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 gut 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 at this point you had? You wanted to go to Yale? Right? I wanted to go to Yale. I did not get into Yale, and did not get into Yale. I get rejected from Yale, which I had applied to earlier. I had all my emotional egs in that basket. I went upstairs when I
got the rejection letter. It was still an analog letter in those days, obviously, and I got the little envelope. I went upstairs to the bathroom and I shaved my head with scissors and a razor. If that doesn't tell you that I was an insanely over dramatic child who really just needed to be an actor and not go to Yale. Like that just tells you it's good you didn't get into Yale. You're you're way too emotionally unstable as a seventeen year old. You just need to be
an actor. That voice you just heard is none other than cal Penn. You might know him as one of the world's most famous donors and one of two stars of the Harold and Kumar franchise. But did you know he also worked in the White House. That's right, cal Penn is the king of pivots. He's done a dizzying amount of work in the industry. How Sunnyside designated Survivor, and he also worked for former President Obama. We sat down to talk about his new book, You Can't Be
Serious and his incredible journey. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. I'm very excited. I'm so excited to get a chance to talk to you. Um where are you? Where are you right now? I'm in New York, So I'm I'm a New Yorker. Oh all right. I was born in Jersey. I was I grew up mostly in Wayne and in a town called Freehold, which is where Bruce Springsteen is from. We went to my rival high school, I know, I know. So those are those are big claims to fame for where I grew up.
And so you where high school? Did you go to Freehold Township High School? Freehold High School? Cause I went to I went to high school in Englewood, New Jersey. Um, but I commuted from the city to Englewood, which wasn't done in the eighties. It was the reverse commute. But it was crazy. It was like the one kid from from New York the city. Yeah, what was your childhood like in New Jersey? Like, it's so funny. I've I've thought about that a lot because it's the opener to
this book that I wrote. And so the first draft that I turned in, I thought, and the way that I had pitched the book to my editor was, look, it's gonna be funny, Like these are stories that I've told very close friends after like beer number five, you know, and so it's just they're just gonna organically be fun charming, funny. I turned in the first draft and she goes, hey, um, this is super dark. What a dark series of chapters? And the reason being. And I know you'll appreciate this
as a fellow artist. Is I feel like a lot of times, when we write things, you remember things like, Okay, what was a difficult time in childhood like? Or what was it like getting bullied in middle school? Which, by the way, when I was in middle school was not called getting bullied, it was just called eighth grade. So in writing that, I didn't realize that I was reverting
back to whatever those emotions were. So the first draft of those chapters oddly read as more painful than they are because when I tell those stories verbally, they have a lot of humor, and there's a lot of obviously perspective of being a forty something year old who can look back at childhood with a lot of good humor. Well that's interesting because one of the things that struck me the most is your positivity through all of it, you know, and that there's this real joy in just
everything and really understanding it. I can understand how it seems like these are rough stories because you're talking about stories of being bullied eighth grade. There is something in that, But to find humor through all of it is a
through line. And yet I tell my kids stories like, you know, I walked into my dorm in college and my roommates had taken my Brook doll, because you know, I had a doll after me in the eighties, as one does, and it was hanging by a little news and it's like, it sounds horrible and it was funny. But when I tell my daughters things like this, they get so upset and they get so so so sad. But I learned from a very very early age the p our hum For me, that was how I survived.
When did you realize you were funny? The eighth grade and sort of by force, I was the tin man and our school's production of the Whiz Uh. And you know, at the time, if you were in the school play, or if you were a soccer player, you stayed after school for your either soccer practice or rehearsal. So that late bus that took all the kids home was where all the tormenting would happen. Right, the soccer players were cool,
we were not. But the tormenting, like it was things that by today's standard, thankfully, there's a way that we recognized them. Right, We were getting beat up on those busses, We were getting spit on we were getting, you know, it was just things that that we're not just the jokey thing that you can say, Oh, how silly. That was what middle school was. They were. They were certainly
painful at the time. So the school play was about to go up, and you know, it was like three nights in the evening for the parents to come watch, and our drama teacher says, hey, great news, everybody. We're going to do three scenes from the play in front of the whole school during a special assembly in the afternoon. And we were all like, absolutely not, no, no way, that's that's like, this is gonna be horrible, Like we already get beat up on the bus ride home. Absolutely not.
They don't need to see me in silver makeup being the tin Man, you know. And the director was like, then this play is not going up at all if you don't have the guts to do this, and so we were forced to do it. The students all come into the auditorium, they're already yelling things to make fun of us, like we can hear them from backstage, and
I go out for my third scene. It was the scene when the tin Man gets his heart from the whizz or the Wizard of Us and I'm supposed to take that hard around my neck and go to the center of the stage. And the line was all you find ladies out there, watch out. And I was dreading saying this because I knew for nerdy, fourteen year old me that was just gonna be endless torment. People are just gonna repeat that line. So you've heard this phrase
actors being in the zone, right. This was the first time that I remember being in the zone I apparently, and there's a video evidence of this. I had the heart around my neck. I, instead of staying in the some of the stage, walked to the very edge of the stage and in the cockiest bravado that I could muster, I looked at the audience and I said, all you find ladies out there, and then I did this massive pelvic thrust and I said watch out, and the crowd
went wild. Everyone started laughing. Ladies, the girls started screaming. Everyone was on their feet applauding. It was a standing ovation. And on the bus ride on the way home, all the soccer players started applauding, and I thought they were kidding, and they said, dude, that was so funny. We had no idea that that's the kind of thing you guys were working on, and it totally just broke down this wall. Now, look, aside from the problematic nature of like why was the
onus on me to not be bullied? It was well, but but you take the situation and instead of shrinking from it, you go deeper into it. For sure, reverse the narrative so that you're in control of this that you asian. So that was that sort of divine intervention of the zone totally. Did your parents come and see the performance? Yea. So they came and saw it, and I think they thought it was good. They thought it was it was fun. And did you do the hip threat? Did?
I thought? I thought I was going to get in trouble when we got off stage at the assembly, and the director instead was like, that was amazing to do that again, like okay, cool, great? Uh and in hairness like that. That's why I love comedy, right, It can bring people together in a world, especially now, a world that's so polarizing, and so I still love that. And my parents didn't necessarily understand that that was a love that went beyond just a hobby, and I get it.
I mean, for context, you know, their immigrants. They moved to the States in the in the early seventies, and my dad is an engineer and that was what allowed him to come to America. The fourteen year old me, of course, didn't care about any of that. I was like, okay, I don't care why you don't think the arts are a viable career. All I know is I'm this fourteen year old who was born and raised in New Jersey and I want to be an actor. So there's definitely
some tension growing up there. Did you resent that at all or did you feel it or did they try to stop you in writing this book? I called my parents so many times because I wanted to talk to them about how much of what I felt was accurate.
And I said, Hey, on a scale one to tend, how embarrassed were you of me when all your friends would come over for a family gathering and all the other kids would say they wanted to go to med school and people asked me, and I would say, I want to go to film school or I want to be an actor. How embarrassed on a scale one to tend? And my parents got really quiet, and they said, I don't know why you think we were embarrassed. How did you get that into your head? We were never embarrassed.
We were scared because we just didn't think that somebody from our community could have a career in the arts, nor did we know that that was a viable career because we didn't have that background. I thought that was so interesting being an actor. In becoming an actor is fraught in the in the best best of all times, and whenever I hear somebody is in it, I I sort of say, oh, dear God, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. But you had the extra layer of of like racism in that. Can you talk a little bit
about your early experience with that? That was the one piece that I hadn't necessarily anticipated. So my acting teacher had always said, you know, here are the odds. Whenever any of you start pursuing a career, you know, casting directors and producers will always only allow you to audition for things that they think you're physically right for. That's
just the reality of when you start your career. It doesn't go away, by the way exactly ever, unfortunately right, And so the way that it was explained to us was like, look, and this turned out to be true. Obviously, you know, you you walk in to an audition, they're going to tell you no because you're too tall, you're too short, you're too fat, you're too skinny, all of those things, and you're just gonna have to deal with that.
You can't let that get to you. What I wasn't really prepared for is that, especially in those days, and thankfully the industry has changed a lot in beautiful ways, but if you were an ethnic performer, you didn't have the luxury of being too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, because they usually would just say, yeah, we
don't want somebody who's brown. And that was super shocking to me because some of the shows that I loved that I grew up watching were like Seinfeld and Friends and shows that took place in New York City, and I didn't recognize at the time, I had no performers of color on the show, not because we didn't exist, but because the folks making those shows wanted to exclude
those communities. And it was a different time. You know, I'm so glad that that doesn't exist now, not just for the sake of like people like us being able to have a fair shot at a job, but for audiences, no matter what the audiences background, was there a moment that just sort of made you almost quit because you experienced it in your face, like why didn't you have an accent? And one casting director was disappointed that you weren't even what do you say? You're not even are
you even Latin? Are you? And she was disappointed that she could that I couldn't put you in that bad God damn it, you're not even lack. There were a lot of moments where I I kind of thought, maybe this isn't the right fit for me. And if I can be a little cocky, it's not because I didn't think that I had the chops. I just wanted a fair shot, right if I wasn't getting an audition because I wasn't the best person for the job, so be it that happens, right, You go on a hundred auditions,
you only get one call back. So I get that that that I would have been fine with. It was the other stuff that I didn't have control over that
that I thought was um so demoralizing. And then it finally dawned on me through these auditions that a lot of times you get asked to put on an accent to mask bad writing or to mask subpar writing, and so the character you're playing automatically gets assigned these racial or ethnic signifiers in ways that producers think are helpful to advance the comedy, but in reality they don't do anything other than connect that character to race, ethnicity, religion,
which is ultimately like super boring, right, because then you're not playing any buddy. Um. I'll give you a quick example, and remember the show Sabrina the Teenage which yes, yes, with the cat, but the talking cat. So I got to audition for this show once and I was super excited. It was only three lines, and I needed credits on my resume, right, So my agent at the time, who was wonderful, she said, here's the info. Here are the
three lines. I created this whole back story for this guy who was supposed to be a kid in Sabrina's study group in college. And I was like, all right, he's from the Pacific Northwest, and he likes small batch organic coffee, and he probably likes Pearl Jam and Nirvana. So I wore a flannel to the audition. I thought I did well, and I was walking back to my car and the casting director ran after me and he goes, hey, man, the producers would love for you to do it again,
this time with an accent. And I was like, okay, So again the decision was totally mine, right. I could have said no, thank you, but I went back in and I thought I needed credit on my resume. The job I think paid like five bucks and my rent was like five fifty for the month, so that was huge. And I said the thing that I usually say when people ask for that, where they said we'd love for you to do it again with an accent, and I said, sure, what kind of accent would you like? I can do
Brooklyn Scottish, Irish Portuguese. You know, I just like went through the list. They were obviously not amused. Uh, And so I you know, I made the choice to do it. Nobody was forcing me to do that. But you know, not to offend anybody that that the racial stuff didn't bother me. But the bigger issue as an artist is that's a boring choice, man. Like It's just I can be funny based on the merits of how I can create this character. That's literally what I do. Just let
me do my thing. I promise you it'll be funny. Do you think that there's a space for stereotypes in comedy. I definitely think there's a role for stereotypes. Also, the you know that old adage of stereotypes come from some element of truth, right, and so depending on the comedic bit, if you're stripping away context or adding context, or subverting something that used to be a stereotype to make it funny.
For a different reason, I welcome the reality that audiences palettes have changed, and so if my job is to be funny, I have to evolve with what their pelts are and to sort of update my jokes for things that people are going to find funny. I don't see that as limiting. I actually see that as the opposite, where it makes me have to get my chops together. You know, well, it's funny because when I when I did Suddenly Susan, when I was like, the first time I was really well, the first time I was ever
really really allowed to be funny was and Friends. But one of the things that I had to hook into, which I didn't resent at all, I loved was the physical comedy so that people could laugh at me falling on my face or here's the tall girl. Here's the big girl. You know, it goes deeper than falling, you know, slipping on the banana peel. I mean, it's just always funny.
You just can't so seeing me get slapped in the back with a huge fish and knocked down, or you know, or fall off a stool or something, it was sort of bizarrely liberating. And I remember thinking, oh my god, because they had me falling off something almost every week. And I finally said that. I was like, can I not all it's just fall off a chair or a stool or something. Can you can we make the comedy
more more funny. But I do think that that's a really interesting conversation, and you just make it much more sort of intelligent. When you were cast in Van Wilder, you said it was a brown catch twenty two. Can you explain that? Yeah? Sure, And I'm glad you you you asked about Van Wilder when you were talking about falling off the stool and getting hit with a fish,
I'm like, oh, I should. I should talk about Van Wilder because it was my first real, big, big movie and there was a scene where my character is uh the whole movie, he's trying to ask out this woman. She agrees to go out with him, and they're they're about to try to make love in his room and he sets all these scented candles around the room and she is putting massage oil on him. He's massaging her. By the way, like just keep in mind early two
thousand's team comedy, so not not particularly high brow. But then my character's back catches on fire from one of the sentence candles, and the rest of the scene, I'm running around the room with my back on fire, which, by the way, they that was a practical stunt, so I had to wear a prosthetic back. They lit it on fire. They're all these guys with essentially hazmat suits
standing around in case something went wrong. But didn't they do it like the first scene was the first day, and you're like, why did they do it the first day? And they're like, well, because if something happened to you, we'd beat We wouldn't have to reshoot all. If you die, we can replace you. Really totally, like we'll just replace you there. But that's an example of like, yeah, aside from the sort of ethnic stereotyping question and all that equation, the idea that like I got to light my back
on fire and run around. You talked to stunt guys today and they're like, what producer in the right mind, let an actor do that for real? And I was like, they said they wanted the wide shot, the special effects were too expensive. So we did it and it was
a blast. But the Brown catch twenty two is something that I call it this because it was the thing of like, okay, you in order for this is by the way, for any actor, right in order to get your foot in the door, you have to take small parts and that builds up your resume and the credits on your resume, and then your agent hopefully can open
more and more doors for you. The challenge with a lot of ethnic performers and a lot of women as well, was that the only roles that you're being offered are the ones that are sort of reductionists or sort of stereotypical and not particularly challenging. And so the Brown Catch twenty two was like, do I take those in order to get my foot in the door for something bigger, because I'm not able to audition for something bigger unless I've done those. So it was that sort of thing.
But but yeah, I mean the the advice that I got from the people who I was close to and had a lot of mentors who were really good about the practicality, which I don't think we talked about nuance enough these days, and that you do have to make tough choices that are sometimes less than ideal in any any job. But then for you, the next sort of watershed moment in a way came as You're a Stoner when you were in the comedy Harold and Kumart go to to White Castle. You know, how did that role
come about? Really? I think the reason that I got that part. And by the way, when I read that script, it was the funniest script that I had read. And I called John Hurwitz, who I had met at a birthday party. He's one of the co creators of the franchise, and I called him up and I said, hey, man, thank you for sending me the script. You're never gonna sell it because studios are never going to green light
a movie with two Asian American men. So when you can't sell it, why don't you call me and like, let's find some venture capitalists who can throw together a couple of hundred grand and maybe we can make it. And he laughed at me and he said, I am sorry that that's been your experience, but no, we're selling this to a major studio. And I said, no, man, I'm telling you the studio is just going to change the characters to be black and white. And he interrupted me.
He's like, well, listen, cal we're making a movie called Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, not David and Jason go to McDonald's. So we're we are selling this movie and they did. They sold it. And one of the reasons that I ultimately got the part, you know, there was no shortage of actors to play of the roles that John cho and I ultimately played, but I was one of the few brown actors who had had a studio movie under his belt because I had done Van
Wilder and so let's cast him in this. And of course there's there's no stereotyping in Harold and Kumargo to White Castle. It's subverting them. And actually, had I not gotten Harold and Kumaro to White Castle, which was completely career defining for me, and I'm very indebted to the
fans of that movie. One of my favorite art films that I had the chance to work on is called The Namesake, based on the novel by Jimpaliery, and I would not have gotten the part in The Namesake were it not for Harold and Kumar, because Mier and I are who directed that film her then fourteen year old sons Aren was a huge Harold and Kumar fan, and that's basically why I got to audition for the project. And you had seen her work and we're so unbelievably moved by it. It did mir and I are who
directed it, had done. One of her first films was called Mississippi Massala with Denzel Washington and Street the Choree, and I remember seeing that around the same time that I was playing the tin man Um. I didn't realize fully that I had never really seen people who looked like me on screen until I saw this movie, and I thought, why am I feeling so seen by a film with incredibly flawed, beautifully flawed characters, all of the
things that make you human. And it kind of dawned on me like, Wow, we don't really see ourselves unless we're stereotypes or cartoon characters, and so so it really it meant a lot, and for for friends I have
this conversation with friends a lot. If you've always grown up with the privilege of seeing characters who look like you on screen, you sort of don't feel the thing that I couldn't quite put my finger on, which was if you don't see yourself, you kind of feel like your options in the world might be limited, like maybe certain things aren't for you. One of the reasons that project was so special was both artistically and in terms of who was behind it. A lot of things really
came full circle for me. The idea that I could be this storyteller or this actor was in some way because of her early films that that inspired me. Okay, first of all, you're you're you're my friend. Now you're gonna tell you that now we're friends. But I think your life has been so extraordinary. But the pivot to politics is seemingly unexpected. How did you get involved? Initially? So the I had no desire at all to do
anything in politics. And for folks who are listening, who if the only thing you know about me is that I played a stone or three times and then went to go work for the president of the United States, you are correct to wonder why and how and whether
I was qualified. So, when I was working on House, Olivia Wilde, who you know, fantastic actor and director, She was on the show with me, and she had a plus one to an Obama campaign event, and I very begrudgingly said that I would go with her, even though I had no desire to sort of do anything political. And I was really inspired by what I saw at that event. And so she and I and Tatiana Ali and Megalan Chikwauke were the four artists who signed up
that week. This was back in October of two thousand and seven, to go to Iowa, the first state to vote in the primary process, to help out the Obama campaign. And then I went there and was and fell in love with the fact that it was just people who were doing something that they believed in and and I had the chance to work on that campaign then for for the next roughly year or so. And that's that's
sort of what opened the door. Um. I also think what was really eye opening for me was, you know, I get why there was a lot of media attention when I left the show House to take the sabbatical from acting and go go work in the White House for a couple of years. Believe they let you out of the count community just like that. That's a double edged sort. Why you're like thank you, I'm not really
I mean thank you. The way that that went down, I had when I got the offer to work at the White House, I had called my agent at the time and told her and I said, can you please chat with Fox and with House to see if there's a way to write me off? And she called back almost immediately and said, they said, no, there's no way
they can do it. So I actually went to David Shore, who created House, and I made a point with them, sat down with him in his office and I said, I know the answer has already been no, and I already know that somebody's approached you about this, but I got this offer to work for President Obama, and I would love for at least you to consider helping me do that. And he goes, I had no idea. This is the first time hearing of this. You got an
offer to work at the White House. That's so cool, And how did you get the job in the administration because you didn't in a sense, you didn't really advocate for yourself. No, I didn't. I know this is so silly. Um, so I work you would. You had worked for the campaign for like a year, and anyone who worked on that campaign got a link right around inauguration. I got before or after the election that said, if you're interested in working for the incoming administration, upload your resume to
this website at change dot gov. And so I uploaded a resume, and I thought, I guess I don't want to bother anybody, right, Like, if I'm qualified to work at the White House, somebody will call me, But I certainly don't want to upload my resume and then make a hundred calls like, Hey, just so you guys know, I'm super interested, right because A I was already on a TV show that was my dream job, and B I didn't want it to seem like, oh, cal Penn thinks that just because he's on this TV show he
can ask for a job at the White House. I don't know. I didn't know how that worked. So I applied. The only person in the world who I told was my manager by acting manager. But you had a direct line of communication too well by I did, and people forget people forget this when you start working for any political campaign early enough you get to know the candidate. It's usually a very small operation, so you do get
to know people really well. Part of it is probably I felt like there was a bit of imposter syndrome there, like, wow, I can't believe that I would actually be considered. And then there was another part that was just very self conscious and maybe I am really qualified and they'll just figure it out. You know. I don't know which it is. But at inauguration, Mrs Obama, who I had not met before, came over and said something very casual like I hope
you stay involved. And my manager was standing next to me, he was my plus one, and he goes, well, you know, Cal applied for a job, right, And she goes, what do you mean, and he goes, yeah, he applied for a job at the White House and nobody even called him back. Sounds like dude, please not now, not now, And Mrs Obama says, oh, who did you apply with?
And I just blurted out, oh, I just put my resume on change dot gov, the website that you guys sent around, and she looked at me like I was insane, and she called the President elect over and made me repeat what I had done, and then he basically said, Okay, let's if you're serious about this, let's figure out the real the reason I even tell the story, Like, hey,
it's obviously funny and self deprecating and ridiculous. But let's say you started at a small startup firm, right, and you worked there for a year, and that firm got bought out or that firm expanded in a huge way, and you were really proud of the work you did and you wanted to continue working for the new company. Don't just upload your resume. You would call your boss and be like, hey, man, I am so proud of the work we did together. I would love to be considered.
And what ways did working because you kind of went in with zero experience? I mean that's another Now, what moment you all of a sudden you find your moment, you find yourself, Oh, I'm in the White House. I'm working in the White House, And what ways did that change you? I left working in the administration with a lot of reverence and inspiration for the process of what's possible.
And here's why the I have the chance to work with thousands and thousands of people who were taking a leave of absence from their private sector jobs, just like I was. Many of them were teachers or or some doctors, some people who were in law school. Um, you know, there was no rhyme or reason to people's background necessarily, It's just that they wanted to do what they also thought was the right thing to do. That's something that
happens regardless of which administration is in power. Other thing was my job was One of my jobs was as the President's liaison to young Americans. I worked in the Outreach Office. That meant that, because Obama loved hearing ideas that he disagreed with, our mandate was to meet with
people who we agree and disagree with. So that meant that in my case, you know, young Republicans were coming in to talk about things like healthcare and climate change, and we were trying to come up with solutions that
everybody could sort of compromise on. It didn't mean that the President wasn't going to advocate for what he wanted and what he thought his base wanted, but it meant that that we realized the only way to actually accomplish things was to listen to each other and to have conversations that are I think, really tough to have today. But that was the biggest takeaway from me, was the
idea that that these things are still possible. I wanted to ask you just briefly about your relationship, yeah, because it's so beautiful to me. But I'm curious as to why or how you were able to keep it private for so long. Yeah, of course, it's so funny. When I was writing it, there are two chapters in the book that have nothing to do with merit. You just say it though. It's like in the book I went back. I was like, there's a chapter about how my partner
Josh and I met and fell in love. We've been to there eleven years. There's another chapter about going to a strip club drunk with friends a couple of years after college for a bachelor party. Both of those chapters are the only two chapters that I just didn't think twice about writing because they had nothing to do with merit. They're what editors call a palette cleansing chapter. Because you have serious things, you have discovery thing, Okay, here's how
I achieved this in my line of work. And then here's just like a chapter that has nothing to do with your success. But then the book came out, and I realized my naivete was understandably a lot of journalists, especially those who really like profit off of the clicks, are like gay Kalpenn writes gay gay only book about being gay, very gay book only, And I was like, oh no, that's I was like, well, I'm happy to share that chapter in the book. That's why I wrote it.
But I did not think it was gonna distract from what the book is actually about. So in retrospect, I probably should have like given that chapter to The Atlantic or the you know, the New Yorker or something like that, with like, hey, do you guys want to run this six months before my book comes out. But that said, to your point, like there was so much love about sharing my story, there was not, I think, a desire to sort of hide. I certainly didn't feel like I
was living a life in the closet. You know. I I did come out to myself or figure out my own sexuality relatively later in life. You know. I meet friends who are like, yeah, I knew when I was eight. I was like, man, good for you. I was not that kid, you know. It was a little later in life for me. But then when my partner Josh and I met in d C. He is an incredibly private person, sort of like my parents, and so the last thing he wants is like we go to movie premieres together.
He'll come to work events with me, the whole thing. But he and my parents when we go to premiers that are like cool, we know you have to do the photo line and the red carpet because you have to sell your movi V. We're going to grab the popcorn and go through the side entrance and just see you with the seats because it's it's um. You know. As someone who has never been able to keep anything private, all of my grades from school were published in Life magazine.
My first period was in People magazine, just because I don't know what it was a slow news day, I don't know, but yeah, you hit the nail on the head. It's not you know. I think people feel that if you're choosing not to share a certain aspect of your life, that that means that you're either uncomfortable about it or you're ashamed about it. And the contrary, I've found for many of us who live in the public eye and prefer having a certain modicum of privacy is the opposite
is true. I am so proud and thrilled of who I am, of my exactly. It comes from a place of respect. Yes, um, do you have a date set for the wedding? We were could be a flower girl? Please? Oh my gosh, would you when I come? I want to drive me. I'm coming all right. I mean this is going to know your local to you. I'm really good with with family members. Parents will talk your ear off, They'll love it. That was the hilarious Cal Pen Keep an eye out for pictures of his wedding featuring yours
truly as a flower girl. I'm just kidding, but Cal, if if you want me, I'm I am free. You know. If you want to hear more from Cal, pick up a copy of his book. You can't be serious. If you want to hear more from me, subscribe to this podcast Now What with Brookshields on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 eight