Delaney Rowe

You'll know because you're the bellwether of cultural zegeist. What is it called when you know guys want that kind of the perfect it's the perfect, like descriptor of the girlfriend, Manic Pixy dream girl. That's exactly right. Did you see how quickly she knew what I was talking about? You see how she speaks youth. She speaks youth. That's my bread and butter. Well, Manic Pixie dream girl, Yeah.

That's me.

Well, I think I was just manic. I was just fan of Hello, I'm mini driver. I've always loved Proust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing.

The other player's true nature.

In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appear to be universal. And it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation stuff. So I adapted Pru's questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are pertinent to a person's story.

They are When and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines.

Love for you?

What question would you most like answered? What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group.

Of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience, or the most surprising.

Or created the most fertile ground to connect.

My guest today is writer and comedian Delaney Rowe. She has millions and millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok, But I hesitate to use the term social media personality because to me as a descriptor, it lacks the depth of interest that Delaney possesses. Now, this could just be me forcing narratives into concepts, I understand, But she makes what are essentially short films on Instagram and TikTok. Her most famous creation being a character called insufferable female lead

Okay? I used to be a private chef like before what I do now, and that was a crazy time in my life because it was the thing that allowed me to realize I can do very difficult things. I can access a stamina in myself that I didn't know that I had, maybe growing up and then being in a highly pressorized situation like being a private chef for like big clients who are expecting so much from you.

Wow, I think that's such a good point about learning how to do hard things. I think that's like that. I talk about that a lot with my son. That part of my job is to teach him how to do that. But I think figuring out for yourself just by actually doing it is even more impassibl Yeah, how would you get to the venue? How would you do? Uber?

When you were go it was wagon to the grocery store, fill the wagon and then lift the wagon into the back of a black suv like Uber black suv.

Oh my god. It was like I was ripped, Manny.

I had these insane biceps from just you know, and like you know, they're athletes, so it's like you're carrying.

Like boxes of booze in.

It was just and I was like this kind of like tiny twenty two year old, and I was like, I don't ever have to work out. I just have to do this job forever. You're on your feet your Wow. Fuck, it's big, like in a good way, like Mustella, like it's awesome.

I was like, I was ripped.

I miss it.

My god, how amazing, So which leads very nicely then into what would I can't wait to hear this? What would be your last?

It's going to be a little disappointing. I think it always is. My favorite food in the world is just white rice, and I love it with just some sort of like fat.

My choice is butter, So like white.

Rice with a ton of butter, and then I would put two over easy eggs on that, and I have that most days for breakfast. So I like that my last meal is something that I kind of have every day. Like that's how much I love it.

That's very comforting. But I also like that. I like that you have it for breakfast and that's how you would go out, and it was my last meal.

Two bottles of wine and a pack of cigarettes one hundred percent Magenta Capri cigarettes. Yeah, two bottles of orange wine and a pack cigarettes one hundred percent.

I love the drinking natural wine and smoking a pack of ye way out. Now, have you just developed a real taste for orange wine?

Yeah, I'm like that. I'm into that shit. I'm into that world all of a sudden. And I actually got into the world because when I was cheffing, I had this massive budget to spend on wine every day. And athletes they're not drinking a ton of wine. Most of them weren't anyway, like it was more like Don Julio nineteen forty two, Like that was kind of there. But you know, I had all this extra budget for wine, so I would buy the wine anyway and.

Then I would drink it, and then I would drink it. Yeah, that's right, I was doing.

I'm a hero, Okay, I'm a hero. I would also get like a book about wine, and then I'd be reading a book about wine as I would wait for them to come home and in between lunch and dinner service, and I'm like, try and love it a loine and have it a great time.

Is wine you'r thing? Is wine what you love? Yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah yeah, yeah, wine. Wine is a really big deal.

I have wine fridges in both my apartments because of that.

It's a big deal for me.

I'm not taking cocktails off the table though, Like of course, I love a martini as much as the next broad So, like gin is also big for me.

I like monkey forty seven gin.

You know this?

Do I know? That? Chin Chin Chin? For me is just it's just the taste of hopelessness, cleaning supplies. I get that.

I do get that. What is your drink? Oh?

Tequila on the Rocks. I just love a good episode. But I love beer, Okay, cool girl of beer. I also love cheap beer, no way, man, by the way. That's honestly. It was because you get these weird YenS, like when you get pregnant and stuff, and one of them. I'd never really been a beer drinker before, and then I had this yen that never went away since I had my son, and I just I fucking love them hops. That is great, that's sexy. I love that you're saying that it's sexy and it's cool on Never in a

Fol It was mostly athletes and then it was some other actors and like people like that as well.

But did you stop doing that to do what you're doing now or did you do them in like concurrently?

Yeah? I was doing at the end there, I was doing it concurrently and it was so embarrassing. I'd be like in the kitchen making like gaspacho and I would like hear my voice on their phone, like I would come up on their TikTok and I was like, that's not me, that's a look alike. And then I had a job and naturally, and then in that gap between finding a new driver, I was like, what if I just don't find a new job and see what happens with this internet stuff?

And then blah and beholt I'm on Mini Drivers podcast. Dude, would to be able to like, it's so impressive to be able to convert what's funny and interesting and that you have a facility for into actually being able to live off. Like that's quite something, Like it really is, Like I think it's such an extraordinary bit of alchemy to ever be able to take your interest that's outside of what you've been previously doing, particularly and make a

Easy? I can be so self centered and single minded. I was having a discussion with someone last night who was talking about a very specific experience to them, and I went no, that can't be right, and he goes, no, no, no, Just because you haven't experienced it doesn't mean it's not true for me, And I was like, aha, yes, you're probably right about that. So a lot of that goes on with me, a lot of if I haven't felt it,

Here, how do you do that? Do you do that by listening and going I'm just going to let this like talk and I'm not going to comment on what he's saying, even if I don't agree with it, Like how do you practice it?

How I practice it is by allowing myself to be incorrect a lot like looking for reasons that evidence in my mind for whatever I'm thinking, like the contrary evidence of that, where I'm like, okay, now look for examples in the world where what you're so sure of is not true and you can always find it.

So I try to do that.

I try to prove myself wrong a lot because I actually really want to be wrong.

It makes me feel hopeful. I love it. You must love getting pulled over by the cops. Well, thank you for setting right. I needed to feel wrong and now I do. Maybe that's my king being wrong sounds like it either way. That's so hilarious. It's like being cool breaking an entering, right, I'm just doing this is like right, this is my I'm trying to better myself. Yeah, this honestly this doesn't live like self improvement. It looks like I'm trying to make your jewelry, but it is self improvement.

Right, It's that, And then it also manifests itself and just like this intense like horse blinder focus around something that I'm working on, where it is like everything around me is just like destroyed tables flipped over, like apartment in disarray until I like finish that thing. And I'm using like examples of like physical objects, but same with relationships, like I will let things really go by the wayside, communicating with my family, like romantic things. It's just like

You know what, I home, you didn't grow out of all of it. Some therapist, rather brilliantly it said to me once when I was whatever it was I was going through, It was like, you never want to get rid of one hundred percent of your shit. You always need to keep a certain percentage in order to recognize it, in order to know it, and also in order to pay it its dues for having taught you. And I was like, oh my god, I'm supposed to literally tithe

And I think also those.

Women were told there was supposed to iron out every single thing that is somehow difficult or unappealing, when a natural thing what you've just described. Yes, I know that being self centered and single minded. I've been there, of suffering the loss of relationships and family, being mad, But it's also becomes the engine. There's nobody else motivating you.

Often like just two sides of the same coin like that. Yeah, so you need it? What's yours? Yeah?

What's yours? Everything mine a spiral, a spiral, and I pull everything into the vortex of the small thing that's going wrong is suddenly everything? Is this just in a form of anxiety? Do you?

I think?

Yeah? Which I never had that word. I really genuinely never had that word. And there was never a bottom to it, so you could never actually hit the bottom and go, oh what was that? It was a kind of I think it's a free fall. And I think also because there wasn't a word for it, and so there wasn't a medication or a therapy or anything. Is it be years of putting that together to go, oh,

Of like pathologies to other people, being like, hey, this is what's going on right now. I even have a signal now to the people in my life. I shake my hands like this. If I'm like going into this weird sort of introverted like the hall, I just go.

I'll talk to you in three hours. Listen. Communication and the ability to teach people about your language. I think that's really cool to be able to do that. Yeah, it's not easy, all this living now, it's not You've got to find whatever tools you possibly can. Becoming friendly with and having signals I think is all really positive. I love what you do. Jazz hair.

Yeah, I don't know. It seems like a way to make people laugh when it's happening. So it's just sort of like.

Hey, delady's going into that mode exactly. I might have to steal that. That's really good. That's really great. Where and when were you happiest?

Okay, I recently threw a dinner party at my loft in Los Angeles. This moment where I wake up and I know that that evening I'm entertaining, I'm having a bunch of people over. That moment is when I'm the happiest.

And then you come home.

And it's the stay of repping and creating sauces while all simultaneously watching like a Nancy Meyer's movie at the background. That's my ritual I love to put on a movie and I'm getting ready for a dinner party, and then it's the making the table, setting the table. I did some really crazy things where I would like go to the fabric District in Los Angeles and make my own

Wow, God, if I've got sixteen people coming over, I wake up on the morning to be like, oh fucking footballs, yeah, wow, so good. How most people find that way? I know, and my sister loves it. You two and you I'm sure are very good at it because you take pleasure in it.

Yeah, I think it's a performance or maybe even a manipulation, because it's look at how I can show you that my life is put together.

Look at all these little tricks I'm showing you.

How I shut then oyster in, how I was able to get sixteen bottles of wine.

It is a little bit of a manipulation.

And I think about that a lot.

That's interesting how I'm come instantly, not constantly every now and again, when I'm stop breaking down, Like performance and being an actor, I can never get away from the embarrassing need for approbation and of people's acknowledgement of what I've done and needing supports the nice way of saying it around that, are you aware of kind of your foibles around the things that you like? You say, that's a tenet of you. Having a dinner party is going.

I definitely think it's part of being a performer of any kind. I think that people who have been doing it for a really long time and have been able to sustain a career as a performer probably are able to shed that sooner rather than later, because it's an unsustainable way to go about doing it expecting that sort of positive feedback loop.

Yeah, I think about sometimes my apartment.

It's more of like a set that I've like, really thought about the production design of it more than enough apartment. Oh, I've got these beautiful gold salt and pepper grinders.

Do I like these?

Or do I just want them so that people see them and go, Delaney has those?

And what does that say?

That she found those or sourced them from an interesting vantage website and she must have such a rich internal life?

What am I always looking for? But that's it. I think it's interesting. I've always felt like if one is in on the jug of what one is doing, that there's an absolution in that. Like it was like, is this Delaney wanting the gold pepper and salt things or is this actually me wanting to bread? Like I think having that self awareness, I think it's observably that way, and none of this is much to come across as patronizing even if it does. But I am significantly older

There's this sort of funny rhetoric on it where it's like, if you are even considering whether you're a narcissist or googling it, you're probably not a narcissist. And I'm like, okay, but come on, there's got to be a loopho hole there. That's some narcissists have figured out.

So I'm still not stop free on that. No convinced, Yeah, no, convinced, not entirely.

Are the really good narcissists in on that too.

Yeah, exactly. I'm really well prepared. What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you.

I was actually watching when Harry met Sali recently, and you know how it's interspersed with these introductions to these couples who have been together in real life for like one hundred and forty seven years. It's like Marty and Nancy met in a bread factory and they've been together for two hundred years. I I am really fascinated by couples who withstand like an insane test of time like that, because it's increasingly rare, and I find it very old

I love that My aunt was married for sixty two years and he died quite recently, and I was asking her about her marriage and she said, it's like a centrifuge, and you have all of these things that will get put into that centrifige. But because there was a ton of shit that went down that he did and that today we would go, well, I can't believe they didn't get divorced or whatever from whatever, all these different things.

Of course, love makes everything better, and it makes when something is networking in your life, it makes that all the sweeter because you go, it's okay, I'm in love. I don't have to work out with it. I'm in love.

I just paid X amount of taxes. I'm fine, I'm in love.

That's what I like about love. It really does make everything better. And I find that, like when I'm in love, I am healthyest physically healthy, Like my like disposition changes when I'm in love, Like my hair looks better, you know. And these are all probably results of the hormonal in flux coursing through your system, of course, with.

What comes with love. But yeah, totally that's really nice. That's really nice to acknowledge that I don't know that I really liked being in love that much. Are you in love at the moment? Well, oh yes, there I go, Oh yes, I But I have to say it is an evolved version of the love that I felt at twenty six is different from the love that I feel. I love them both, but this one feels like it could manage a tornado, and it could in it will.

What would you say to the mid to late twenties MANI who is either in love or falling in love?

What's that love advice that you're going to give now? It genuinely would say, just please just put a moratorium on dating actors. Just don't do it. Just don't do it. Just if I'm going to do one thing, I'm not going to do this, because there isn't with all the love in the world, and God knows, I love actors. I love them, fascinated by them. I think they're sexy and cool and great, and they do what I do, and they love what I love, and I love watching how they do it. Or there is room, but it's

I've constructed a theory in the last few months, which is that within every great romantic relationship, there is the ham, and then there's the straight man. And this reference doesn't work because'm actually about to reference to actors, but it's like, there's got to be the Charlie Day and then there's the Jason Bateman, meaning like Charlie's the hair, and then we've got a straight man over here. So it's like, I've noticed that whenever I have a relationship that's really working,

By the way, Can I tell you that is what Addison has in all of his like capacious intellectual amazingness, what he has done for me is just to let me be the ham, not be angry with me for it. Not put poke fun at me, not feel threatened, not be jealous, not be jealous. I need to shut it down. So maybe to throw that blanket thing over. Well, just no actors, But I really do think as a general rule of thumb, the actors are better off with civilians. Yeah.

I've done it both, so I'll let you know how it goes.

You know, it's all up in the air and now.

But no, I'd love to date like a dentist. That sounds great. Dentists start really on RAYA is the problem?

Have you ever been on Riya?

Really?

I yet? No, I have not been on Rare. I've swiped through with a friend of mine, and the world of online dating that is quite something. Oh yeah, is that way you meet people?

No, I meet people at work events and they're usually actors, writers, directors, comedians.

I've got a hot dentist.

I'm really to it.

Yeah, okay, I'm not even kidding. Then where does he live. He's like in Hudson. Oh that's not too far. Okay, I'm in Chinatown. I'm definitely texting him after we we hang out. Okay, how old are we talking? He's thirty four. Oh, that's per effect. I know that's where dentist. I was like, hold please, she looks like me. You're gonna be so happy. Okay,

The theme music is also by me.

An Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, Anick oppenheim, A, Nick Muller and Annette Wolfe at w kp R, Will Pearson, Nicki Etoor, Morgan Levoy and Mangesh had ticke Adore