What do you do in life doesn't go according to plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one, or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down with a guest to talk about the times they were knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Some stories are funny, others are cut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question, now What? So I asked Chris if there was anything that he wanted to say to you, and he said, tell him. I loved watching him on celebrity Wheel of Wortune. Continue tell me about that experience. I loved being on it. But I had one of those I had that thing happened that I was afraid
would happen. When you watch you at home, you're like, oh, it's this, and then when you're actually there in the moment, I had a huge brain freeze and apparently the other contestants behind me were like, it's kill Can you not see this? And oh, God, I could never do those total brain freezes. Never do those things. Even if I knew all of the information, I think I would just panic for some reason. Oh yeah, but um, I remember
there's a great comedian named Tom Kenny. He's the voice of SpongeBob, and he talks about you watch Wheel of Fortune and you think that you're a genius because the people on that show ago, I'm gonna try to guess a stitch in Tom saves pork, and then so you're like, I'm the smartest person. People are idiots. And then right after Wheel of Fortune is Jeopardy, where you feel like the dumbest, like just stuff you've never heard of, Like, why are they doing this to my ego? Right now?
My guest today is Patton Oswalt. Patton is one I have admired for quite some time. He's an Emmy and Grammy Award winning comedian, an actor, and truly a genuinely good guy. If you haven't seen him on one of his many comedy specials, chances are you've heard him as the voice of Remy and Retta Tui, or maybe you've seen him on a p bio or King of Queens Veep Gaslet, young adult. The list just goes on. Patton
has had an incredible career with tremendous range. He's one of those rare actors who can appeal to both a five year old and a fifty year old. He's also had some very public now what moments, including the unexpected loss of his wife, Michelle back in two thousand and sixteen. Patton's life is an exercise in resilience, and his story is one that I think will resonate with many people, especially those who are grieving a great loss. So, without
further ado, here is Patton Oswalt Patton Oswalt Brook. So nice to see you. How are you good? Good? How my god? I uh, I was just thinking I have not seen Chris Hench in a decade or so. I said the same thing, and he was like, oh man, that's so great that Patent is coming on your show. I miss him. We've got to see him. Tell him. I say, I, um, now, I'm from New York and you're you were on an episode of Seinfeld. So it would kind of be a logical question as to which
one of us is more authentic New Yorker? You are? You could not be more authentically New Yorker. Not only are you, you're more authentic than the New Yorkers who live there now because you got to grow up during the most New York East of New York. You grew up in the seventies and eighties, when everything that influenced fashion, hip hop, everything. You were right in the middle of that. You could look down on current New Yorkers. That is that is how authentically New York you are. You grew
up during all that stuff. I was in there in the heart of it. Definitely. Where did you grow up? I grew up in the bland suburbs of northern Virginia. No culture, nothing, just suburbs. We got everything. We got everything six months late. We we had. We had such opposite childhoods. You were there at the epicenter. You were like watching the Talking Heads form, and I was finding out about the Talking Heads my senior year of high school after they were about to break up. Like, that's
how slow the news was getting to me. Where You're just like, what kind of little kid were you? I was a little I was a kid who was super into monsters, films, the growth test because where I grew up was so peaceful and so solid and steady that I craved the weirdness because there was no change in the structure at all. So I wanted the chaos. I wanted that weirdness. It was just hard to get to it because you know, I got it all second hand.
Like what did you do for fun? What was what would like a big thing you would look forward to? Would be well, one thing we would do for fun. But maybe you you will agree with this boy. The seventies was about um benign parental neglect. We basically almost got killed every day riding bikes without helmets, building ramps, jumping them. There were construction sites all over our development. We would go play war games and they half constructed
houses and fall through foot. It's amazing any of us survived when you look back at the childhood that we had in the seventies and eighties, because we're supposed to be outside and active. This is good parenting, even though we're riding our bikes into gorges for your parents. Funny.
My parents themselves weren't funny, but they loved comedy. My dad was a huge comedy fan and had, you know, Steve Martin records, Jonathan Winter's record, so there I always had access to really good comedy, and then having that stuff like watching Carol Burnett with my parents would lead to me sneaking downstairs on Saturday night to watch SNL. Who are your You're like icons comedy icons of that ofot era, I mean, Richard Pryor was. It was just
like massive and still is for me. Steve Martin, George Carlin, obviously, all the SNL stuff, all the SCTV stuff. But then once I started doing comedy when I was nineteen, my influences were just all my friends. When I went to my first open mic, which I didn't do well at, but I was like, oh my god, I'm actually hanging out at the source of where people are making up jokes. I'm actually here watching it get invented. And I just
loved the hang. I loved the lifestyle so much that I knew that this is the world I wanted to be in. What did your parents say when you said I'm going to be a comedian? That was Well, here's what was weird I was. I started doing open mics between my freshman and sophomore year of college, and and that's that summers when I realized, oh, I really want to pursue this, and my parents, my dad was my dad loves comedy, so he was very excited. My mom, of course, being a mom, was like, but I want
you to have a backup job. I want you to be saved. And it was also this unspoken you just finished your freshman year of college. You're gonna finish college and then you can do whatever you want. You can't like, I don't want you dropping out of college to pursue comedy. At least finished college, which made college kind of frustrating for me because especially senior year, I knew what I wanted to be doing. I mean, I was getting booked
at that point. I was a professional comedian, so it felt very It felt like I was in that dream you know those dreams where you're back in high school and you're like, but I know, but I'm I'm Brookshields, I have a wife and family in New York. Yeah, but you gotta do this geology test, Like no, this doesn't apply to me anymore. And it's like that was the actual life I was living for real. Okay, well that was a perfect segue into my next question. I
named the show now What because it's really me. It's about those pivotal moments in your life. You know, when things don't go the way you've expected them to or you think they should, or and you have to find a way to move forward. So if you were to like look at those early years, what were some of those now what moments? Well, a big now what moment for me was, um, you know, I got engaged when I was in college and I was going to get married and live in Northern Virginia and try to make
it as a comedian. And the girl I was engaged it was a wonderful person, but she was very open and honest about I don't want to leave this area. I'm very happy living here and I'd like us to live here. And I realized I have to go because the comedy boom in the late eighties was kind of collapsing, and I'm like, I need to move to work. So I flipped a coin and I was like, do I go to New York or San Francisco. Actually I fake
flipped a coin and pretend to like I did. But I had a friend say, you're meal to go someplace and starve. Go someplace warm. So that's one less problem you need to worry about. So I moved to San Francisco where there were a lot of clubs, but I had to break off an engagement and it was it was really rough. Um. So that was that big, you know,
that was one of them. And then there was another one where I remember I was really really in the San Francisco scene and really loved it, but I had an opportunity to go down to l A. Which at the time, and I don't know if you remember how it was in the early nineties, it was very much gen X, grunge, riot girl, don't sell out, stay real, don't move down to l A. And so I had to make that decision do I stay in San Francisco do I moved down to l A. And there's always
been those little moments where you have to make a choice, and sometimes the best choice is to do what feels like the uncomfortable, scary thing. You've had such an incredible personal journey, and there's one very tragic event that that you talk about in your special Annihilation. Um it's beyond a O what moment um, But can you talk a little bit about your first wife, Michelle, who passed away very suddenly, very very suddenly, in just out of nowhere.
It was horrible. I was just talking to my daughter because she's thirteen now, and I was saying, if I seemed very cold and distant to you during that time, because I know that you were going through some bad stuff. I just in my mind, I think I went into defensive mode and that she's gone through enough shock and trauma. I can't let her see me crying and breaking down and freaking out. I've got to be this strong, steady pillar for her, and I can do my healing out
of sight of her. And now I'm wondering was that the best idea, because I really got wired into how traumatic that must have been for because I could just imagine if I had lost my parents at her age, it would have shattered my world. So I I think I overcorrected to make sure that she had this absolutely steady presence, and in being this steady presence I did, I wasn't as human as I was, so I was
experiencing it and hiding it. And then it wasn't until later that I could start to experience joy and actual life again. M Although the people in my grief group were like, you will experience joy again, I know you can't imagine this, but you will, it will happen. Did someone tell you that there was this grief group or
did you look? Look. I had a friend who lost his wife and he turned me onto this place although this was this was interesting, So I called him immediately because I wanted my daughter to get into a grief group immediately. And they said, you actually have to wait a couple of months because if you go into the group right now, you will end up not processing a lot of this stuff, because we will you'll get the
tools too early. You actually have to let this be painful and sloppy for a while and let all of this stuff get out, and then you go to the grief group to process it. But if you go here too early, we'll nip it in the bud and you'll never actually face it. And it was this really why it was a harsh thing to hear. But these are people that knew and have gone through this, and we're just like, no, no, you have to this is what you have to do. Who were the people that you
were able to lean on at that time? Um? My family, Michelle's family, all of her she came from a massive Irish brood. My family is my mom my dad and my brother. Her family is like sixty people, and um, so they were there for me. And then also, I know this sounds really weird. A lot of my I'm very lucky. A lot of my friends are comedians, and comedians really understand darkness and know how to mock it in a very smart, tasteful way that makes it manageable.
I remember six months after Michelle passed, my manager was like, you got an offer to be on this show. Those who can't it's a little part. Just go and do something, go work. You need to just go and do something. So I went and did it. And at this point, like my friend's sister had died, and then this other friend of mine her husband had died. And I'm sitting there with Susie Essman. Susie Esthman was also on the show,
and I'm She's like, are you okay, sweetie. I was like, yeah, I just you know, like my wife passed away, and now my friend's sister just died, and my other friend's husband just died. It's like I feel like I am I this avatar of death and I just bringing death everywhere I go. And then she said, you're not that important. Sweetie, and it it cracked me up, and it also brought me out of my narcissistic funk. It was, but it was the perfect thing for her to say to me.
It's it, But it's got to be hard to be funny when you're going through tragedy. Well, not only is it hard to be funny, you really questioned, is this disgusting of me to even do this? Is this? What right do I have to be up here doing? But but then I was talking to my my shrink, who at that point I was talking to like two or three times a week, and he said, you have a skill. You can make people laugh. People are also going through awful things out there. Yes, you have gone through an
awful thing, and yes you need to process it. But have have you during this time gone and looked at someone someone's comedy special, or or watch someone's thing that made you laugh and gave you a little bit of hope. I'm sure they went through the same kind of darkness. You need to keep passing it around like that's part of what's going to help get the grief out of you is to find a way. He goes, I don't know how you're gonna do it, but try to find a way to talk about it and if not, make
it funny, make it understandable, and make it empathetic. So with that mindset, that's why I started going back on stage like seven eight months later. It was funny when my well not funny. I mean, it's like you're making death funny. It's just right there. There's there's sort of ironically ridiculous things surrounding death, you know, that are just insane.
And I knew that when I I mean, I was alone when my mom pat I was with her when she died, and you know, just recounting what that looked like was so hysterically funny in my opinion, because it was so odd. And when I went in to go see her before the cremation, you know, she said in the box and I was alone in the room, and I kept thinking like she was just gonna jump up and and and then I realized I hadn't. I had only picked out a top for her, I hadn't picked
out a bottom. I'm so I'm looking at thinking and I'm thinking, I'm thinking, no, that that can't be like but and I was like, I have to look, I just have to look. Had no pants on it. Oh my god. Yeah, So I looked in it time. When I wrote about it in a book, I called it, look Mom, no pants, Hey, Mom, sending you into the afterlife with no pants? You know, without that, she would
have appreciated that, right. I remember a year after Michelle passed away, I went to visit her stone, you know, and I would visit her stone and speak with her, and but this is like one year, so I wanted to let her know that, you know, things are okay,
and Alice is okay. And I'm sitting there and there is a adorable, adorable um Asian family gathered around a stone like one of their family members, like a hundred yards away, and they have brought food like it's a whole day, like they're there with their loved one and that's it's beautiful. But they had brought a boom box and they were blaring Selene Dion's My Heart Will Go On and it was so trebly. There was no base on this thing and it was just like this screeching.
It's felt like somebody was playing that song but on a dentist drill, and it was just filling the air. And I'm trying to talk with her and I and I eventually I think I said a version of listen, I'm gonna go sit in my car and like you're a ghost, you can like fly with me. Just come over there to the car and we'll talk. I cannot listen to this song like that. It was so and I didn't give the family the stink face. That's the way. I'd never judge how people mourn. And they were together
and happy. But I was chased back into my car by Selene Dion's My Heart Will Go On because they could not listen to it anymore. They had it on a loop. Brook. It was on a loop. It was all they were playing. No, no, it was well maybe it was her. Yeah. Again, I'm not going to judge how people born. But good lord, wow, get some base, for God's sake, get some base. I have found that, UM, grief definitely changes us. Boy, how do you think it's
changed to you? Um? It has made me much more open to maybe wage less judgmental about what affects people and makes them either sad or happy, because I had to be very open about you know, if this is making me happy right now and getting me through the day, then good it got me past all that coolness like if someone tells me that something is hurting them or bother them. I used to be guilty of doing the well that you shouldn't be bothered by that that's not important.
But now I'm very much about let me hear what it is, that's why it's bothering you, Like I'll know, or I'll just accept it, no judgments, and then I'll talk about it, rather than or like, oh, you're listening to that music, like who if it's making someone happy, who cares it's helping? Who cares what they're listening to
as long as I'm making them happy? So it really it really blew me out of that whole thing of like you know, Like like now when I get interviewed, um, because I I love movies and people ask me, what are your guilty pleasures, I'm like, I've I've stopped having guilty pleasures. If I like something, there's no guilt to it. If a movie works, I'm I'm into it. I don't I don't judge it anymore. Has it changed their view of comedy in general and your comedy? I mean it definitely.
I don't know if that it changed my I mean, I still you. I still have the same voice that I have. It just I've experienced more things that I can think about it. It it expanded the canvas of my experience. I cursed the lesson and bless the knowledge. I I got some insight into some stuff that I would have been very happy not to have had insight into. But now that I do, I'm trying to use it for good. I guess so, you know. But but there's that thing of like, hey, I don't know if I
don't wanna let me go through that. When did you notice that you were falling in love with this woman who is going to become eroer and your daughter's person. Well, here's how I met Meredith. Um. We have a lot of friends in common, and one of the friends we have in common is an actress named Martha Plimpton. Love her. Martha rules. Yeah, And Martha is one of those Queen Bee connectors. Everyone knows her and she has these salons at her house where she'll have a dinner and invite
various people to watch them interact. And she had a thing said the February after Michelle passed, where she was like, hey, come, I have a dinner at the house and I think I was either traveling that day or I was traveling and got delayed and stuck in it, and I could but I couldn't go. And Meredith was one of the people that was going to be there because she's they've known each other since, say we're teenagers. So I couldn't go. And then Meredith like sent me and said, hey, you
missed the best lasagna ever. And then I message her back like, oh, hey, story in my life, and then like yeah, and then we just started talking. It was like at nine o'clock at night, We're just texting back and forth, nothing flirty, just talking. And then the next night around nine I'd like sent her, Hey, what are you doing right now? And so one of the things that I'm of the many things I missed about Michelle
was that you found I had found someone. And this is what everyone you know when you're really deeply loved. It's someone you can talk to at the end of the day in the dark. At the end of the day, you lie next to him in the the dark and we talk to them and suddenly, here's this I'm just interacting with this mind and this personality. We're not talking on the phone. We're not talking face to face, it's just texting. And we started doing that every night for three months.
We never spoke on the phone, never met, just got together. I put Alice to sleep and then we would just talk for like two hours and then we just sort of fell in love doing it. Is there one thing that just does a family that you, you and Meredith have created that you were the most proud of. Wow, that's a good question. Well, we always do a thing. At the end of the day, we name our rose, bud and thorn, which is what was the rose of the day? What was the rose of the day, what's
the what's the bud? What are you looking forward to? And then what was the thorn? And we connect on that and so we just trade those off. And then we also um a lot of we we have a lot of board game traditions. We are very much a board game family. There's a lot of that going on. But also we were, you know, Meredith and I are still I think we're because we're creatives. Were still very much connected to what it was like to be a
little kid and then start moving into your teenage years. Alice, we still all love each other, but Alice is thirteen now, and she wants to hang out with her friends. And I know a lot of my friends when their kids stop wanting to hang out as much, they kind of take it personally. It's like, no, that's actually a healthy thing that they're doing. They're supposed to separate from you a little bit and start to mold themselves. That's part
of growing up. So it's it's exciting to see that, to see the kind of person she's becoming, and to get out of her way. I mean, I you know, my daughter's just living her life at college, and you know, and and it breaks your soul, it breaks your heart. And yet you know, if you've done it right, that's what you want them to do. Yes, but yet but it's heartbreaking, it's what that's why they're um. Those toy
story movies I think really hit people hard. That no one was ready for that, because toys, the toy story phones are about being a parent. It's your this toy for this kid, and the kid outgrows you and and you you know that's that that that line that Tom Hank says, You're like, he's going to get sicky you and that where he goes. I know. But I wouldn't miss this. I still wouldn't miss this. And you're like, oh god, you know, it's just that that's exactly what
being a parent is. Oh I just bummed you out. I'm so sorry. No, not at all, it is It's I'm I'm living it. Um. I still have a sixteen year old um and has the eye rolling startup, has the we're just getting the beginning of the eye rolling. That's nothing. That is the tip of the iceberg. And that's another another part of it too. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that. I'm like, what's what's some got something in your throat? How is school's good? Yeah,
it's good. Things are good, they're fine, fine good? Or what about what mama? Everything? I was like, is that up too syllables? Mama. I'm like, it's just there's a lot of that going. Um oh yes. So again, that's so I think they have to learn how to individuate, and they don't know how to so they have to find reasons to hate us. Um. I think just hi separating absolutely thinks yep, dang it. Switching back to comedy
a little bit. Uh, we're sort of in a very weird time and in comedy, and I cannot even imagine. Talk to me about where comedy is and how do you deal with it. Well, we're in a weird time in comedy, but we're not in a new time. There have been versions of this in the past. Whenever there is a new generation coming up that is more attuned to things that we're either not spoken about in the past or we're not as a tune to, there are
people that will dig in and go yeah. But I should still be able to do this because well, you know, any art from, any art from has got to mutate and evolve and grow. And you know, one thing I always remember when when for years, for years, African American people were like, you know, we're abused by the police, and they do, and people are like, oh, this is just being made up. And then the police started wearing cameras and lo and behold, there's all this footage of
police abuse. So I tend to air on the side of one of my one of the minority groups says something is happening that I tend to now listen to them. So you know, as far as like you know, trans or or queer or anyone on the gender spectrum is saying, hey, there's a lot of hidden abuse and invisible abuse that you don't see. I tend to want to listen to that because because I had been so blind to stuff before. So um, if I got to adjust how I'm funny, then then I can adjust. I can. You know, I'm
a comedian. You can write new stuff. I mean, you also got a lot of flat talking about these topics. You've got a lot of flak for for posting a photo with Dave Chappelle. The flak for posting the photo. I got the flak from certain quarters for then going, hey, he's still my friend. I still think he's a genius.
I don't agree with his stance on trans people, and that's gonna And I realized that posting that um may have hurt the feelings of some of my trans friends that I have, and I just wanted to clear that up there, and and that just that that nuance freaked people out. You know, there's this there's this weird culture now of cruelty for clout and also this weird culture of no apologies. Ever. I'm like, I cannot imagine living a life with zero regrets or zero apologies. That is
science fiction that just doesn't exist. And they've made this fantasy because what they're hearkening back to was there was a time when a certain economic level of straight white male didn't have to ever apologize or explain anything. And I think there's a generation of of young men that feel like I should have had a turn at that. It's like, well, you know, those days were horrible, though? Is that because I'm curious about how do you reconcile
a friendship when there's such polarizing opinions? Just because I have I really really try to see. There's just so much good and value in everybody, even people that I don't necessarily like. I mean, Davis is one I really like and I think is genuinely brilliant. But it's the century, but we're starting to act like it's the ninth century,
where we're literally dividing ourselves up into feudal camps. And if you have this one opinion you agree with, it must mean you must be with these opinions, and that, to me is insane. People are complex and and that's what makes life fun. And if we're gonna if it's gonna be reduced to blue shirts versus red shirts, if it's going to be, you know, a snowball fight by five year olds, then we're on a very very bad path.
What's amazing is if you read the thing that I wrote, when I wrote my thing about the photo with Dave, it's me embracing the fact that I'm in this difficult position and a lot of us are, and all these people that are always about the truth, and you've gotta be a reels like I'm actually being real because this is really awkward and hard to talk about. But again, nuance now is looked at as weakness. Empathy has looked at his weakness, Doubt and self reflection and struggling is
looked at his weakness. But to me, that's always meant strength. To quote James Carville, We're gonna have to let the actionary tables do their job. There's gonna be this's gonna need to be some generations of people that need to just I know that's a terrible thing to say, but in order to move us forward, it's like we gotta kind of call generations. Well, there was just this is so I can't believe I'm citing this. This is so weird.
There's a Rank and Bass special remember Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and all those little animated special Yeah, so they made one called Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and it's basically like Santa Claus Year one. It's his origin story. And then the villain is this guy, the Burger Burgermeister, Meister Burger Um remember him, And he's like, there's no Christmas and Santa has to become like an outlaw re member and and then at the end Santa
Claus never really defeats Burgermeister. He just goes, I'll just move up north and change my name and come at night. And then so and then then this this little kids like, so what happened to the Burger Meister Meister Burger And they're like, well, they kind of stayed in power, but then the family just sort of died out and everyone just kind of forgot about it. Like it was that thing of like, no, sometimes you don't defeat the big villain.
Sometimes the villain is defeated after the villain is dead, you know what I mean. Like, but I was like, I can't believe that is the most weirdly mature thing to have any children's cartoon of like how did he defeat them? Oh he didn't. He just eventually died and everyone ignored him like he was just like wow, and that happens with people. I so funny because I remember him for some reason. I remember him turning sweet. No, that was the evening. Oh my god, I'm such a nerd.
There was an evil ice wizard, remember the ice Wizards, And then Santa gives him a the But then Santa gives him a toy. He gives him a gift. He's like, no one's ever got given me a gift, and it melts his heart and he becomes nice. That's what I'm getting them confused with. But thank you for clearing that up. I loved um. I lived in Rudolph with cute. I was always haunted by the the Island of Misfit Toys because yes, the train has square wheels, I get it,
Yes it's a try. But then there's just this dolly there, like she doesn't really like was she murdering people? Why is she managed to this island? Like the other toys are mouth octioning? But what was her deal? I don't want to know. That's it for us today. If you want to hear more from Patton Oswalt. Check out his newest comedy special We All Scream, streaming now on Netflix.
If you want to hear more from me, well you have to subscribe to this show Now What with Brookshields on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. Now What is produced by the wonderful Julia Weaver with help from Darby Masters. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Bahid Fraser and Christian Bowman. A special thanks to nicky Etre and Will Pearson