This is the most dramatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast. Chris Harrison and Lauren Zema coming to you from Austin, Texas, where today we're opening up the playbook. Today's topic, well, it's your topics. We are going to go over several topics today that you have thrown at us via the Most Dramatic Pod Ever Instagram page. It's been a good week. It's been a busy week. We had dropped off our
daughter at TCU week or so ago. My son had finished his internship, so we just dropped him off, took him up to Fort Worth, moved him into his house to get him ready for wait for it, his senior year of college. And yes, it kicked me in the gut. It has hit me like a ton of bricks that I have a I'm old enough to have a child that's graduating college. That doesn't feel right. But just you know, dropping him at school for the last time, it'll be it. I mean he may go to get his masters or whatever,
but that's different. And so this is kind of the last hurrah. And you know, the the advice I told him within reason, soak it up, man, This is it, This is this is the Swan song, be prepared to just enjoy this and enjoy every moment. But it was a it's weird when you drop him off for that senior year of college. So anyone else in that boat, I'm feeling all the all the fields, as we used to say a few years ago. But l Z Today's playbook.
The first topic that was sent into the most dramatic pod Instagram was about pregame rituals and it's kind of funny. I was licking some up because you know, football season is upon us. I know you're not like pregaming for football, but these are some funny ones things that people do. Josh Allen, the quarterback, he throws up before every game.
Does he make himself throw up?
No? I I think there are people, and I know a lot of people to do this before shows or before a game. They just get I think I want to say, Harry and Aba did this when we were hosting stuff together that she got physically ill and then she puked and everything was fine. She was ready to go wow mouthwash. Harrison Smith, another football player, takes a shot of hot sauce.
Why would he do that?
I just maybe to fire him up and just to how about this. Jason Kelsey, one of the Kelsey brothers, listens to Christmas music, and why would he do that? Just maybe it's calming, Maybe it just puts him in a friendly He smells the pine trees. Yeah, thinks of George Kittle. He reads a new letter from his dad every time.
Okay, that's nice.
So do you I'm curious, do you have a pre game something you did before you went on air, before you spoke?
No, But I was also on a daily entertainment news show. I mean it was every day, and it was so chaotic. We were news is sort of ongoing, you know, and I was doing interviews. Ever, I would do three, four or five interviews a day sometimes if not more so. I just didn't have It was sort of always going. I don't know that I had a big moment.
Now.
I do think you have to get organized in your head. I would definitely. One thing I did was we always had note cards, and we'd have my producer would write topics and questions on them, but I would need to go through and do them again myself, sort of almost like revising them for myself in my own words, with my own notes and thoughts I couldn't just look down at somebody else's notes and do my interviews from there.
So maybe that was my ritual and I kind of it was a way of like you know, they say writing stuff down helps you remember it, So I would have to do that for every interview. Centered what did you do because yours was different? You're filming on and did you have a different ritual for if you were going to go do a rose ceremony versus a proposal versus a live at.
A for sure, because I was the same as you. If I was just doing you know, regular bachelor stuff, you know, ros ceremonies, talking to the girls about the dates, whatever, I didn't think twice about it. I would just you know, I got my head straight about what I needed to say and what I wanted to accomplish in that moment. I just went and did it, not as much pressure, and I also knew that it was being taped and if honestly I screwed up, we could do it over.
When I hosted Miss America or hosted the like AFR the Final Rows specials that were live, that was totally different because there was so much choreography going into it. You had to hit the ends, hit the outs, going to commercial, make sure you know people were going in the right right place, right time, asking the right questions. I like to be very calm and miss America. When you're walking out, there's fifteen thousand people live in the audience and you're doing it in front of millions around
the world. I would get very quiet. I often would lay down in the green room, and you know, Gina, my makeup artist, thought I was napping, but really I would just close my eyes and just maybe it's meditation. That was my form of meditation. But I was really really quiet. I wasn't hype. I wasn't like, let's play EM and M and let's get jacked and you know, like a like a game where you want to get all pumped up. I like to be really, really calm
before I go on. Why, just so I just had control of my heart rate, I had control of my head. I could let I could let the show come to me. And that was my you know, I always say my advice to people is I like to let the moment and the show come to me, so you can't come out fired out of a cannon. If that's not what it not what the moment dictates.
And I see that now as I think back to watching you in episodes, because you definitely were more an interviewer who leaned into pauses let people speak, versus kind of going in there and attacking. I mean, you grilled people, but you didn't attack with questions.
And I'm not a screamer. I'm not a big like talk real loud. And if a moment's exciting, and I took this from my broadcasting, my sportscasting career, that's where it all started. Is if a moment's great, if a play is great eight everybody knows it, they've just seen it. Let that happen and try and let it breathe and you get the gnat sound. And you know, I think people have this feel and this goes to everybody relationships, business meetings. You feel you got to feel that void.
If there's silence, I gotta feel that silence. You don't let the natural moment live a little bit and then speak.
I think that's one of the hardest things to do, is to let the silence. It's so vulnerable. It's probably the difference between you are not a yell at your kid's dad, you're a disappointed dad voice.
Sound for sure. And it's interesting because when I played sports my whole life, the axiom is you practice how you play, practice at one hundred percent because that's how you're gonna play. I am absolutely not like that on stage. I did when I did Miss America or even AFR which was after the final rose for the Bachelor batchs Wrette,
I didn't want to use my jokes. I didn't want to say them because I felt like if I said them twice, it became disingenuous, it wasn't real, And so I could think about things that I wanted to do later, but I wouldn't do them, and I wouldn't use my full voice. I wouldn't be animated. And when you are a first time director working with me, it scares the hell out of producers and directors that work with me, and I tell them, I'm like, this is this is
my process. I'm just not a I'm not a go one hundred percent in rehearsal because I wanted to feel live and real the first time I do it, And once they work with me, they're like, oh, I get it now, But that's just me. Some people love to choreograph and know exactly what they're going to do when they do it exactly the same way. A lot of actors do that.
I actually read not long ago, you know that famous coretroom scene in A Few Good Men with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, when Jack Nicholson.
Said handle the truth.
Yes, Apparently he did that full out every single time they rehearsed it. The director Rob Ryaner was like, Jack, do you want to keep doing this at this level? Jack Nielson said, yes, that's my process. I'm going to do it full out every time. He probably sounded like me. Afterwards. I just realized I have a postgame ritual shots. No, it's not, it's it's maybe unhealthy. I might need to work on it, but I even do it after we record every podcast. I second guess everything I did, and
I used to do this in interviews. I would never walk away. I don't know it again. I might need to go to therapy. It's not it's my type a personality. I walk away from everything I do, never saying I just killed that, I just did awesome. I think instantly I could have done this differently. I should have done that better. I missed that question. I forgot this I wish I'd ask that differently. Should I have been quiet? There?
Should I? And I run through it on my head and I'm nauseous an anxious about it for a couple hours, and then honestly it albos if I have someone tell me, oh, here's something great you did. I sort of need that validation and then I can kind of talk myself off a ledge thinking I was a total failure.
I think if you are successful and you're a type a personality, you will often always pick apart your mistakes and remember your mistakes. They live with you as opposed to the ninety nine point nine percent of the things that you did great and you crushed.
So how did you feel when you leave tell All taping or a live episode taping?
It depends, you know, sometimes I really if things just I don't know. There's some days when when it's just everything's forced and it's hard and the interviews don't flow, and I'm like, I always felt like that was on me. I was the quarterback, and I felt like that was
on me. But then there were times when you know it could be a complete show and things were going sideways and I kept it on the tracks, or I brought something to the table that you know saved the show, especially if it's live and a camera goes down or something you know, technical happens and I save it. I'm really proud of myself of just the experience of having done it so many times that I know a lesser host probably couldn't have pulled that off, and it would
have been really clunky and funky and sounded weird. And when I always say, and you and I have had these discussions, when you don't notice things like it's things at home as the viewer, you would never notice. You just thought, oh, that's the way it was supposed to be. That's when we've done a great job. And so a lot of times it's unceremonious or whatever, but I knew.
Like, right, it's not so clear as in sports that you won that game. You don't get a clear one hundred percent. And honestly, I mean, look, I don't know my sports, but even there, I'm sure if somebody wins a game, they still look back, of course, and think of things they wish they'd done differently, and then they made it look easy, and you know whatever. But as I'm sitting you're thinking about it. We probably all need to accept and revel more in things going well and
not always strive for things to go perfect. In school, we are literally taught things should be perfect. Did you get a one hundred percent on that test? But as you get older, nothing is ever I mean any field. Do you do a presentation at your business, Maybe you could have done a few things about it better, but it still went really well. I'm going to work on this about myself. It doesn't have to be perfect.
You're no I gotta call it. I'm not going to break this down to you, and it's going to be shocking. You're not perfect. Nobody is. There is no perfection.
I's just got wide.
Wow.
I need to speak to someone.
Thank you for jumping in and giving us your questions and comments at the Most Dramatic Pod Ever. You can always find Elsie at Lauren Zima and I am at Chris B. Harrison. Thank you so much for joining us today as we opened up the playbook, and we'll talk to you next time because we have a lot more to talk about. Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the Most Dramatic Pod Ever, and make sure to write us review and leave us five Stars, I'll talk to you next time.