Danai Gurira on "The Walking Dead" Spinoff | Jason Isbell Discusses His Album "Weathervanes"

You're listening to Comedy Central. My guest tonight is an actor and playwright who's the co creator and star of the new AMC miniseries The Walking Dead The Ones Who Live. Please welcome Deny Guerrera. Thank you, Oh mymen, that's a good welcome. Beautiful guys.

Thank you, guys, And they're happy to.

Be you, and I'm happy to see you. Thank you so much for being here. Of course, I am having such a fan of your work. You're an incredible actress, and you command such a presence every time you're on screen. These roles that you play, You play these extraordinary, powerful, resilient katana wielding women. Do you ever feel like you just want to like take a break and play Linda from HR?

You know, as long as you dresses cute, Yes, that's what I miss.

I miss wearing cute clothes when I go to work.

Oh my god, I don't even think about that. Not just not having blood smeared everywhere.

Yeah, like that's the makeup. Ye you still got smearing and like dust, Get some more dust on here, get some more dirt. That's perfect now, Yeah, you still want to kill zombies?

Don't take away the katana now, no, let me hold on to that.

I think you're managing it. You managed to kill zombies.

HR with a katana.

Sure, hey, I think it's an asset. You know, we don't even have HR here, so our budget got cut. That's not true. We'll edit that part out. You What's so interesting to me about this series is that you're not only acting in it, but you executive produce, you co created it, you write on it. Was it challenging just juggling all the hats in one project?

Well it was.

Actually it was really cool because from where you start, you get a role like what was that like twelve years ago, and it's in this show that was massive at the time, and just like I'm just hoping I can keep this katana in my hand and not drop it and when they're shooting, and then to go through this whole arc with the character and the journey she's had, which has been tremendous and I'm very thankful for how

A very cool arc.

I mean, the interesting parts of it were of course, executive producing is a lot of work. But then I was also there was an episode that I wrote that I was show running and Scott Kimbul was like, don't talk to.

Me, talk to her.

It's all her.

And you know, there are times I'm like, in this very intense episode, and then I noticed that the corpse and the scene doesn't look dead enough, and I'm like, special effects makeup, can you just help me with this a little bit? So I have to jump out of the shown and make sure she looks good in three weeks did and then and then jump back into the role.

Of course, the Walking Dead fans are going to devour this like a zombieyond flesh, But truly it stands on its own. If you haven't watched the series, it's it's its own beast.

Yeah, thank you. I think that's true because it really is the epic love story of the series, And if you haven't watched it, you can really just latch in because you can see what's happened to Rick and what's happening with Michewan and how they come together and what happens there. So it really kind of stands on its own.

Yes, you can feel that. I can't wait to Maybe you would consider sneaking me the rest of the episodes because I don't think I can wait until they come out. If you don't mind, you can do it. Yeah. Now, the Walking Dead franchise is considered a sci fi zombie apocalypse, but are you concerned when you look at the state of the world, is it becoming a little bit more of a political drama.

I think they've been neck and neck for like ten years.

Yeah.

I mean what I love about The Walking Dead and what attracted me to because I was scared out of my mind of horror, But what attracted me to it when I when I was asked to audition for it in like twenty twelve was the fact that you know, it was about people characters like who would and everyone is like what would I? Who would I be if the world end? And if everything that was convenient to me and normal to me just was gone and everything was just totally upended. Who would I become? And I

What would become?

If people tell me what they got decked out for the the you know, the bad day that could come, they've got it all in their garage.

And preppers jis day preppers. What's the craziest thing that a prepper has ever told you that they're collecting?

Wow, that's a good question. I mean, you know, I've heard a lot about peanut butter. People like their peanut butter.

Yeah, people love peanut butter.

Yeah.

I collect that just jars and tubs. I hide it under my bed just in case. I want it Midnight's tag.

Listen, there's nothing like a good speed of peanut butter.

Some under this desk, you want some? I would break out your birthday just past Happy Birthday? Her birthday is on valid Yes, to celebrate you wrote this beautiful post. What was behind that message and tell us a little bit about the foundation.

Yeah, I created Love Our Girls because I just think Valentine's Day is just it's just such a sucky holiday.

What is it really?

You know, people are expecting things like give me roses and candy and like, you know what I mean. But I think it is beautiful in the sense that it's about love, and I would I was trying to like repurpose it about six seven, eight years ago when I had a show on Broadway and it was an all women play, and I just wanted to like, say, what if this day that has always been associated with the day I was born, so I can never disassociate from it.

So that's really all it is.

It's just an informational hub to celebrate women and girls and show them love.

Oh so beautiful. My guest tonight is a Grammy Award winning musician whose latest album is called Weather Veins. He can also be seen in the Oscar nominated film Killers of the Flower Moon. Please Welcome, Jason Invio. Oh my goodness, congratulations, thank you. You got another Grammy.

I did. I got a couple of this time. It was crazy, My god.

This is how many six?

This is six?

Good lord? Yeah, well deserved, you well deserved. And not only are you an accomplished musician, but you are now an incredible actor. You were in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, which has been nominated for all of the Academy Awards, and you're great in it. Now, did you did you find that the grind of touring and performing prepared you for the pure stamina you needed to sit through the entire movie start to finish.

Yeah. I do really good at not paying and that helped a lot.

You're well trained for it.

Yeah, yeah, it was.

It was an incredible experience to see all that go down. I didn't know why I was there.

Oh no, don't be so much. You're incredible in the film.

Well, thank you, And I do believe they didn't let me screw the movie up. No, but it took a little while for me to realize that.

So they had this guy who was like a dialect coach, right and all day every day he was working with with DiCaprio and with de Niro on talking like this.

Yeah.

I went and met with him and he said, we're just going to hang out. I don't have any notes for you, just talk like you talk. And I thought, I know why I'm here. They're saving money on the dog.

Talent and a budget cut two birds Whatso that's so funny. I also heard that an incident happened on set when you were doing a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Oh, yeah, yeah, there was an incident.

It was an incident. So, yeah, do you want to tell it.

I can tell you that, yeah, I could tell I would not have volunteered to tell the story.

But I think we should. I have the sense of humor of a fourteen year old boy, so I would love for you to tell the story.

So we were in this very small space and we're shooting a scene where the two of us kind of get up in each other's space, and it's intense, you know, and we're not friends, and we're about to, you know, throw hands, and it gets really serious. And we've been doing this for a couple of hours, and all of a sudden there were like thirty crew people in the room and me and Leo, and the camera was rolling, the film was happening, and all of a sudden, somebody in the crew flatulated he.

Had the most polite so other way. He flatches, well, shoudn't assume it's a here. It could have been a sheep.

It very well could have been a she But whoever it was, you could tell that that person had lost a great battle.

Just by the sound of it, you know.

And then, of course, everybody, being the best of the best, nobody did anything.

Nobody, nobody would he farted, you know. It was like later on, I.

Called it a fartica situation because they were all willing to take the hit for this. But what happened was I started laughing and DiCaprio started laughing, and I thought, oh great, we're doing one of those blooper reels. Because I've never been in a movie before.

I thought, this guy farted, this is gonna be great.

And then he like wove the laugh into his character, and all of a sudden, it was Ernest laughing at Bell and I was not bal anymore.

I was a redneck laughing at a farting man. And I realized, this is why.

One of us has an oscar and the other one is about a budget for an accent.

I thought you were going to say that he rolled it into his character and he just said, excuse me. It just went on and now that's part of the movie.

I'm nervous. That's what my guitar player said. I'm nervous.

I'm nervous. But I imagine when you're on stage performing that if that sort of thing happens, one of the band members farts, then you just play louder.

You do, Yeah, you do. It's well, we have cues, you know.

It's it's hard to communicate on stage, so sometimes it's it's intentional. It's like, oh, it's that's that's when we go to the drum solo.

Was this the first time that you ever acted before?

Really? Yeah, it was.

I've done some voiceover stuff for a show called The squid Billies show that I love.

Yes, I was. I was. I was the youth minister on that show.

I had gone to Bible School on a cheerleading scholarship, so essentially I was just playing myself on that and that was in And then I was in the Deadwood movie just standing there in the background because I just loved the show so much that they let me come stand in the background and that was.

That was generous.

It was really kind. Yeah it was.

But this is the first time I actually acted like somebody other than myself or a youth minister, so it.

Was a child.

You're really really incredible in the movie. Is it Is it true that you just started auditioning during some downtime during during COVID when.

You get a tour.

Yeah, we were. We were locked down, couldn't tour. And I told my agent, if you can find anything where people are working safely and I can still keep me busy and do something creative and if there's a good story to tell. And so I got an audition, I got another audition. Then I wound up, you know, on a zoom call in my bedroom with Scorsese and de Niro and uh, and then I got the part. Yeah, it was amazing. It was my birthday actually.

Oh anybody than that? So I want to talk about Weather Vans. I heard that you wrote the entire album when you had downtime on set.

That's true, Yeah, almost all of it. I did.

Now when I have downtime on set, I play wordle.

Yes, I had gone through a lot of word I'd tried.

Sometimes I'll try everything else except what I should be doing.

How did you do that? Did you now have like a creative association with your with the acting process on that film and the songwriting process or they woven it?

I think so.

But that was incidental, really, you know, I didn't know until I went back and listened to the finished product of the album that I had used a lot of themes and names that happened to line up with the movie. You know, in the song King of Oklahoma, there's a Molly, and that to me had I had no idea that I was spending most of my time with, you know, Lily Gladstone who was playing Molly, and it was it

Can you play in and write in your in your head at the same time or do you write first? And then how does the process work? How do you not get in your way? When you're in the creative flow.

You have to remind yourself like am I writing a song? Or am I editing a song?

You know? And those you can't do those at the same time. I can't.

Some people probably can, but I Usually I'll start by like repeating a phrase, I'll overhear something, or I'll think of something, and it may be like literally what I'm doing, Like I might say there's there's not coffee.

In this and that well, you don't have to get Sorry they cut the budget. Okay, we'll get your coffee.

Most of my songs are complaints at the end of the way. But then after a while you just.

Repeat it and and and a melody sort of makes itself happen. And then I'll pick up a guitar r and start finding the chords. And you know, I kind of look at it like there's a big, huge field full of rocks, and everything you need is under one of those rocks. And it might be under the first rock you pick up.

But you might have to pick up a million of them.

But if you just keep trying things, eventually you'll get you'll get there.

I feel like I'm just just a lifetime of picking up rocks, keep going. You you have a song called Middle of the Morning and you talk about being a strong but silent Southern man. Do you feel like the idea of what a Southern man is or Southern masculinity has evolved in your lifetime.

We're trying, we're trying to evolve that, you know, but evidence sometimes shows the contrary to be true. So well, you know, in my experience, we're not always the best at talking about how we feel and that makes us not very good at dealing with our emotions, and things will come out in ways that we don't intend them to, you know, when we're.

Not able to say I am scared or I am sad.

And I don't necessarily know that that's a Southern thing, but but you know, it definitely happens a lot in the South, and that's where I came from.

And do you hope that your music can kind of act as a solve for young men to grow up and see another way of being.

I would like that.

You know, it serves a purpose for me initially, but I think if your intentions are honest and you're really trying to communicate with people, then that will happen as a by product.

Of what you're doing. And I do.

I see a lot of big dudes crying at the shows, and it makes me really happy.

It makes me really happy.

I think you're making a lot of big dudes cry out here right now.

You can do it, you can. This is a safe space.

Big dudes, safe safe, we can laugh, we can cry. You also are extremely outspoken when it comes to common sense gun laws and advocacy. You wrote a song on your album that's about the fear as a parent that you have in this country, and many of us feel sending our kids to school every day.

Was that.

I can't even imagine how difficult that song was to write. Was it an emotional experience for you?

It was hard.

The first time I wrote it, I didn't do a very good job because I wasn't saying exactly what I wanted to say, you know.

And when I rewrote it, I got closer to what I meant.

And then I did it again, and finally I was actually telling the truth. Sometimes that's the process, you know, you want to be vague and you don't want to hit the nail on the head.

But this one really called for that, and.

I went from when I'm writing about something that heavy, I find the best way to do it for me is to go from my own personal perspective. I don't have any experience in a mass shooting situation, so I'm not.

Going to write a song about that.

But what I will write about is being at the grocery store and hearing a balloon pop and the first thing that comes into my mind is, oh, my god, is somebody in here with a gun?

You know? And I know it is extremely.

Frustrating for a whole lot of people in this country to deal with. It's, you know, it's something that we shouldn't have to worry about. I think it's something that that you know, is a capitalist issue at heart. I think all those companies that sprung up after the Brady Bill was repealed are really kind of pulling the strings right now and selling people something that they don't need so they can feel proud of something that they really

I have to smell, well, you're you're going to stay and you're going to perform for us. You're going to perform a song called cast iron Skillet. Now, I'm from Kentucky, so I'm no stranger to Southern phrases like don't wash the cast iron skillet. That's why I never do the dishes. But these you have a way of using these like simple Southern phrases, but there's a much deeper meaning. Underneath, what was the inspiration behind this song.

I like to make characters and then follow them around and see what they do. And when I start a song, I don't necessarily know how it's going to end. I just like to make characters that you can believe and that are honest, and then see how they behave as human people would behave. And sometimes that character is the narrator, because this has got two This song has two separate stories. Both of them are true, and both of them happened to people that I was close to when I was

I mean, here's the secret you can wash the skill it. You know, it's made of case. It'll be fine. You can wash the skill it.

A lot of times I'll write a song that has some southern, you know, words of wisdom in it, and people will say, hey, man, that's not exactly right.

And I'm like, you're almost there.

You're almost you're understanding the song.

You know.

I cannot wait for you to perform. I'm very excited. Everyone here is very excited.

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