This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually it's about an hour and a half and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, Come and see me live on the Pants on Fire Tour in your region. Tickets our own sale now, and we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you on the road, my DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Hello, my DearS, Now look for my money. One of the best shows on TV right now is the show called Hacks, which is on HBO or Max or whatever they call it now. But it's a great show. It's co created by my guest today. It was a fascinating a very very clever
individual by the name of James Statsky. Enjoy. You see, that's how they're doing TV. You just go five four three two, and then you don't see anything else in the one I have works on TV in ages though you still work in DV Do they still do that? Oh no, you do single cameras, so.
I do single camera. But so there's no there's no countdown.
But I'm trying to remember because I started in Late Night, and I think we had a countdown.
I think we had the five four three two.
Yeah, you were on Jimmy's Chauffeur. That was your first gig, wasn't it that.
That was my first job.
That was my first writing job, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon back in twenty eleven.
So you were You were doing that at the same time I was doing yeah late night.
Yeah, we're both. Did you child from Late Night? I did watch your show, Yes, of course.
Yes, you are an excellent interviewer, which I'm sure you've been told many times over the years.
Thank you. I feel like that it is an odd, weird skill. Did you ever see the movie Demolition Man. It's one of Sandra Bullok's early movies.
No, I never did.
There's a Sandra Bullock movie called Demolition Man, and I call it Sandra Bulok movie. He's a Sylvester stallone movie and he's Sylvester Stone and Wesley Snipes and he gets cryogenically frozen and then has to catch a criminal in the future. A lot of movies were like that back in the day. During his cryogenics, he the computer implanted in his head that he knew how to knit. It was a joke in the film, and he was mystified by that. And that's like my skills for interviewing. I
have no idea where I came about that. I certainly didn't study for it or have I any academic training, but I feel like I can do it.
I think you're right, Yeah, you definitely can't.
Did you find, like before you became a host that like in conversations, like you're good at like being interested in people and asking them questions like did it feel natural visa viu moving through the world?
That kind of was a skill. No, not at all. In fact, I'm quite misanthropic. I am. I'm quite shy, and but aggressively shy. So I don't just like go oh oh, I'm like we want to go keep away from me? That kind of shy, you know what I mean? I suspect, you know, I write a lot, and I know that that is what you do a lot of and I think a lot of people who write are quite like that. There are you like that. I'm like that too.
I'm pretty like one on one I really like to connect with the person.
But if I'm like at a party, I'm definitely going to be the person probably talking the least and a little bit quiet, which sometimes comes off as like standoffish, and people think you're like not the friendliest, but it's it's not that it at all.
It's not. It's more that I am, yeah, just kind of more internal.
I think we should speak out against parties. I think the parties are being forced on as by people who like parties. But yeah, I really like parties that much. A small group of people is all right, go out for there, maybe go and see something.
But sure, sure I like a party, but there's it's brutal when you are not in the mood for one and you have to go.
That is that's one of life's worst situations to be in.
I can't think of the last time I was in the mood for a party, or even two parties. But let me just say this though, I have to say this, right now, which is congratulations on the success of Hacks and thanks. I think just someone who's it's very rare, like you know, like when people cops, when they watch cop shows, go a, that's not what it's really like being a call. Yeah, well I bore attacks now like as exactly what it's like, as exactly thank.
You, that is exactly just like that is such a lovely compliment, and it means so much coming from you, you know, like when we started making the show, we were like, this is a horrible tightrope walk we're doing, which is to portray a comedy portraying comedians and the
life of a comedian. And we always said like if real stand ups and now late night hosts like yourself can watch it and feel like it is capturing something real, will have you know, kind of cleared that this really high bar we said for ourselves.
So it really means a lot to hear that from you.
Well so much so. The truth of it is this that the relationship between the two main protagonists and Hikes, it's so similar to a relationship that I have with a guy who is now writes for me all the time. Oh ah, who was on my show. I know if you remember, he stopped off as an intern and he became the front end of the pantomime Horse used to dance around. Well, now he writes all the time. He produces for Netflix and stuff like that, and he writes for me. Joe Bolter is Joe Bolter?
Okay?
Yeah right? And Joe and I so much. So. When I saw the first season of Hacks, I called Joe and I said, are you in the writer's room on that show?
You?
Are you being doing stuff on that show? And he said no, he said, but I've seen it and it's spooky. There are episodes there was I think it was the first season, could have been the second. You'll know, I'm sure when Debra says, we have to go to Vegas, and they go to Vegas and then they you know, they go in a plane somewhere and they come back and mix it up with my own life. I said to Joe once, I'm doing a show in Vegas, and he said, I can't come. I have to see my parents.
I said, we'll be back by ten o'clock. And when I took him to Van Night's Airport and we got on this plane and we go out to the Las Vegas and we did the show, we came back. It was all done in two hours, three hours maybe, and if there was something like that in Hacks And he was like, it's so the same, right down to our argument about comedy. When I would be very cranky about, you know, the new rules of comedy, and he would say, there are no new rules of comedy. You just have
to be funny, which I think is possibly true. There was a time there when I was very worried about the dogma of the next generation of comedy, but I'm not anymore. I think it's really funny.
You were worried because you felt like we were treading into a place where we weren't, Like comedy wasn't being valued or.
What was it that was worrying you.
I think more it was about the idea. And you've had Debra say these words like it's great to see a character where you go, yes, yes, that's right, you know, and then you realize, wait, this is the cranky old lady,
myocracy old lady. Right, I kind of have a little bit yeah, but it's the idea that I think for a while, I don't believe this anymore, but I did for a while there think that they're saying, or the young people are saying, that certain areas of comedy are off limits and you can't make jokes about that, which I don't believe. I believe that you must be able to make jokes about whatever you can make funny. It's not like there are taboo subjects. I think that that.
I mean, there's bad jokes, but I think tabli yeah, you know, yeah, and that. But also the retrogression look at material that you had done before attitudes changed, and picking up on that was a very weird thing because like, well, I did that joke ten years ago, I wouldn't.
Do it now, you know, right, right, And that's very much so, you know, we did that last season when Deborah goes back to her alma mater college and is taken to task by the students there for old material, and we very much wanted to have this exact conversation that you're saying and kind of talk about, Yes, times change, and you know, there's things that we were joking about at the time and now we have moved on and
understand as a society that that was not right. And you know, it's a conversation between feeling what Debora feels is she feels very like persecuted in that moment, and she's like, but I've always tried to be on the right side of history. I just had these jokes that at the time went right, and Ava was sort of saying yes. And it's also the right of people who hear those jokes down to say like this is this is painful and this was not great, and there's an understanding.
Like you know, one thing we're always trying to do with the show is have each character be both right and wrong, because it's amazing. It's way more interesting to see a conversation between two people where they're both right and wrong, versus like if Deborah was just wholly in the wrong, it's less of an interesting conversation. So that one, in particular, was you know, really important for us to do because that is such a conversation in comedy these days.
Like you're saying, it's funny.
The interesting thing about it as well, And what what I very much like about the portrayal of Debra is that it's unapologetic. It's it's very kind of she's still funny, you know, which I love that the idea of it, did you have this because I mean, it seems funny to say this to you, but you you're kind of you get to the point of veteran status. Now I've been doing it for a while. I know it's weird how fast it happens. As well, it is like, oh my god, I know it's great.
Well talking about like starting on you know, Fallen was my first job and I was twenty for twenty five years old when I got that job, and like now I've been doing it now, I'm thirty nine, Like I've been doing it for a decade and a half, and it feels crazy, like you're saying, because I still feel like that kid who started in dirty rock, like writing monologue jokes for Jimmy.
So yeah, it is.
It's it's wild to kind of have had the luck that I've had in this career and gotten to move from late night to now making Hacks and all the shows I've been lucky enough to work on in between.
Yeah, because you worked in the Good Place as well, which was another kind of groundbreaker, is another real wonderful show.
Yeah, the Good Place.
You know, I value my time on that show so much and make sure who created that, you know, did something so brilliant with that show, which was it was a network sitcom, but it was so original in its idea and its conception and what we were trying to do with the stories we were trying to do.
And so yeah, I feel really lucky to have to have worked on that.
Hello, this is Greig Ferguson and I want to let you know I have a brand new stand up comedy special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy, and I would be so happy if you checked it out. To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel at the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there? Just click it and play it and it's free. I can't look. I'm not going to come around you, husband and show you how to do it. If you can't
do it, then you can have it. But if you can figure it out, it's yours, the three of you that came up with hacks. Therese you and remind me Paul W.
Dwan's and Lucianello.
Yeah right, And did you all come up together? Is that something that? Do you all know each other earlier?
Yes?
It was came organically from that.
Yeah, we basically all met doing like sketch and improv and stand up in New York City. So back in like Lucci and I my senior year at NYU, I was in this sketch group that was kind of an offshoot of the Upright Citizens Brigade theater, and Lucci and I were the only girls in the sketch group, and we kind of instantly gravitated towards each other in our senses of humor. And I really loved her and thought
she was so so talented. And then she introduced me to Paul, and they had been doing sketches as a two man group and making things and Paul, you know again same just instantly was like, Oh, these are the funniest people, and just had a real instant kinship and knew that I wanted to work with them.
Is it something that still exists? Do you make each other laugh in the writer's room still? We do? Yeah? Yeah, we do.
You know, we kind of show Oh thanks, yeah, we really.
You know, when we started the show, we made a promise to ourselves that we wouldn't ever let it interfere with our friendship, but we would always try to like protect that first and always kind of honor the fact that this started because we just genuinely loved making each other laugh and try to hold on to that as
we move through the process. And I think that like that is only proven more and more true as we've gone on, because as the show has been successful, and we've been lucky to have this show be successful, like, the bigger it gets, you actually kind of can't take it all in and think about that if you start thinking about doing it for a review or doing it for an award, it just kind of can. It can
be overwhelming and eat away at you. And so I think even the bigger the show has gotten, the more wheeling into trying to just rely on like does Paul think this good? Does Lucia think this is good? And then expanding it out through there like do our writers think this is good? And the other people who work in the show thing is good? And trying to keep it concentrated like that.
Yeah, It's an interesting thing because the idea of success is such an odd kind of ingredient creatively, I think it does very odd things to creative people. It does odd things to anyone. Yeah, but if you add success and fame and then there is this thing. I remember the example I will give you is this is that when I started in late night, people immediately began ask me because I was working for David Letterman behind a worldwide pants and Dave was doing the eleven thirty show
and I was doing twelve thirty. And immediately people started saying, are you going to take over from Dave? Like before I even started, right, And I said, no, I have no interest in that, that's not my thing, and they they, and also, I'm just starting this job. And it almost seems like in the world of show business. I don't gonna say, Hollywood, but it's so much kind of not that anymore. But in the world of show business, it seems to me people used to say, what have you
done lately? Now it seems to be it's what are you doing next? Well, you haven't done, Yeah, it is more important.
Yeah, I used to It's so interesting you bring this up because I used to think this all the time, because when I was lucky enough to be a staff writer on like Parks and Recreation or The Good Place or broad City, people would always say, but when are you going to do your own show? But you want to run your own show, right, And of course I did eventually go on to do that with Hucks. But it was such an interesting thing that people kind of put you on this ladder, even if you yourself are
not thinking that way. And it's very much so like, but what's the next thing, what's the next thing? Which is really counterintuitive to your process as an artist because you really are just trying to stay present and focus on making the thing you're doing in that moment good.
Well it's and also it's an odd thing because I get it's ten years since I left Late Night, right, and people say to me, you know, they still say less so now because they're all dead to the people who remember that I was on TV. But the well people will say why did you leave? And I said, look, it's mental health. It's like this if I don't know
how other people deal with it. But if I walk into a building every day, every five days a week, and there are pictures of me everywhere, but everywhere I go with those giant pictures of me, and then there's all the stationary all the paper has my name on it, and my name is everywhere, and there's me everywhere, and there's a hundred fifty people in the building and all they are doing is making sure I am in a good mood. Nobody wants to bring me any bad news,
know what. They want me to be good for the show. Yeah, that makes you fucking crazy, Dan.
I know that's crazy.
It's really wild because you're one of like ten people right that I could talk to about this because I lived on the other side of that, like when I started fell in and this was not you know, Jimmy didn't say to say this.
This was coming from someone who worked for him.
He said, fifty percent of this job is writing good jokes and fifty percent is being friends with Jimmy. That was like, that was the attitude that people around you had. And I'm sure, as you're saying, you didn't even put that out there. You didn't come in and say I need everything to revolve around me and everybody needs to be doing all these things to make me happy.
But it happens.
It's just what it does when there is a central figure at the head of a show that well, I don't know, it's kind of this like almost like it's like a king in the kingdom, like all the people in the court doing all these machinations to like make him happy. But then also kind of like it turns into people being cut throat with each other because everybody's trying to protect this one person and their.
Access to that person. And it occurs to you, this is what I'm interested because in the next season, you're putting Debra in that position. You're putting Debora into being a late night host, which I love, and I want to get to that because it's very important thing. I want to talk to you about that. But the idea of this thing occurs. I've once heard about David Letterman before I was ever on the show, before I was ever on Dave's show, somebody had said, oh, no, you're
not allowed to look Dave directly in the eye. You must correctly, and I if you walk down recorder, you have to look away. And I was like, really, And then, you know, I've since met David's quite a lot. And if I didn't look up in the eye, think I was weird. You know, Yeah, I think he thinks I'm weird anyway. But the idea of that was so odd to me, and I heard that. Then I heard about Jennifer Lopez. For some reason, she was against Donna. It
wasn't even my show. She was in the building and someone said, don't look at her directly, and it was always this same phrase, don't look at that directly in the eye. Oh my god, I've never heard that. And then I heard that about five different people. And then I heard that about myself. Oh no way, yeah, somebody said, oh I heard that, some one of an old friend of a writer who was you know who I brought into the show, who's an old friend of mine from
the old Country, and he was like, what's this. Don't look you directly in the eye. Shit. It was like, oh my god, don't know what you're talking about.
Right, And that must be really crazy to be a public crazy.
Yeah, it makes you crazy. I could. When Seth Meyers started, he called me up and he said, I'm very excited and he was just phoning all the other hosts and I said, it'll make you crazy sense he said, I don't think it will. I don't think it will. I saw him at Rangers game maybe about a few or four months ago, and I don't think it has made him crazy. I think he's okay.
I think that if he I think is a rare guy. That, yeah, he seems because I know something he seems right. Yeah, yeah, totally but like.
That is something with this season that we wanted to pay homage to the fact that late night is such a grind, and I don't think people totally realize, Like for the host of a late night show, it's kind of like, I think it's the hardest job you can have while also being super famous, because it is such a grind.
It's five days a week.
It is like relentless and like you're saying everything it almost sounds like you'd be nice in some ways, like oh, everything revolves around you and everyone's trying to make you happy, but like you're saying that in itself can become its own kind of prison and wrong.
It's great for about a month, yes, yes, yeah, and then you're like, wait a minut it. You had a friend who was a cop in Bakersfield and he gave it up and he said, I hate being a cop because everybody lies to you all the time. I said, that's exactly what it's like being a late night hosts you and even if they're not, you think they are. You know, it's very weird.
Do you ever miss it?
No?
I miss sometimes the fun I had on stage because the people that I worked with on stage Josh Robert Thompson, who did the Skeleton Robot and my show. I had a very small crew of performers and we were kind of a rep. It wasn't even a rep. It was just like it was like half a dozen different people and they would cycle through. And I missed that kind of almost like upright Citizens Brigade kind of Groundland's vibe. I missed the team, but I don't miss I don't
miss fucking television executives. And I think that the new democratic kind of form of making content. I like the idea of being able to speak directly to the audience because that's what stand up is and I kind of like that. And I'm kind of, I mean, an admiration of you and others in your position who can exist in the world of television because you are an artist and you create art. But what a lot of people don't see is the meetings that you're having with people
who are extremely difficult for me to deal with. I mean, it's not their fault, it's just we see the world different and I have a very hard time with it.
Well, I think you'll like this season quite a bit, then, because this season is really focusing on that intersection of art and commerce and how difficult it can be, and also just you know, even since you've left Late Night, how even I think more difficult called it's gotten with the tremendous pressure on each individual show and property to
like expand beyond. You know, it's not just enough to just be one singular show and get decent ratings, Like you're saying, content and expanding, you know, all of that, Like all of that comes into play now in a way that it feels like there's there's a heavier hand on like perhaps the commerce side.
Of it that makes it even more difficult. And not our executives.
We have been really lucky and that they're so wonderful at HBO, and they foster creativity and they're so supportive. But I think Late Night in particulars and this's really, as has been discussed many times, a very interesting moment.
It is an odd thing. And I think while I was looking at why I'm excited to see the new season because Debra, I thought, correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, you created the character. But I always thought one of the archetypes for Therera would be Joan Revers that I thought that I don't know. If you know the story about Joan Rivers in Late Night and how poorly she was treated when she got her own show, I'm sure you do. Yeah, And I always thought that's really fucking unfair what happened.
Now I know it's so heartbreaking.
I know, yeah, yes, we you know, there's many people that Debra's and and malcolmission of and certainly Droan is one of them that we talked about a lot and researched a lot. And yeah, she got such a raw deal with with the Tonight Show and being banned from it and then her show.
That's really it's.
Heartbreaking because she had the audacity to do her own show, Yeah, right.
Which is such a you have to think like anybody would understand someone doing that.
I don't know. I mean it seems like maybe now I feel like in show business. One of the things I always loved about show business, and I really believe this, there's room for everybody, Like everybody doesn't really matter, you
know it. I know it feels like I think, particularly when you're young, when everybody's competitive and everyone's trying make their bones, that you feel like if they're getting success, then somehow I'm going to there's a lovely scene of that actually in the first scene of Hacks, when they meet in the line for that show in Vegas and they're talking about, you know, other people who are doing really well. Oh yeah, I love that. So true.
There's this like kind of thing that when you're young, you feel like someone's success is your failure. And I remember, I remember when I started writing and was young and doing it. I really had to like train myself out of that way of thinking because it's so kind of negative. I'm glad that I'm at a point in my career where I don't.
Well, I think. I think a bit of success will help you get rid of it as well, I think.
But I hope I got I think I got rid of it also before before, like yesterday, I think.
But but yeah, it is true. It's really hard, especially that career isn't where you want.
It to be. Yeah.
That gore Vidal's which is it's not enough that I succeed, it's that my friends have to fail. Yeah.
Yeah, and a lot of I mean, you come from the stand up world, which I feel like is even maybe a little more cut throat that way than an improvert sketch where I came from. That's a lot of still stand ups takes. I think, Oh yeah, I think so.
I although I have to say I had a similar conversation with Bill Hayder about this because I asked them about when he was on Saturday Night Live, and he took a similar route to you in a way that you know, he came out and started, you know, and making Barry and running the show. And I said, were you very competitive when you were all working together as Saturday Live? And he said, no, we actually wearn't. We
were quite It was quite collegiate, he said. But I heard about it from the old the previous cast, and he said, and he thinks it might be a generational thing, which might be a bit like that as well. I think for all the kind of noise that people my age make about people your age, I think that actually younger people are kind of a bit better with each other. I think so.
I think something I noticed in younger comedians, even the ones that are super driven, there is less I think people have evolved a bit out of the mentality that someone else needs to fail for you to succeed. Like, Yeah, I do think that hopefully there's a better kind of collective mindset around that, I.
Guess it comes down to the individual. So when Debra go was into late night in this season, so I'm actually, you know, I don't know if you've gotted this. I'm actually a huge fan of this show. I mean really, it's there are shows that I like, Yeah, your show, the first three seasons of The Righteous Gemstones, and then and then I don't know, I'm going back.
To maybe okay, you're going to go into a long list, but that it ended there and then you're back to Soprano's a show.
From and the Wire.
I mean, you're mash Yeah, you know what was the the the Adams Family, you know, the original cash you know.
Yeah, well that means that means a lot coming from you, and I'm I am so curious. And we have been lucky enough to hear from other late night hosts that they liked the show. I mean, watching this season, I hope it doesn't give you PTSD because it is firmly in the world in which you lived, and you're one of the only people on earth.
That has quite this experience.
I know, it's funny. I had a conversation with Jimmy Kimmel a few years ago when he said, you know, we this was actually before I left. It was just as I was. He said, you know, we should all kind of get together me, you, j Alas and stuff and have a dinner or something, because there are so few people that have done this, And I was like, nah, I want to do that.
Why why do you say now?
I don't know, but I know that I know that Dave would say the same thing. But what's interesting is I feel much more sanguine and affectionate towards late night now that I don't do it got it, And I know that Dave is in a very similar place with it.
You know.
I feel like like once I went diving with sharks in the Bahamas, and I'm really glad I did it. I'm never fucking doing it again. And that's kind of That's kind of how I feel about it. It has a I'm really glad that I'm proud of what we did, but I I'm glad you're.
Happy you got out of the world when you did.
I am. I am happy I get out of the water. I am happy to get out of it. And so what happens with hacked, because you're at the point now if you're starting season four. A lot of what you're doing now, if my timeline is correct, and what it's like to be in charge of an operation in show business, A lot of what you're doing now will involve being HR.
Well it's not HR, but it certainly is.
And I have discussed this before. The interesting thing about show running is you start as a writer. You come up as a writer, you're like, I like writing TV. It's something I feel like I'm good at and I want to pursue. And then once you get your own show, all of a sudden you're in charge of a two hundred and fifty person corporation and there's a skill set of show running that is completely different from the skill
set of writing comedy. And that has been a real learning experience over the last you know, four or five years now, Propology and myself, because you're right that there's just a lot of things that you have to deal with that you never envision having to deal with when you're just unstabed.
People's problems and their feelings about that, I know, it's like, oh my god, yeah, and like, you know, when if someone isn't doing like The thing I find very challenging is knowing, you know, if someone isn't doing a great job or it's not a great fit, like the letting go of someone, which you know, we have luckily knock on Wood haven't had to do a lot, but that that's really difficult to me because it's very hard to divorce the fact that this is a human being and
this is their life and their livelihood.
And I find that to be I've really had to do work around that because it's real. It's difficult.
Also, you will be alienated from the other side because you become a resource to other people and you become if you're the boss you start, you go from that possession of being scrappy writer for Jimmy Fallen to you know, boss lady in charge.
Yeah, totally.
Did you have any I mean, I'm friendly with Marta Kaufman, who's you know, is your rat friends and yeah, you know, such great shows and she seems to me to be someone who's kept her humanity through the process. Did you do you have a mentor for that? Did you talk to anyone? Was there anyone that you could Yeah?
I think that, you know, I was really lucky and that I came up on Mike Sure shows so Parks and rec and The Good Place were created by Mike Sure, and Mike is Mike is a really excellent boss in that he's He's just a genuinely good, deeply good person.
And so that I think helped me. I had a good role model for running a room in terms of that.
And then I think though it is that like it's a it's a good way to put it, like keeping your humanity in staf in check with your humanity, because I think you can get so some people get so myopic and focused on the end goal of the show or the you know, and you do you have to do that. You have to be protecting the show and protecting your work, but you also do need to stay in touch with your humanity and that these are human
beings that you're working with. So it is something that's a difficult part of it because it's exactly in play in you is the intersection of art and commerce. You're trying to stay creative and vulnerable to create something real and funny and truthful, but you're also having to be management and make some decisions along the way that maybe
emotion doesn't serve you as well. And so it's a really interesting thing to balance, and I hope over the years I've only gotten better at it because it's a difficult thing.
It is a difficult thing, and it isn't ultimately I think. I think for me, I had to make a choice, but I gotta go ye on this, And I think that what I think is fascinating about it is that the people I know who have gone through your the probably like going through a showrunner's type life. You know, if you look at well, I suppose a great archetype for it would be Larry David. Yes, yeah, you know, going to that if I look at I mean, I
always liked Seinfeld. Who didn't like Seinfeld? But having watched Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld is a much better show. It's a much better show knowing who Larry is and what Larry is and seeing him in this show.
Seeing him injury.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's kind of fascinating. And I wonder do you have any is there any I mean, I know you're very busy and you're very inside this world and all that, but is there any kind of point where you think that performances for you or moving in that direction is something that you would want to explore.
No, I really, I really am not a performer, and I do not not that I like I've been.
I've acted in things here and there, but it's not. It doesn't light me up. It doesn't.
I don't get the kind of fulfillment that other people get from it. I just really don't. I don't feel comfortable doing it. And and I think one thing you're speaking to about when you said like I had to get out and the management and the pressure is like, I think one thing that has really saved me and made sure running tolerable is that I'm never doing it alone. I'm doing it with Polachia, and I never feel alone. And I say this all the time, like I could
not show Run alone. I would feel I would go crazy if I felt like I didn't have two people that were in it with me and fully understanding the experience of what we're what we're doing. So I also wonder, like, was that a difficult part of it for you? Did you feel? I mean, like you said, it's on the door and your name on the stationary, like it was really all about you, and that probably felt really like solitary.
I think I think for a personality like mine, which is kind of like, you know, I'm kind of alcoholic addict that I know. I feel like I'm the piece of ship at the center of the universe, do you know what I mean. It's like a conflicting narcissism and self hatred and stuff that I think for a personality like mine, it's highly toxic. I think for somebody like I think Seth is like Tom Bombadill with that ship, it just it just doesn't fucking the ring just has
no power over them. He's like, I can do it. I was like, oh my god, don't you go like I was like, ah, my precious.
He's like, no, it's possible that, like demons, you have, the job will draw those out.
And I think success does that. I think I think success nip for for demons. I think that for whatever darkness you have. And Jan, my dear, who you know, my new best friend. I have to tell you, I don't believe for a second that someone that can write like you right doesn't have fucking demons.
So they definitely I definitely have demons, for sure. I have demons.
Do you find them activated by I mean, do you find them activated by busyness and success?
And yeah, well, I kind of mine come from.
I had a very specific upbringing where my parents it was a very difficult household. There were a lot of fighting, a lot of like my mom was not mentally well. It was a chaotic upbringing for sure. And I think what's interesting is my demons. I deal with my demons in the quest for success. Like in I was an only child and so I was very much so alone in that environment, and in my way of coping was to really hone in on school and academics, and I was like, I'm going to be the best student I
can because I saw it as a life raft. I saw it as a thing that would get me out of that situation. And I just as easily could have seen drugs or alcohol as that. I just, for whatever reason, school and work and that was my thing that was
getting me out. But in that same way, it's a coping mechanism, and I've had to also work with the balance of it made me addicted to work, it made me addicted to not to success for the sake of success, the way some people are like, oh, I just want to be successful because I want to see my name on deadline or whatever. It's more it's the demons thing. It's a coping mechanism.
I still feel I need it to get out.
That makes sense to me. What you're saying makes perfect sense, because the idea if you use the word chaotic, if you are around chaos as a young person, then what could be more the antithesis of that than becoming a writer when you're in charge of the story. You know, yes, yes, now you you create order by writing it down and it now occurs like that. I think it's a fantastically clever use of your darkness. Yeah, that's off to you. It's much better than cocaine. I think, much better than
cocaine and alcohol. I feel like your.
Chic fun it's less fun.
Oh I don't know about that.
Well, it's it's that's more fun for a little bit, and then that gets really unfun.
This is yeah, but yeah, but it is. It's exactly that.
It's you're if you grow up in a world that doesn't really make sense. So many people become writers because they are trying to create a world in which they can make sense of it.
I think that I think everything comes down to that, doesn't it. It's like your first ten years will inform the next seventy whatever you will do and I wonder about that later on. What does that look like for you? And is there any kind of look I don't do this, so I don't expect anyone else to do it, but I feel like I as someone like talking to you, who you know you do right? You do, create order? Is there an end goal? Is there a plan beyond the job that you're working on, like as apecific?
Not really no, I mean I think like.
What's interesting is I think it's it's really more the work that I have to do is sitting with stillness and not doing things, and that I find to be the most challenging because I think the way I've gone about my career and I've been really lucky and I feel very privileged to get to create things and have
people connect with them. But like, I have been sort of on this treadmill for a long long time, and I find out when I have to stop, anytime I have to stop, that's that is like the real challenge for me.
So I don't know that there's a goal.
I feel so lucky to do what I do and I want to keep doing it for as long as I can, But I don't know that I don't want for much more in my career because I've been so blessed up unto this point.
Is there a form of writing, because as far as I know, and I could be wrong, As far as I know all of you, writing is contained in the world of television. Is there is there a book?
Is there a book?
You know?
Some of my agent asked me this the other day. I don't know that there's a book.
There's not a novel. I don't envision myself writing a novel. I would maybe write a book of essays or something nonfiction about my life when I have lived more of it and have more to tell.
But no, not a novel.
One of our hacks writers just wrote a novel over like that comes out soon, and I'm so impressed because I just my brain doesn't think that way.
I can't picture doing more like prose.
I feel like I'm going to predict that you will change course on that, oh using book. Look, I'm not the boss of you, but I'm just saying.
It'd be cool of you. I would love someone to tell me what to do, so.
I feel like there are some Now. Look, I don't know who writes what in the script of hacks. But I hear the way that these characters look. I know the rules. I know that, you know, dialogue is exposition. I know that that. I know that every single thing that they're saying is telling the story. Even knowing that rule, I can't see it. That's some good, right, Oh, thank you, thank you, And so whoever, whatever you guys are doing
in there, there is a love of pros. There is a you know, embrace, embrace Mono, embrace the you know, embrace the embrace the Luddite pros and see where it goes. I think you'd enjoy it. I think it's if you talk about imposing order on chaos, like when I was going through I wrote I've written one novel so far, one and a half. And when I wrote the novel, I was going through a terrible well. I don't know if anyone goes through a good divorce, but I was
going through a divorce. Funny, I was going through an amazing it was such fun, such a riot where oh we had such a laugh. But I was going through a divorce when I wrote the novel. And if you talk about getting a world where you could impose everything, because one time I was getting a divorce, and i'd had I'd written a movie which had stiffed it had gone straight to video, which that's you know, that's usually long ago was because now going straight to videos what
you need? Yeah yeah, I'd like streaming right away. Oh that's right. Yeah yeah. But the idea of imposing order on chaos. It became extremely therapeutic during all that to go to a world that I was one hundred percent in charge of. It's interesting. That's interesting. You don't have to have a plan, because once you create the first five or six pages, then it seems to kind of take you where it wants to take you. Oh yeah, I.
Probably shouldn't be so quick to dismiss it, because I might actually really like it.
I think you might.
I hate writing alone. I get really and again, this is about the stillness.
This is about the right.
Even though I am like I don't.
At a party, I'm not again to go back down and I'm going to be like the loudest person pulling focus.
I also really don't.
Look.
I hate writing alone. I like being alone. I like doing things alone. I'm very much an only child in that way. But writing alone is torture to me.
I think you'll get used to it like all of you don't like all of us until you're thirty. That's it's the same thing. Your tastes will change.
Okay, okay, good good.
I don't know. I understand it though. Like people say when they go away to the country to write, I can't write shit in the country. I can't. But if I walk around the stay block in New York, I come back with an idea, right right, right, it's been around. I understand that. I understand the being around it. But look, whatever you're doing, keep fucking doing it because it's awesome. Thanks, and I'm very impressed. I feel like when you do write a book, I am entitled to ten percent of the sure for.
Sure you're getting yes, yeah, yeah, Maybe you can write the introduction.
Yeah yeah, I will, and then I'll write a little thing on the back.
Yeah this was you said, this was my idea.
This is my idea. But you know I got admit Jen that show up and type it all right. It's been great to talk to you. Good luck with the new season, Highs. It's such a great show. Congratulations to everyone's been so lovely to talk to you.
Well, please let me know what you think because it is. It is a world you live, so I hope we did it justice and got it right.
It doesn't deserve justice, it just deserves to be reported A thanks like SAgs Bake