I am all in you. I am all in with Scott Patterson an iHeartRadio podcast. Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am all in Podcast one eleven productions. iHeartRadio, Art Media. iHeart podcasts. One on one interview with Vanessa Branch, who played Bobby for two episodes Gilmore Girls. This is season seven, episode five, The Great Stink, and we will get back to Vanessa after these messages. Vanessa, Hello, Hi, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate the time. We
had a very good time watching your scenes. They were iconic, I have to say, in the in the Gilmour universe, those were that was Those were iconic scenes that that That scene you did in the restaurant was absolutely fantastic. And after I saw it, I said, how did this girl not become a star? Oh did you wonder that yourself? I mean, not out of conceit, but you have so much to offer that I was stunned that you you didn't have a bigger career. Was it because you chose
not to pursue it with real ferocity? You had other things going on?
Or you just Oh no, I mean I I pursued it.
I did.
I mean the past seven years I have not been acting. That was a choice because I had a little man who's my dream man, and I wanted to be able to spend a lot of time with him. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
How old is he's seven?
Yeah?
Yeah, another feeling. I have a nine year old son, so I know.
Yeah, and every minute you don't want to miss a minute, Like I just now that he's this age, now I feel like I could go back to work and actually just started. She asked last week have my first audition that I've had in god knows how long, right, But yeah, I wanted to have that, you know, I want to have that time to save it. It's too fast.
It's too fast. Yeah, isn't it crazy? My guy is going to be ten in June, and it's just it's just like a blink of an eye and another blink of an eye is going to be off to college.
It's like they're a little bit of a different person, and you go through a little bit of a grieving process and no one really tells you that, you know, mm hmmm.
Right, Yeah. What I do is that my phone is filled with videos for when he was two and three and four and five. I watch them all the time I do. I actually, when I'm on the road, I watch these things incessantly. He's sick of me at this point because I you know, I FaceTime him five times a day. He goes, Yeah, Dad, what's it? What's up? But anyway, so you're an actress in a model you're best known for you were the Orbit Gum gal from two thousand and two to two thousand and ten, eight
years of Orbit Gum gigs. That is a great thing to snare.
You were a lot forty five commercials.
Yeah wow, wow wow wow. Yeah, residuals, too residual.
So I was under contract, which was actually a lot better.
A lot better. Yeah, that's nice. And you were gaelling the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Hello, so you did do some big stuff. All right, here we go.
Tell me.
I want to talk about the Orbit Gum stuff. Those commercials were iconic. What was it like working on that campaign for so long? Tell me how you got it.
The thing that's really cool about that campaign, and then I'll tell you how I got it was that it's a really funny story. Actually is that you know, depending on what you watch as far as TV shows go, and there's so many TV shows nowadays or films. There's so much out there, but depending on what you watch depends if people know who you are. But that Orbit campaign was everywhere and everybody knew. It's one of the
best selling campaigns in history. And so it was funny because in person, people don't recognize me because I speak with the British accent in those as I did on Gollmer Girls, and I actually am British, but I was raised back and forth. So for me, it's kind of like being bilingual. It's hard to explain to people that you can switch like that, but with an accent we can, and so you know, it would be neat for me. In person. People wouldn't recognize me, but people would be
talking about it. People were dressing up as me at Halloween, and you know, and I liked being anonymous. I loved that people would like be talking in the grocery store line about like how much their boyfriend loved the Orbit gum girl and they didn't feel threatened by her because they loved her too, And I was like, I know, she's so cute, right, Oh, I love that girl, And so it was really cool to be able to do something like that that, you know, it's kind of part of pop culture, you know, right.
Now, when when you go back to London or England, do you speak with a British accent?
No, although it's very hard for me to not switch into it, so sometimes I will. It's it's a weird it's a weird thing because it is. The minute I'm surrounded by it, I want to, you know, I kind of do switch. But then I think, right, well, I've been speaking this way for a while, and I don't know, it's it's weird.
It's a little weird, right, But it's easy to slip in and out of it, right, Yeah, no problem, all right. So the commercials are very clever. What was the craziest thing he had to do on those commercials?
We actually did a lot of crazy things. We shot. We shot them all over the world. We would go a bunch of places, and we did one with an Ostrich and one with a whole thing of penguins. But like literally I was in the penguin pool and penguins bite and they were like swimming all around and I had boots on a pie. But the crazier one was with the Ostrich because you know Ostrich can be kind
of dangerous. And there was supposed to be an Ostrich running towards my back, like straight into camera, and the guy said, don't worry, I'll stop the ostriche before I don't freak out though, because ostriches, you know, can be dangerous. And he was the Ostrich wrangler, and that's a job,
an ostrich wrangler. And I was looking at the camera and I can see the reflection in the back of me, and the Ostrich comes kind of like charging towards me, and the guy misses when he went to kind of grab the Ostrich, and the Ostrich is still like running straight in my head like full force, and they're big, and I remember thinking, like, just stay still, just stay still.
They said he's still.
And then some other guy came out like just before it got to me and tackle the Ostrich and it was hilario was hilarious my camera.
But don't don't they have a claw that's like three or four inches long that they can yep you gab you with. I mean, yeah, that's one of the boy do you still do people ask you to say the slogan at all all the time? What is the slogan?
We refresh us, no pun intended. There there are a few. Fabulous is one of them. Of course it sounds every when I say it, you know, as the commercial goes dirty mouth and clean it up. Those were the Those were the slogan gotcha.
Gotcha, gotcha? Do you still use Do they still send you orbit gum? You're still chewing it up?
They don't still send the orbit gum.
They don't send you anymore. Yeah, all right, So now let's get into good more girls. How'd you get the role?
So it was regular kind of audition. I went in to did my audition for it and felt like it went really well, And afterwards heard from my manager. She said, they thought you were great, They loved you, but they felt that your British accent wasn't the right British act that it was supposed to be an Oxford educated British accent. And I thought a second. My parents were really sticklers for language and grammar, and my mother had had elocution lessons and that's the exact accent that I have. And
it's hard if you're American. You don't know the difference between these things.
Right, You can't I do I do? I do? You you nailed it. Yeah, No, that was Oxford. It was Oxbridge, as they say, and.
So and so I said to my manager, I said, Flee, will you please call them back and ask them to see me again because I'm promising this is the right accent. And she did, and to their credit, they said, okay, let's bring in and meet the producers because we really liked her. We just weren't sure. And then when I came in, the producers were like, she's the one that's define and I was so sweet that to their credit, the casterders, they were so nice afterwards. They actually said
to me like, we're really sorry. We you know, we apologized for that. That just didn't And I was like, God, don't worry. Thank you for believing in me enough to bring me back in after after you know you were sure about that.
But that was the part of the character that made her so lethal. Was that was that that accent. And you just knew exactly where she was from, you knew exactly where she went to school. Yet she still had this side of her where she was this like stunning woman who could stand up and end a meeting and know that that would be effective to close the deal and talk about contrasting Rory. I mean, you gave off such a cosmopolitan, worldly vibe, knowing vibe, and Rory was
just crushed underneath the weight of that. So the scene, that's what was so great about that scene, that can't contrast of it.
We watched it. I rewatched it today. We're going to be talking about it. And you know, you don't, you don't, you're not often rewatching yourself all the time stuff that you do. And it was really fun. It was so fun because I remember that part was so fun and that, you know, it's interesting being able to be because you know, she was she was Bobby was obviously not really a threat. She was really nice, but just the fact that oh.
No, no, no, she was a threat? Are you kidding me? Well, are you kidding me?
Not in Bobby's eyes, maybe in Rory's eyes, but in hurt right, And it was fun. It was fun seeing that, remembering portraying that, you know, that kind of two sided thing.
It was, you know, it was a it was film. It's you know, once in a while that show gets in does it gets a filmic thing going? That was film. It was that was good film. What do you remember about that? Shooting day.
I remember it was super late. You know, the guys were really fun, the other guys who were on it as well, and everyone was incredibly nice. Alexis is a really I actually ended up doing another job with her shortly thereafter, on a film called Postgrad and she's and she's a really very down to earth, you know, kind human being. And you know, you meet some great people in LA but not everyone that way, and she was I remember her really being specifically. You know, we talked
a lot and I liked her a lot. Right, and the fast talking everyone, of course, right, that's I'm sure that's constant fast talking. You know how fast you got to pick up, pick up the pace, don't leave any spaces, all of that.
It's the only note we ever got. We didn't get any other notes, sure, because we always knew what the director was going to say. Right, you want it faster, right, faster? Got it? It's four am. I can't do it faster. I want to go home. So when we recapped the episode, we were a bit torn on that scene. If Rory should have reacted the way she did when she found out that you were a female colleague of logans Logans,
What What are your thoughts about that? Did you think it was the right dynamic for the for the show.
I kept wondering how he managed to not ever say she that's a tough one, right.
When you think about it, Yeah.
It would have been tough. But do I think, look, I get it from a young woman's perspective, totally get it. Why maybe that would be that way? And so I feel like it made sense, although I don't think he was at fault, Like I didn't think he needed to. I don't think that there was any reason for him to specifically say, oh, she's a girl or she's a.
Guy, right right, right right?
Yeah.
We we went back and forth on that for a little while. All Right, so you've also been in three of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. What was it like working in those all those films? And what do you think of it? It's controversy now that I think I think I think Bruckheimer wants to distance himself from Johnny, from Johnny Depp for some reason. What do you think about all that? First of all, let's talk about what it was like working on it.
Working on those films was literally like a dream, because when you're on a set with that kind of budget and that kind of creativity and perfection. The first I was in the first three, and then they did a ten minute short film, Disney'd a ten minute short film just about me and my partner in it, about our characters, and it's the prequel to the first film, which cost a million dollars that short. And the first movie was shot in la and then second the third we shot
in Saint Vincent in the Caribbean. And I remember the first day of shooting in the Caribbean and we'd be taken by boat to they had this huge bay that they had literally there was nothing modern there. You couldn't see anything other than you know, beautiful beach and palm trees, three gigantic, authentic pirate ships, and this whole town, Tortuga,
which they had created impeccably. And you know, it was early sun rising, and they'd take us on this other little speedboat to enter this bay which we hadn't seen yet, and we're pulling into it and the sun is rising over this as if we're entering, you know, a seventeenth century village, so authentic. And I thought, if I told my eight year old self that I was going to get to do this one day. I wouldn't have believed that. I always remembered that moment just because it was so mesmerizing.
It was an amazing moment.
That's the top of the food chain in the film business. I mean, it doesn't get bigger than that stuff.
Yeah, And I made some great friends on it. And Gore Verbinski was the director of the ones I did, and he was so awesome to work with, and we all would get to hang out. We're on this island. It's just you know, there's not very many of us working together, and it was it was tons of fun. It would be up plate.
Did you stay on the island?
Yes?
Yeah? Wow. So what was it like working with Johnny? Did you get to work with Johnny? And he?
I can all I can say from my personal experience with him is that he is the loveliest human being. He was kind to every single person on set, whether they were working on the set or they were you know, I mean anyone from the island who was there, anyone who was doing background, anyone who was doing craft service to everyone, and we would be you know how you know what long hours you work with things. It was ninety five degrees out. We had on authentic wool costumes
that were killing us. He was, I mean, it was like you were drenched. We'd be like in the blazing sun doing these scenes, and he was just he was lovely. And we'd all hang out as well, you know, at different times, and so you got to you know, see each other other times. And I only ever knew him to be the nicest man.
You know. I always wondered because so many top musicians' top bands embrace him. He's like, he's like friends with Aerosmith, and he did an album with Jeff Beck. If you
can even imagine doing an album with Jeff Beck. He I mean, I went to you know, Patty Smith and I go back to the mid seventies and I went to see her when she came out in LA a couple of years ago, and Johnny was there too, and he played a song or two with her on So he's like, so you can't be a bad guy and be welcomed by that range of people in that business, you know, because they're extra sensitive about who they led
into their worlds because those are really exclusive worlds. So he just always was.
I mean, I didn't this is just my personal opinion. And I didn't know Amber ever, but I felt like if there was falsehood there, to me, it seemed it was on the opposite side. But you know, life is weird. Who knows. But that was my you know, my personal experience with him was that he was always intelligent, interesting and kind.
Soft, very fascinating.
I think about that with my I have a boy who's a gentle boy, and Johnny was a gentle boy, right.
Because hot, you know, you go on a talk show and you're that quiet, that reserved, yet your presence is such that nobody can take your eyes off you, but their eyes off you and you're hysterically funny at the same time by just holding everything back. I mean, that's it. It's a superpower.
And he also is I mean, talk about sexy that man. If I like, if there is, if there is star quality, I mean, I remember the first time I met him, I like, you know, and I'm not one who's ever been starstruck by much, you know. I I've always been pretty grounded, and that was that was the first time I saw trying not to droll all over myself.
All right, So here's a few other fun facts about you, Vanessa. Why fun fact you were Miss Vermont in nineteen ninety four.
Let's just so crazy when I figure about it out, And I did it. I actually won on a dare. I'd never like done pageants before ever, never even thought about it. I was modeling though through college to make money, and my modeling agent had said to me, why don't you do Why don't you do the Miss Vermont pageant because you can win scholarship money to pay back school owns. And I was like, what are you talking about? No way, like I meet because I'm totally a durpball. I've always
been a durpball. I'm like not the girl to like brush your hair and put on makeup. I just did it especially for you. I like, like, you know, I'm I'm out playing with boys. When I was a girl, I was a tomboy. Like I'm just not that. But anyway, she she one of my best friends. The morning of the Miss Vermont pageant said to me, I doubled triple dare you. And we'd been it was my senior year. At the end of all the like that the last week of partying, we'd been up all night long. We
sat in this disgusting bathroom. She painted my nails and I went into the pageant, and I thought a fluke one.
So you you went on to the So if you won Miss Vermont, you were in the Miss America pageant, right, yeah? And so what happened Miss America.
I didn't win, you know if I won, right, But it was a really it was actually a fascinating experience, A fascinating experience to see behind something like that and to see, you know, there's you have all sorts of images of what these women are like and who they are, and and to be very honest, it was an incredibly educated, interesting, accomplished group of women. They all definitely wore more makeup when we're cleaner than I was. But they were a really,
really amazing group of woman. One of my best friends to this day I made she was Miss Tennessee and we still, you know, see each other multiple times a year and nice. Yeah, it was a really fascinating experience.
App And you speak Mandarin Chinese, I speak Chinese and frenchship. So you've been to China. You picked it up there, you studied it.
In college or I studied it in college, and I studied there when I was in college, and then I've worked there quite a few times. I've done a few films in China for the Chinese market. I modeled in Taiwan right after college.
Oh wow, yeah wow. So acting was just a natural progression from what you were doing before.
No, I always knew. I knew at the age of three I wanted to be an actress. Okay, always my thing. It was always what I did. I went to I went to Middlebury College in Vermont, and I had a double major of Chinese in theater. Okay, So I always knew that's what I that's what I wanted to do.
Fantastic. So now you're going to get back into it. You're excited, you get in some meetings, and is your agent excited?
I haven't. I didn't officially do it. It just kind of happened. I've been working on something else that's a true passion project of mine that's about to launch in a few weeks. And it's taken me years to get this finished. And that's what I was working on, apart from being with my child, and I just recently thought, you know, I think it's I think I'm going to be ready. This is going to launch and I'm going
to be ready to do that. And I literally had just had that thought and she called like three days later.
What is the passion project? Can you talk about it?
Yeah, it's called Fabulous Fit Pregnancy and it is a subscription website for pregnancy fitness that I've shot all over the world, really beautiful locations, because when I was pregnant, I wanted to stay healthy and in shape and do it was the right thing. And it was really hard to find things that weren't super boring or shot in someone's living room, or they weren't kind of modifying things
I thought safely, and so I created it. And it's, like I said, shot and all sorts of places, takes you every single day through pregnancy and then post pregnancy. There's a whole like nutrition plan. It's twenty bucks a month. It's really inspiring. You talk about different things about being a mom and this kind of gorgeous transformation that happens after that.
And that's going to come out as.
It's it's a website.
It's it's not true.
It's a yeah, so you can.
It's you're launching a business basically.
Okay doing and I've done and I've done literally, like all parts of it, so it is taken an enormous amount of time. But yeah, so that's it.
That's exciting. What's it called.
Again, Fabulous Fit Pregnancy.
And it's going to be Fabulous Fit Pregnancy dot com. Yeh, Fabulousfitpregnancy dot com. Yeah, make sure everybody check that out because I've seen Vanessa's Instagram page account and yes, she was all over the world, and it looks like a very well involved endeavor. It looked like there was a budget behind it. It was very professionally done, very professionally shot. You had, you know, stylists and make up people and hair people and I mean you really it was quite a production.
Yeah, I wanted it. I wanted women to feel like they had an escape because sometimes that's the time when you're you know, you're a little more homebound, and it's nice to feel like you can get out and do some things, you know, be inspired by what's around you.
Well, that sounds great that I wish you had a lot of luck with that. Okay, now we're going to play a little game called rapid fire, which doesn't mean you doesn't mean you have to answer anything quickly. Okay, good, you just call it rapid fire because it's Gilmore girl. All right, Okay, how do you like your coffee?
I don't coffee. I only drink tea.
What's your favorite tea?
Actually, there is one that is a Twining's black Current black tea. I also love iced tea, but anything that's a black tea with fruity flavors. And I'm a kind of a connoisseur. In China, they have these shops that are like wine like we have here with wine that you go in and do tea tastings, but there the walls are covered with different types of teas. When you delve into the world of tea, it's kind of like being the world of wine, Like there's so much to learn and it's really oh.
Yeah, oh yeah. Who is your favorite Gilmour Girls couple? Luke and larel I or Emily and Richard.
Luke and Laurele I?
Hello, Hello, correct answer? Would you rather work with Michelle or Kirk?
Michel I could speak to him in French them a little bit exactly.
What would you order at Luke's diner?
Bacon is one of my favorite foods, so it would probably be a simple bacon and eggs.
Who would you rather hang out with? Paris or Lane? Hmmm, I think I know the answer to this. I think I know the answer to this. I think Paris or Lane.
I think Paris.
Really, I think so. I wouldn't have guessed that. No, No, because you kind of have this sort of zen quality about you, and I think Lane is a little more zen than Paris.
Yeah, that's only It's funny. People frequently have that feeling with me. Not that I am not calm, I am, but uh yeah, I also get super goofy and silly and wild.
Well, then I guess Paris would be the one. Harvard or Yale? Or would you drop out and live in the poolhouse?
Could I go to Yale and live in the poolhouse?
I'm going to say yeah, I'm going to say yeah, yeah, sure. Would you rather attend d a R event with Emily or a town meeting with Taylor?
Remind me what a DR event is?
Daughters of the American Revolution?
Uh oh? A town meeting?
Uh? Gilmore girl's character that you would want as a roommate? You may why me what?
You're totally a fox who didn't know you on the show.
Me as a roommate, totally but in like not as a Okay, listen, you don't even have to fill out an application something in your life. You're all in on. Oh I think we know, we know what that is there, you go, I know.
Love affair there.
It's great.
And you know they have all different personalities, you know, so they can sometimes. I know that there's certainly some more difficult ones that come out, but I got a really easy, like great one, and I feel very lucky with that.
Are you are you? You're in la Or are you in New York? Where are you?
No, I'm in Florida right now?
Oh you're you live in Florida.
Well kind of temporarily. We've been been here like the past, back and forth the past two years. Yeah, oh that's interesting. It's a super long story. But both my parents were here even though they were book British and they passed they both passed away a few it's been a few years but and it was kind of during COVID. It was a lot easier to be here and I had to deal with the houses and anyway, so long story, so yeah, we've been here a lot, although we're very kind of by.
Coastal, so right, okay, Well, listen. Thank you for your time. I wish you all the best with your new business, and tell us your website.
Again, Fabulousfitpregnancy dot com.
It's fabulous. For weeks in fours, look out for Fabulous Fit Pregnancy dot com. Vanessa Branch. She's bringing it to you. She's gonna have a classy website with all kinds of great stuff in it for pregnant women. So check it out. Fabulous Fit pregnancy dot com. You're amazing. That scene was amazing. You know, you prove the maxim There are no small roles, there are only small actors, and you own that saying God Man. That was fantastic, just fantastic, so much fun.
I wish you all the best, and look also look out for on your TV screens and your movie screens because she's getting back into the game, so look out everybody. Vanessa Branch, thank you so much. Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Hey, everybody, and to forget follow us on Instagram at I Am All In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.