkward yeah, minds are awkward sentences. There was never any of that. It was just like, okay, let's get this down, say as fast as you can the rest of you know, it'll move you where it needs to take you, both physically and emotionally.
Because good writing is easy to learn. Yeah, Like I find now having done this for a while, if I read a script four or five times and I can't learn the lines, I'm still going to learn them and do my job. But in the back of my head, I'm like, I think there's something happening in this scene that like, either my character is being asked to say or do something that doesn't quite a line or that you know, like it's yeah, but good writing, good writing, you learn really quickly.
Yeah, that's rue.
What was it like like you'd worked in television before? Obviously?
Yeah?
Did it feel like.
A totally different experience as you were, because you know episode ten by then, you're probably what like about airing? Like you start, you've got the first nine in the can. The show is about to come out or it's just come out. The world is starting to react and go, oh shit, this is something really new.
We knew we had something just because the trade papers were lauding it right, very glowing reviews in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. So we knew we were onto something. We knew it. We all knew it. Anyway, when we first read the pilot to prepare for our auditions, Okay, I didn't think I would have a chance. I thought this is not going to happen, and this is too good because film actors were crossing over into TV at
that point, you know, they just started doing that. And I said, well, they're going to get a bunch of names, and hey, I'll go in and enjoy myself and much to my surprise. I really have never been so shocked in my life. Yeah. I mean I thought I did a good job, but I was, you know, I was nailing auditions all over the place and not getting the offer. And you're always coming in second or third place or
whatever it is. And that's good. Yeah, you know, that's you can build a you build your career and your reputation that way. That's all good stuff. Yeah, for sure, were you aware of the show in two thousand when it came out, you absolutely you saw it and you react and.
No, I mean, that's that's what I'm saying. Like that every woman I know was having this conversation about like they're doing something over there because there again they're just there.
Hadn't been that much.
That felt it felt like it was by women about women for women, and that there'd been a few, but they all kind of felt like one offs to me and gilmore girls came along and it started to feel like this is the sharp end of a spear. There's gonna be more of this because getting over that like black death thing.
Oh right, it's going around.
Everybody's got it's like proto pneumonia.
But for like, even in the beginning of my career.
Being a leading lady very often meant your job is to make sure that the arc of the leading man makes sense. So he's got to get from here to here, and they're gonna plug you into scenes to make sure that he gets there. There may or may not be an internal logic to your character. You may be asked to do some things that do or do not fully track for you. Your job is to figure out how to get them to track, to create whatever internal logic
you need to so that his journey is complete. Gilmore Girls, being a leading lady meant the show it was your arc that made sense, and two concurrent female arcs were playing out that had their own fully articulated logic. And again it wasn't the first time it happened, But I think it also came an interesting point in kind of
you know, our social, political, cultural vibes. You know, the early two thousands, we were at the the beginning of women taking a certain kind of creative and cultural power in a sustainable way, and this show was very much a part of that, which is it's a wild legacy.
Yeah, we witnessed that too. With Yeah, I will admit there was a little bit of a tension between Amy and the studio. And I don't think she was really I think she was listening to ideas, but I think her entire being was about this is my show, this is my voice. No, I will not implement this storyline. No I will not get them together faster. No. And she she, you know, she voraciously defended her show well, and it was quite something to watch.
She must have. I imagined she had to because it was it was so new that the the impulse would be, well, if we make it a little bit more like Friends, or a little bit more like the West Wing, or I mean like Warner Brothers back then had this insane
catalog of wildly successful television. Yes, and I can only imagine that, you know, you put a lot of money into TV, that there are a lot of folks in the check writing offices going if you just kind of do this and sometimes mean, you know, not for nothing. Frank Derbat was the same way with Walking Dead, like he was he was there to.
Make his show and it's hard to do.
Like Amy, he was right, you know, he was right. And then but then, of course, the tricky thing for the people in the check writing offices. Has got to be that sometimes people I'm sure are just as ferocious.
In defense of their vision and they're wrong.
I'm sure there are showrunners who you know, we've never heard of because they stamped their feet and said, I'm not going to make any changes, and the audience was like, yeah, we don't like this very much.
You know, I almost see her and Dan as indie rock stars who don't care about commercial success per se. I think they just always want they wrote their songs. This is how we're not changing them. This is who we are. We have to stay true to who we are, and if you don't like it too bad, then don't come to our shows. And they that's they dug in. But I never really saw that side of them. You know, you don't see an unpleasant side of them. It was always sort of a carnival. When they would show up
on Saturday they were directing an episode. It was always just such an enhanced experience. Not that anybody else was was was terrible or boring. I mean, they had great directors, but I mean when Amy was on set directing an episode, it was a fun eight days. Yeah, I mean it was just filled with stories and laughter. She just brought this energy. She brings this sort she's like a nuclear reactor of comedy. Yeah, she's very she's she's like a
volcano of joy, you know what I mean. It's just a it's it's just all of this positive, high volume laughter and stories and yeah, just great, just great stuff. Really miss her, Yeah.
Well, And I mean what's interesting is to see the way that she's sort of iterated her work since you know, like she's got this ferociously creative, creative impulse. And I what I love about it is that she articulates female power in ways that are not male power, right, Like I have a pet peeve, And anybody who's ever seen me interviewed about anything, we'll probably know this when somebody decides to write a strong woman and she's just a man and a woman's body, right, meaning like, and I'll
be honest, it happened on Walking Dead. Sometimes someone would be like, oh, to fucking kick your ass, and I
was like, you won't though, like you won't. And you know, for anybody who's ever been in a fight, like if you get punched in the face by somebody who's forty pounds heavier than you, you go down and it's over, and so that kind of false, like machismo just seemed so it just seemed like a lie to me, because you're like, well, now the guy you're acting opposite has to act scared of you, and quite frankly, that's dumb, and that puts him in a weird position.
And that ruins his character, and it.
Ruins his character. It makes the whole scene look like a lie. Whereas when female power is humor, is cunning, is intelligence, is shame, is manipulation, is empowerment, is inclusion, is community. When we articulate female power the way women experience power, then all of a sudden, it feels really true. And that's the word that I would use. Actually, when I saw the show is it felt true, not like documentary,
do you know what I mean. I'm not like, oh, I live in a town just like this and we talked just like this, but it the way female power was articulated, felt true and felt much more. And I saw it on the West Wing too, actually, you know what I mean, like another big Warner Brothers show at the time, Like, yes, this is the way women are powerful,
and it was great. It was great to see. And she's still doing it Amy, you know, I mean with what she did with MASL, Like there is an extraordinary articulation of female power there in ways that are familiar to women but often really I think underrepresented or were underrepresented in TV.
Right. You know, in the beginning, I didn't understand this, and then I gained understanding as we went along that this was a show rooted in female power.
Yeah.
That, and that I was in a situation where I was sort of just helping tell these stories, you know what I'm saying, Okay, Yeah, And it was it, It was It was a strange adjustment for me, but but I was used to that. I was. I was always from a man's point of view, and it like like I'm an alpha dude and all that stuff always have been.
So it was odd being in this environment that I thoroughly enjoyed all of the time and felt it felt really right walking into that room meeting Amy and Gavin Polone and the director and casting it just you know, you walk into a room and it's like, oh, this is this is right, and because because you walk in rooms and it doesn't feel right, and there's all kinds of reasons for that have that have nothing to do
with you. But but but this felt like, oh, there, we're connecting very quickly here and this is this this could be nice. But yeah, it was an adjustment for me.
It didn't take long, but it was an adjustment. It was it was It was not an entirely new experience because I'd worked with all, you know, a lot of the top women in TV, Julia, Louis Dreyfus, Deborah Messing, Sharon Lawrence, and it was perfectly comfortable just serving them, you know, and and being being that supporting actor guy, right, Yeah, and this was this Sometimes this was a little confusing because you know, as I was telling my wife earlier,
you know, Amy and Dan put me in situations that all of the that that sort of mimicked all of these great movie moments from the forties and the fifties and you know, the golden era of filmmaking. And Luke was in those situations and having to to realize all that and and act through that, and it was just the greatest gift of my career was doing that role. And you know, you wonder why people see you as that character wherever you go, and they get confused when
you try to play another character. They don't get it. It's like, what are you doing? It's like, can't you just put the hat on and be that guy? But a very special experience to be in the belly of the beast for so long and continually after twenty five years at this groundbreaking show where women did take over and stake their claim, and like, this is far more interesting, nuanced, intelligent storytelling than you have seen before and here and this is what it looks like, like wake up, you know.
And intergenerationally, I mean, I've noticed when I did Council of Dad's, which was an NBC show in twenty twenty, I'd been in the business for ninety seventeen years, and it was the first time I'd ever had a mother on screen, and it was the first time I ever had a female showrunner. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting Like you know, I'd played I'd played leading ladies more often than not, and nobody ever gave my character a mother, which.
Is the central, most complex.
And foundational relationship in a woman's life. And all of a sudden, I didn't even notice until I read it, and I was like, oh my god, I have a mom. Oh my god, it's because Joan Raider is writing this now. But to go back to Luke, this is something that I noticed, especially actually in the episode that we're talking about, right, because there's so much Laura lies in such a precarious position.
And one of the things that I think is really cool about watching the dynamic between Laura I and Luke is that you're actually, in some ways modeling like what does it look like to be an alpha dude who's still supporting an alpha lady? Like and I actually kind of hate those terms, because the whole concept of alpha male, I think has been super stump. I just read something yesterday about how like an alpha wolf is actually the wolf who's responsibility it is to like feed the community.
Like it's much more anyway, But when you were kind of like there was a level of like, as I was watching it, I found it really moving because I was like, Oh, this is what it looks like for a strong man to show up for a strong woman without diminishing either himself or her right. And that's it's hard to write and it's hard to play, especially in two thousand and one when there's not a ton of
that in heterosexual relationships out there. You know, what I mean, like there's will and grace and like two thumbs up. But that's a very kind of that's in a different paradigm.
And so I kind of love that while.
While there was all this work being done in sort of female identities, in a lot of ways, the work that you were doing model the kind of masculinity that wasn't I didn't see a lot of it in TV. I don't know. I just think that's kind of I think we need a lot of that even now, you know what I mean.
When I read the pilot, I thought there's only really one anchor here. It needs another one because everything's so light and airy and fun and fluffy if you will, yeah, yeah. And Emily provided that, but I didn't know how much she was going to be represented in the show. And I thought, Okay, this is Luke's job too. Mmm, I've got to I've got to be an anchor. That's it. It's just he's got to be a rock and that's all.
That's my job. I tried to understand my job, you know, before I went in, and I said, Okay, I need to communicate. It's not so much about the reading. I know I can do the reading but it's like it's got to be in my body. Yeah, and if I don't communicate that, I'm not going to get the offer. I won't have a chance.
So how did you put it in your body?
Like what were the choices that you were making as an actor to throw away?
Throw away, relax, relax, relax, underplay, underplay. But it's an attitude. So I just you know, I went in you know, where I'm from. There's a swagger, there's an attitude, you know, and I just put that on where are you from? I'm from. I was born in Philadelphia but raised in South Jersey. So it's a it's it's a real it's a different type of play. It's I don't know, they
kind of call it. There's always a simmering kind of very working class, very unexpressed, not anger so much, but there's an intensity to the people that I grew up around, and they, you know, they call Philadelphia the fighting City for a reason. It's like everybody, everybody's like a hair trigger away from like yeah, okay, let's go, you know, very fast to fight physically, I'm talking. So that's what
I grew up with. So that's always simmering and I thought that that's you know that to me is Northeast, that's the East coast, that's the northeastern part of the country, and especially this character. So it kind of.
Worked especially I think, and I haven't spent really any time in Philly, like a weekend here and there. I went to school in New Hampshire, and there's this especially in rural communities and in smaller communities, because everybody knew
how to do everything, you know what I mean. It's like, even if you're a professor, you're cleaning your gutters and you're patching your roof, and you're fixing the wood stove and you're chopping, like there's a sense of everybody being able to handle themselves, you know, not full Winter's bone, but like there's a there's a touch of like of like I'm really not afraid to get my hands dirty,
if that's what it takes. It's funny when you were talking about South South Jersey and some of this I had, I was getting images of Bruce Springsteen in my head. I don't know if that feels it all accurate, but just that like super laid back, like yeah, man, whatever, it might be a rock star.
Well, he's a beach guy. You know, that's it. They're different, you know, Okay, he's Asbury Park and he's like, you know, that's that's on the coast.
This nuance is totally lost. I grew up in Hawaii, so this you say. Also, when you say beach guy, I'm like.
No, shitty serves like.
How he was played music. But yeah, he grew up near the ocean. Those ocean city people, and they're different from from from everybody else.
Those ocean city people. That fascinating. I just like touched into some like cool New England identity world.
But it was but it was a great dynamic because you know, Lauren would come in with all of this glory and power and intelligence and uh, it was a lot of bright lights going off all at the same time, and there was no way to match that. I mean, there's just like, forget it right, you know, you gotta go the other way. Yeah, you got to balance it, you gotta letter shine right. Basically my job was just to stay out of her way, you know.
But also I don't know, I totally hear that, but it feels like you're under selling it.
Well, she was driving most of the scenes, sure, but she was coming, so it's like she's at the wheel d.
Percent, Yeah, hundred percent. But like, but it had there has to be contrast in order for it to mean anything, right, Like, I'm always I heard something really interesting in an acting class a bazillion years ago in grad school, and it always stuck with me that you can't take status, you can only give it. And so the queen is not the woman who sits. The queen is the woman who
sits while everyone else stands. And one of the things that I see the more I like, I've been mostly directing the last sort of eight years, and what's interesting is when somebody refuses to give up status in a scene where they need to give it up, the scene doesn't work. And what I love is that Luke immediately gives up the status, which gives her the status, which allows those lights to go off, but also then creates an identity for him as someone who doesn't need status.
And all of a sudden, you're really curious because it's like, wait, wait, what makes you so secure? How come you're so relaxed about the fact that this woman's going to show up and dazzle and use her cell phone even though there says, no cell phones and all this shit like it creates. It creates a really interesting dynamic. And it's almost a little bit of an uptown girl right.
A thing right, which is like absolutely, it's it's him feeling like he's not worthy. It's him feeling like that. You know, he melts in her presence because he just man, he loves.
Her, but also he knows she needs him, right. And I don't mean needs as in like I want, he needs a man, but like people up there, they need the grounding, you know, like and I don't know if Amy and Dan were that way. I never saw them, but I know so many creative couples my showrunners.
You know what, Yeah, they are kind of like that. He is kind of like that.
Tony and Joan Rader are like that.
Yeah, he's kind of grounding. He's grounding and calls yeah.
All of this energy all like she will tell a story and the entire crew is like right, and then there's Tony just kind of sitting there going there she is. But they are a brilliant like yes, she writes, he directs, she creates, he and it's like it's you have to have that. And so actually I wonder how much you
guys were based on Amy and Dan. I've never had that thought before, but like, if there's that sparkle and the grounding, I wonder if there was a little bit of and they never talked about that auto a.
No, now, I always thought they were Paris and Doyle, oh part of it. But you're right, it could be like they eject themselves in all of these relationships I see. I see a lot of Richard and Emily in them too, Okay, I think there are a lot a lot of people going on inside both.
Of them, you know, there must be for them to create them all.
Oh yeah, yeah.
So you've never seen the show before, is that right?
Well?
I have now, I have now, Yeah.
Yeah, but you're watching this for the first time.
Second time now, first time where we're on our second go round, you're your second go round. Yeah, we've been doing this for three and a half years, almost four years almost Oh wow, yeah wow, yeah, but no, i'd never seen I'd seen the pilot. Obviously. I saw Winter from the Netflix episodes because we went to the premiere and we were forced to watch it. Yeah, but that's it.
And I've seen little clips here and there, other shows, but I've never I never got into the library of the show, and yeah, I didn't, and it was shocking to me when I first sat down and went through the first season. Absolutely shocking to me.
Well, because we're on our prison Break podcast, we're we're on season two right now, and I saw most of season one when it aired because I was just trying to learn how to backed on camera. But a lot of season two is new, and I never I wasn't in season three and then came back for season four. And one of the things that we're noticing, you know, your show was a little bit older than ours, well a lot, I guess, like seven years older, but no,
only five. But I am finally able to see myself as a totally different person.
Part of why I didn't watch back then was I was like, I don't.
Need to no, no, thank you, it's all self critical monster inside now, no way. But it's like, looking back, My eldest right now is seventeen and closer to the age I was when I did that than I am to her, and it's kind of cool. I mean, do you enjoy it at all?
Like, are you able to look back and go look at it?
Guy? He did.
Yeah, it's like a completely different person. Yeah, it's I don't recognize him and and uh yeah, it's it's it's it's it's kind of fun, you know. Yeah, it's fun to watch because I just I don't remember virtually all of it. I don't remember really, I don't remember doing the scenes.
That's wild. And you guys were on the lot the whole time.
Yeah, we had a parking has parking space that's special with our names on it. Yeah, no one else could park there. Yep, that's valuable real estate.
Man, that's well, and it's a different feeling. Most of my career was on location, Like Christ and Break and Walking Dead were all on location, right, And I just did a show. The last thing I ever did on the acting side was on the Paramount lot, and man, like driving through the gates of an LA studio, it's good and belonging there, and like I was already twenty some years into the business and I was like, oh, I finally feel like I belong Like it was a wild.
Now on the other end of the opposite of that coin, imagine having seven years of that and then going off onto location all the times on all these indie projects. And things. It's like, whoa, it's quite an adjustment.
It must be, it must be. Now, I say, here's the thing.
What I love about being on location is a cast usually has to get quite close because you don't know anyone else, you know, I mean we part of Walking Dead Magic was season one, no one knew anyone in Georgia, not just Atlanta, like the entire state. And there were only two people who were local Hires and the rest of it in the regular cast and everybody else, like you know, we were all young. A couple of us had brand new kids or whatever. Like you you get
really close, So I think there's value in that. But yeah, you know, waking up in your own damn bed and driving to your own parking space and there's a glamour to that. That's pretty cool.
Yeah, six miles away from Warrenbush. I get there in fifteen minutes.
Yeah, did you bike? No?
You know Michael Rooker's are friends?
Is he?
Yeah? I love him?
Speaking of not remembering, Michael showed up to the table read of I think it was episode two of the first season, walking Down and did his work and he was brilliant because he always is. And I walked up to him and I was like, Michael, hey, it's Sarah and he goes hi and I was like we from from Whisper and he goes honey, and I was like we were in a movie together a couple of years ago. Were we? I lost a lot of years? How was I? And I was like, I don't even talk about it.
It's nice to see you again. Laid me. Please give him my love the next time you talk to you.
I think I'm gonna I do a lot of conventions and so he's on this. We have the same agent, So I see him sometimes nice and we get to go to dinner and have too much sake and laugh until we're like we burst a blood vessel in our eye.
That's a nice thing about conventions, is you get to have with your friends. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. In fact, I think the last time I saw worker was at a convention and he just become a grandfather and I was like, that was not on my Michael Ricker Bingo card. Right, Yeah, he's such a good guy.
Yeah, he so is.
How do you guys know each other?
Did you work together just from the convention circuit?
Oh?
No way.
He wasn't an extro and girl girls is what.
You're saying he was, but he doesn't remember.
Oh yeah, maybe that's what happened to me. No, he maybe it is me.
He was never an extra in anything. Let me tell you. Yeah, uh, not that guy.
I mean.
The whole story of how he started his career is one of the most fascinating stories I've ever heard.
Oh, I've never heard it. I'll have to ask you.
That you've got Let him tell you. Let him tell you this story. Get him to tell you the story of how he got eight men out. Okay, please, you have to hear this.
Okay, I can't wait.
Go to dinner, have a couple of drinks, and then and then wind him up and get them going. Man, it'll be just like it's glorious. The story is glorious.
He is amazing.
He is amazing, absolutely amazing human.
He's also in a couple of wild stories. There was a Frank Dermunt had a party at a house in Malibu for I think the beginning of the second season or something. And we were all there and then there's a knock on the door and I opened the door and it's Michael Rooker wearing only a pair of overalls. At a ball cap only no shoes, no shirt, I didn't check, but probably no underwear. Also no wallet, and.
We're like, where the fuck did you come from?
Like he just materialized. There was no uber at that point, like did he take a tap? But he didn't. There was nothing in his hands. He had no money, and we're like, Michael Rooker can materialize anywhere in the universe. We're like, he's a superhero. Clearly, that is the only explanation for this. And at the end of the night he was like somebody, uh, somebody get me home. We're like, yeah, man, we.
Should, we got you.
Oh god.
The first time I met him, I think we're in Connecticut at Mohegan's son, Okay, and they've got a great you know, you stay in the hotel there, right, you're right there in the in the and the and the space is you know, you walk to it from it's inside that complex and they have this fantastic sushi restaurant right off the lobby. So we all congregated down there, and you know, you don't know how you're gonna vibe with somebody or whatever, but you know, usually it's it
goes pretty well. But with him, oh man, I hooked into his world and we were just riffing back and forth until we were on the floor. I mean, he's like a long lost brother or something from another planet.
Well, I love that.
It's just wild.
That means you're nuts. You understand that. Well, that's okay, nuts.
So to bring it back to your podcast, if Michael Rooker were to play a character on Gilmour Girls, Yeah, who would he play?
He would be Kirk's father.
I don't think I know the show that well.
Okay, he'd be my father. Now he'd be Kirk's father. Okay, he would be Kirk's father. Or who would be Kirk's uncle, like Uncle Michael or something. Kirk is the guy who had you know, he's the guy who has a million different jobs. He's always inventing a job for himself, okay, not succeeding. Yeah.
Sure.
He's a serious comic relief, the terrific physical comedian and just a great comedic actor.
I love the idea of Michael Rooker in Gilmore Girls. There's something so extraordinarily incongruous about that that, oh my god, it's also possible that that's the day that Gilmore Girls turns into like the craziest horror story you've ever seen.
It's like that.
It'd be the like Friday the Thirteenth meets Gilmore, Girl's episode or something Henry Portrait of a serial Killer comes to town.
Oh my god. Oh, I'll never forget the first time I saw that movie.
I've never seen it. Actually, I saw the trailer and I was like, I can't I can't thing. Yeah i've heard. I mean, i've heard he's brilliant, but it's too I can't watch. Or I couldn't watch. I couldn't watch Longington. It was too scary, it.
Was too real. He made it too real. It was just like whoa. Yeah, anyway, let's talk about the episode a little bit totally.
Yeah, we've got we've got seven minutes before I have.
The recap episode it. But what what did you think about the episode? You watch the episode, what did you think about? What do you think? I mean, it's a it's a you know, Richard ends up in the hospital. Uh, you know, it's it's it's one of the rare episodes in the entire series where we're dealing with death or the potential of it.
That's really interesting.
Yeah, it really we really never have to deal with anything this heavy. Usually that's that's sort of the charm of the show. It's like, yeah, but it doesn't deal with the you know, weapons or car chases or deaths or anything like that.
In front of my right.
That's all I do, ay bad And I've done plenty of that too, and I love it so But we see this bond, this this back and forth between Luca Lorelei. Yeah, what do you think of all that? And the crowning of with the with the blue hat that was a significant moment for guilds. What do you think of all that?
I mean, you know, as I said earlier, I think it's a really.
Beautiful primer in like, how do you stand up for somebody the way they need you? Two.
A lot of times in the hospital, I think.
People are at a loss for how to be how to be there for someone who's hurting or who's scared, and often there's nothing you can really do except be there. And I think I think Luke does that really beautifully. Also, I think he has a brilliant intuitive sense that like, you stay out of the dynamics between mothers and daughters, you give that space. I thought, I don't know her name, but the actress who played lorealised mom.
Kelly Bishop.
I thought she did a marvelous job, like there was something about her work that was super understated and grounded and real. But I don't know, I mean, at least for me. By the end of the episode, I'm sort of screaming at the television like, if you need a man in your life, this is the one, you know.
Interesting that they dragged it out for four seasons until Mark No, very very smart, Absolutely the way to go, there's no question. Yeah, but to drop that episode in in the middle of the first season, yeah, like, here's this is what it could be. This is maybe what it should be, but we're not giving it to you for a while.
Well, and also maybe it's important that this woman not be paired up for a while, right, you know. I also think that there was and I wonder if this is one of those kind of pushback moments that Amy was working with. When it comes to studio and network notes, I think there's often a drive to get couples paired
up early. And I remember on prison Break they wanted us kissing by like episode six or seven or something, and it actually came from us Wentworth and I were like, no, we're not going to do it, because the longer you draw it out, the more interesting saying it becomes, the more it means, and kind of once you get together, there's not as many places to go right when you
read it. Did you read it and go, oh, okay, we're getting together in the next episode, or like, what was your sense of it when you well you said you don't remember any of this.
No, but I remember those I remember thinking and hoping because I knew that the struggle she was, she was at odds the way you just described. Yeah, I think there was some pressure brought to bear to get those two together sooner.
Hmmm. Did you get a lot of it from fans at the time, Like if you'd see fans in the middle of season two, would they be like, just get together already or were they along for the ride to wait?
Both okay, okay, fair enough?
Oh, both properly split?
Yeah, but no, I mean but both at the same time. People feeling that both those ways Okay, they love it and they hate it. I think a given what they want, they go away. I think you're right, you can't do it. If you have something that powerful, Yeah, use it. Just use it, just milk it as long as you can. I think they could have they could have gone another season before they got together, and in true style, a
naked Kirk I was running through the middle of it. So, Sarah Wayne Collie's thank you for your time and your insights, and let's do this again.
Let's do this again, or we should have you on our podcast. Come on prison Breaking with Sarah and Paul. You can talk about prison Break and we'll talk about your cameo as a prison guard exactly which clearly happened.
Actually be very believable. Yeah, it doesn't take much of an imagination. Again, awesome, right, thank you, Sarah, Thank you.
You have a good one.
All right, take care, Cheers everybody, and don't forget Follow us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.