Kristen Bell

Hello and welcome to armchair expert. I am Dak Shepherd and today my guest is the lovely Kristen Bell. She was Veronica Mars, Sarah Marshall, Princess Anna, and she's currently Eleanor Shellstrop in the good place. She can sing, she can dance, she can do drama, she can do comedy.

She's frustratingly talented and special. And above all those things, she's my wife. And even more importantly, she's an incredible mother to our girls. What is funny about this interview is that I naively assume this would be a slam dunk because we've acted opposite one another and a bunch of things and done dozens of interviews together.

And for the most part, those things have always been pretty effortless. And in full disclosure, she was my first interview because I was so confident it would go well. But on this day, this day you're about to hear, we just were not getting along. We were bickering and impatient with one another.

And the first half of the interview was a struggle. In fact, I considered just leaving this unreleased because truthfully, I'm embarrassingly controlling throughout most of it. And she is by my estimation, very suspicious of my motives throughout. But ultimately, I have decided to put it out because it's real and true.

And we do find our way back to liking each other by the end. In short, I want you to think of this episode as the antidote to our Samsung commercials. Please enjoy. This podcast is brought to you by Swarespace.

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I'm very excited to welcome. We'll definitely be the close, the guest and closest to in the whole world. Assuming we don't have our children on. Kristen Bell, thank you for joining me on armchair expert.

Thank you for having me. And you're a little nervous, right? I think because truth be told, we've been arguing for about the last 12 minutes. They're just little bitey little things.

Yeah, we're both on edge. And that's not how I like to go into a public discussion. Yeah, or a public appearance with you. But you were annoying me.

So I bit back and that's life. And how what was I doing that was so annoying? Mostly just asking you to do this, right? Is that the main?

Well, I did look, I did have to go to Michaels today. And then I I'm missing Garland and I really went back. Garland for any folks that don't go to Michaels. That's a yarn store, right?

It's like a craft. And here's a perfect example of why you're being annoying. Yes, it is a craft store. It's not a yarn store, but it also has great Garland.

And if you need yarn, where's the best place to go? Any of the McDonald's, Taco Bell, Knitting stores in that water village. OK. Well, I associate maybe wrongly Michaels with crafts and yarn and knitting needles, those kind of things.

So you would prefer to be at Michaels. You've made that abundantly clear. But I also think because you have this new you have this podcast now and you're like excited to strip people down and I'm just scared of what you're going to ask me. Because you know, I don't know a lot of stuff and I also don't have a good memory.

So you're going to be like, but I have all your memories now locked in here. Right. So do this podcast with yourself about me. I considered it.

I really would prefer. I think everyone prefer if I did because I do a great impersonation of you. Yeah. And maybe better if I just recounted all your stories.

You're good. No, you're not. I love you. You were just you were being annoying because you want to hear my impersonation of you?

Sure. Well, there's another example of why I was trying to get work done for a job that I have. Right. Which you have a lot of them and I'm very right.

And you were talking over it and making jokes and saying, do you guys see all the bay laurel trees we got outside? And I was like, does he not realize I'm trying to get this done as quickly as possible? So I can do this podcast. Then you're refusing to get a door on your bathroom and I give you a perfectly accurate observation that we could put a curtain and you say it's scientifically impossible.

You just hang a curtain there. So just everyone else, we're in a what would be described, I guess, as an attic that's been converted into a little room above a garage of a house that we are trying to move into. And it's yeah, it's shaped oddly. Well, here's the thing.

You and I have different everything. I wish you could see this room because you and I have different ideas about nesting and how to welcome someone in here. For me, I would probably get the wood chips off the ground. I would vacuum the carpet.

I would possibly take all these like loose cords, this like open live electrical system. Yeah. So guys, there was a wall in here and it really cut into the open space. So I tore the wall out with my own two bare hands, which an actress of your calories should be grateful that she married a husband who knows how to tear a wall up.

But you're not hearing any of that. You're just hearing all the complaints about the electric. It's not a complaint. I'm just saying if you're going to be inviting people here to your podcast, you have to have a door on the bathroom.

By the way, I think if we went downtown to a new restaurant and it looked like this, we go so cool. They left all the electrical stuff. You love to make observations about like current hip things like you hate the word artisan and all this stuff. You don't know that.

All I'm asking you is in feet. How many feet away is that toilet bowl from my face right now? It is. No, no, no.

What you have to do is pitch your mean lane and I'm a little over six feet. So I think it's about 15 feet away from you. I think that's less than two bodies of you. I think it's probably one and a half.

But regardless, let's say it's 12 feet. You're close to the commode. That's in arguable. Right.

And if you have a guest up here, let's say Robert De Niro does your podcast. Yeah, he likely will. Yeah. Right.

So he's not going to want to go to a toilet that first of all I can see into right now. You have to put a curtain on that. OK, you have to have human beings want to spend time with you. First of all, I hear you and I respect your opinion about this.

Secondly, I've spent dozens of hours in here writing staring at that exact doorway, which is at a 70 degree angle, the ceiling. It is technically impossible to get a barrier between the toilet and the guests. So this is just something I've come to accept. And I think the faster the guests come to accept that the better.

In the middle of the room when you're having people and you can't do that. But how about this? I need to go to Michael's anyway. Watch this tomorrow.

I'm going to go to Michael's and I'm going to get you a beautiful piece of fabric that looks like it's ripped straight off of Jesus's robe, old diaper bin. And I'm going to hang it up with two hooks and it's going to work perfectly. Then at least I'm going to feel comfortable that if my girlfriends want to come here and do your podcast, which by the way is I can't wait for. Oh, your girlfriend's this is what this is why you're annoying.

I'm going to give you a standing ovation. If you solve this problem, the barrier between the come out and the guests. I can't wait. OK, and I'll do it.

Yeah, I'll give you your proppers. I'm going to fix it. All right. Knowing that you were going to come on, I thought of a story that probably we haven't told in public that I think is pretty funny.

I love you. I love you so much to. I love you when you're annoying. Well, that's the key.

If you can get through the annoying times, you got a shot. So when we first met our very first time hanging out by choice, we met at a dinner party. That was not our choice. And then we ran into each other at the Red Wings game also not planned, but then we hung out intentionally, right?

We went to what was your favorite restaurant? You always went to a firefly. I met you and your friends there and then we ended up back at your house and you had a hot tub. Yeah, and we went in the hot tub together.

Yeah, with my room, my roommates initially. Yeah, but then they all they peeled off. They peeled off, but they were there because they knew I was like dating and then it made me nervous and they want to make sure you. It was like a top predator.

Yeah. Yeah, like Apex predator. Well, they saw you and like most people immediately didn't trust you. Right.

So Ryan was like going in a hot tub with a jungle cat, like a jaguar or a leopard. Yeah. Sure. Anyways, so it ended up being just you and I in the hot tub and at a certain.

Ryan whispered to me a couple of times, are you okay? Are you okay? I'm sure you feel safe about this. Yes.

So you, Ryan left and we were by ourselves and then you said what we were talking, we were in the middle talking and then you said, what? Here we go. From my perspective, which I understand you take issue with you like most guys, unintentionally and perhaps even subconsciously, your eyes started down to my sternum area and perhaps the left and right side of my sternum, which I refer to as my breasts. Yeah.

And I said to diffuse the air because I noticed you popped down once or twice. I said, what are you looking at my fake tits? Right. So you so Chris said, what are you looking at my fake tits?

Now in my defense and I maintain this position, I'll admit anything. You know me. I've admitted the most terrible things possibly. That's true.

You're very honest. Yeah. Shitting the bed in an orgy. Okay.

I'll say that at an inner party. Listen, so what I'm saying is it's weird to me that I would not admit looking at your boobs because I'll admit to staring at your ass a ton that night. Right. Sincerely, my gaze definitely was probably on your boobs, but it was not I wasn't looking at you.

Right. But can I just tell you something? You're you're an ape. Okay.

You're a man. You do something subconsciously. Even you know, people I work with don't even realize it. Look, I stared at everyone's hair lines and I don't realize it until someone's pointing it out.

And I don't think I'm staring at your hair line. Yeah. But well, because I want to know what's going on. Yeah.

But I felt I noticed you were looking down and I do believe 100% sincerely that you don't think you were doing it. Yeah. But as any woman can understand, sometimes their eyes dart and they won't they don't even know they're doing it. Right.

So that's neither here nor there. So you did though, we agree on this. You said, what are you looking at my fake tits? Yeah.

So I thought it was a very funny joke because I have very small boobs, but they are very, very, very, very, very, very, very perky. You were in your 20s at that time. You were 27 and I was 32. And so they were very perky.

And then later, so that was clue number one for me. So what are you looking at my fake tits? Then clue number two was we're not dating for a couple months. We go do one in Rome and you I know you're in a show called Veronica Mars.

And I think, okay, I've got to watch this show as a good boyfriend. I end up watching it. I end up loving it and becoming a marshmallow proper. But between seasons one and two, you came into the room and you said, Oh, look at this.

This is when I got my boobs. Yes. Right. Yes.

Because at the time in 2004 or five push up bras were like the hot ticket item, like real proper push up bras from Victoria Secret. Well engineered. Yeah. So I had discovered that and in addition, my hormones were sort of rearranging themselves in my twenties and I lost a lot of my likes of sort of chubby cheeks as a kid and my body started to fill out more like a woman.

So I got hips and I got boobs and I was 24, 25 years old. So again, because my breasts are so small, I thought it was a very funny joke. Say, Oh, that's when I got my boobs because look how late I went through puberty. I actually have a boob that someone will recognize as more than a raisin on camera.

And that's why I said that. Yeah. So, so from my point of view, you said, look at my fake tits. And then you said, this is when I got my boobs.

And then there's another one, but it would be breaking anonymity of a family member, but another really, really spot on piece of a piece of proof that you had fake boobs. And so I was under the impression that you had fake boobs. Yeah. And which I, which I still to this day find so.

But we later cleared that up. So yes, you're always right about everything. Well, I'm only going to bring up stories where the punch line is as I was right. Yeah.

OK, so, you know, months are going on. We're dating things are great. And you are occasionally making jokes about people with fake boobs or you're making observations. I don't want to say your body shaming one, but between you and I are like jokes, but like we were, I remember what you're talking about.

We were like, yeah, like a Kate, look, we live in Los Angeles. And sometimes when someone walks in with an extreme amount of plastic surgery and it wasn't body shaming, but it was like, whoa, where exactly they look really, really, really tight or it's like, I, I, where like, you know, it's insane. And I remember what the breaking point was. The first few times this happened over the course of months, I didn't say a thing.

I just was like, oh, it's weird. She has fake boobs, but she's kind of making fun of fake boobs or observing fake boobs or whatever. And then finally, unlike the fourth time it happened, I finally broke and said, what do you want me to do right now? I feel like this is a test.

Like, should I join in and comment on these boobs? And you were like, what are you talking about? And I will say, to set the scene at the time we were in Hawaii, I have very, very few memories, but I remember this clearly. We were in Hawaii.

I was wearing an orange, Rachel pally dress, which if anyone knows Rachel pally, it's like a thin t-shirt material. You do not need to wear a bra with it if you have very small, or I wasn't wearing a bra with it. It was like a halter. And we were in Hawaii and it was one of those like, brawless days where you're wearing a sort of like bikini top.

And I said something about, oh, yeah, like, wow, we or something about a girl that had, you know, gigantic fake boobs. And you said, is this a trap? Yes. What am I supposed to say?

And I said, what do you mean? What are you supposed to say? I'm just, I said, well, you have fake boobs. You had breast augmentation.

And now you're, you're making fun of this. And I don't know whether I'm supposed to join you or stay quiet. And I just can't do it anymore. And I you were shocked.

Well, again, to say, I wasn't wearing a bra at the time, I have no boobs. And they were just, it's just like those skin tags. And I thought, you think I did that you think I did this to myself and this is what I got? Yes.

And then later I purchased these while I was ripped off. No, I and then I explained to you, I have friends. I have female friends that have had breast enhancement that have gone from an A to a B. And then you said, well, I would have some scars or something.

And then I said, well, just to further my point, I wasn't even a B. Wasn't a skin tags. I know, I think you were a B. I'm going to give you a B.

Well, I know you think that I have the bursiers and I purchased them. So as much as I want to say, they were beautiful boobs. They were beautiful boobs and they were they were inordinately perky. And it made sense to me.

One more point. There's nothing to make them sag. Hunn, I've seen I've seen small, saggy boobs. They exist.

In fact, they're not that rare. It happens. So, okay. I mean, you're you're you're you're we're sitting sitting way up high as Bob Seager would say there's because there's nothing to pull him down.

Okay. Well, anyways, what is really funny about the whole thing is that for months, I thought you had fake boobs and I was very disinterested in them, if you recall. Yeah. And then when I found out those things were real and they were that perky, I was so excited.

You weren't. I was all over there. They were the huge shift. And you said, I said, well, wouldn't I have scars?

Wouldn't you see scars? Because this is an important part of the story where you are right. So I'd like to highlight that to make you feel good. You said they you don't need scars anymore.

They can go through your belly button. I said, no way. But then I remember. Let's name drop.

I mean, Kelli used to be like a nurses assistant and I said surgical assistant. I said, I said, let me and I know she's done boob jobs. And I said, let me ask me and I said, can you go through your belly button? And she said, yeah, absolutely.

So you this whole time assumed that I had a hangover. First class. Well, I thought you had a really high end boob job because there was no evidence of it. Well, I'm that's so flattering.

And now after I've had two children for you, I think you know that who was right and who was wrong. Well, yeah. Now, now you know, I gotta say they're still in really fine shape. That's another thing that you could go much more self.

So I think things are doing great. Thank you, honey. Now you and I differ in a bazillion ways. Yeah, we're almost pull our opposite.

Um, again, I love you. Okay. So one of the ways we differ is that I was not a kid who wanted to be an actor. I didn't I didn't know an actor.

We live. We both are from Detroit. And you're working actors in the whole state. So it seemed preposterous to me.

Nor did I do theater or any of that stuff. No, but you wanted to entertain. You were always the class clown. You were you wanted to entertain.

You were you were pulling focus a lot in your life. Let's put it that way. So I was deflecting from the fact that I was dyslexic and going to special ed. Yes.

Okay. Well, there's not a two home. Yeah. Okay.

So you did though. You were what eight years old when you decided you wanted to act? No, well, yes and no. Um, I was always a mimic.

So I would I almost had a little very little tick where if I heard you still have it. When we watch movies, Kristen whispers almost every line to herself as well. It's not every line. It is I can't stop it because if I hear it, I have to figure out how it can come out of my mouth.

Right. You guys see if you can do it. I got to see if you can do it. So to watch shows with accents, that's where it kills me.

To watch game of Thrones. Yeah, down the Abbey. Yeah, you were pretty much titles to titles. Yeah.

You don't sit next to me while we're watching something. Any foreign nominated best picture, you're going to be all over it. Yeah, it's trouble. It's trouble.

But I mimicked a lot of things as a kid and I was always really into music. I was I heard music everywhere and I heard things musically. So I started studying voice when I was younger. It wasn't eight years old, I think.

But my mom knew that I wasn't big enough to play sports or I wasn't really succeeding in that. Although you did play Spelanier or stand out. I did. You were right about half that sentence.

I did play. Oh, well, you know, I guess when I was young. Anyway, the point is I joined a local theater company and the sweet part of the story, this sort of like hallmark lifetime moment is that my mom drove me to stage crafters, which is a local theater in Royal Oak, Michigan. Sounds like they sell yarn.

Yeah. Stage crafters. So she said, do you want to audition for this play? Yes.

And I memorized a shell silverstein poem to say on stage and I was probably 12, 13. Which one from where the sidewalk ends or lightning at it? Hell if I remember. And when we got there, I saw that everyone was sitting in the audience while people went up and performed.

My desire to mimic or it wasn't really even a desire to perform. My hearing things musically was always to myself. It was very, very intimate. I didn't really want I liked to be funny and make people giggle, but I wasn't into performance yet.

And the fact that there were kids in the audience and adults watching you perform, it made me feel very, very uncomfortable and I started crying left the theater and I remember in the. Did your mom give you a tough love talk? No, which is weird because I have so few memories. My memory is so awful.

But I remember this very clearly. We were in the parking lot of stage drafters and she said, listen, you memorized this? I think that you would enjoy this being a part of the theater company. If you have a bad experience today and you don't enjoy it, we never have to come here again.

We won't even drive past this street again. That's good. Yes. So she's basically said we can strike it from the record if it's embarrassing or humiliating.

We never talk about it again. And I. It's a good pep talk. It was a wonderful thing.

And I. I need to memorize that for when the inevitable happens in our children. One audition for things. And I got a I was cast as a we did Ragadian and Andy.

I was cast as a banana in the first act and a tree in the second act. I didn't have any lines, but I really liked that sense of community. You were like Eddie Murphy. You played a lot of characters.

Yeah. Banana tree. And I. I loved the sense of community and I loved that people in the theater were allowed to be dorky.

And there wasn't like this popularity thing. There wasn't this standard. It was like you were weird and wonderful. And I just I liked making the sets.

I like it was the island of Misfit toys. Yeah. And I was still studying music and then I sort of discovered musical theater. But at the same time, my mom was recognizing that I was happy there.

And so she submitted me to like a local commercial agent. Well, yes. I'm now reflecting on is your mother sent us some VHS tapes or no, rather she had transferred some VHS tapes to DVD. And on those, you're a very little kid doing like monologues in front of the camera.

Oh, yeah. But but you need that was that seems intentionally with the professional end in sight. Yes. And I was probably between like 11 and 14 when I did that and I prior to that prior to the invention of the video camera, I would watch Disney movies and play them in the background so I could get some of the orchestration and on my boombox press record and like do aerial and do all of that.

And I don't know what I was keeping those for. And even when I was singing my fair lady in front of the fireplace and I'd set up the video camera when I was 12 years old, the idea that someone would ever watch that was humiliating. I would be way too embarrassed. So again, like this, I still have this like duplicitous nature about acting where I really, really want to do it, but I don't want anyone to look at me doing it.

I think I've heard a lot of actors say that. Yeah. But I'm interested specifically in the professional aspect. So you were putting yourself on tape, you were auditioning, you were in a Kmart circular holding a bicycle.

I've seen that picture. So when you're that age, you were very much thinking, I'm going to do this as a for a living, hopefully when I grow up. No, no, not at all. We're just kind of going through the steps, not even realizing what it was.

Yeah, making money. We didn't have a ton of money. And I was, that was a college fund for me. I had not even thought about adult life or what I would do.

I knew what I enjoyed right now. And I suppose if someone sat me down, which is actually what happened when I was 17 in my counselor's office in my high school and they said, what do you want to do with your life? I said, I have no idea. They said, start with what you love.

I said, I love theater. They said, you can study that. I said, great, have a wonderful day. That's what I'm doing.

Right. It was never an epiphany of I'm going to do this. It was, um, those Kmart circulars. You're in an enigma to me in a lot of ways.

And these are all the reasons I married you. You have, by my estimation, a pretty pure draw to this. Whereas maybe it's cause I'm a comedian or whatnot. I was a middle child that didn't get enough attention.

I very much wanted attention. I loved being funny as again, a defense mechanism for feeling stupid for going to special ed. All these things. Can you think of a motivation you had to do this that you feel like was maybe treating some kind of wound or helping you heal or it's just it was fun and you did it like a sport.

It seems to me that it was fun and you did it like a sport, which is interesting. A lot of it is that. A lot of it is I, you know, we've had this conversation before about what is being good, what is altruism, you know, is it selfish or selfless? Because when I'm helping people, I get a real boost.

I get an ego boost. I like that feeling. So in some ways you could argue, it's very selfish too. Oh, I'm going to get to that.

Okay, great. But when you are on stage and people are enjoying something. But you don't think it doesn't. So it just made me happy.

Kristen had many step dads as I had many step dads. It was you and your mom versus the world, most of the time. Yeah. I mean, my dad was there, but yes, that 50% of my life is me.

Yeah. And you had like a latch key, right? Oh, yeah. Your mom worked hard on hours as a nurse.

So none of that it's not like you went there and you felt like, oh, this is, I'm getting a bunch of the attention that I would normally be getting if I lived in a nuclear family with two doting parents and all that. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Now that you say that maybe.

Because although your mom does do it on you quite a bit. Yeah, getting attention from my mom was never my problem. I think I felt big. Uh huh.

Oh, and you're very tiny. Yeah, it didn't. Almost invisible. Well, I also have the child's voice and I look young and every time I go to the grocery store, like someone calls me sweetheart.

That shit bugs me like no end. That is interesting because on a stage size is irrelevant. You can be as powerful as the guy with acromegaly. Yes.

You think I probably felt powerful? I felt like I was good at something because I, I was, I have, you know, not had a difficult life. Like I, I was accepted. I had friends.

I wasn't. Yeah, you were popular. Yeah. But I, but I was, I never felt really like good at something or special at something.

And I think when I discovered music, I particularly because music is so peaceful to my brain. It, when I was singing or when I was involved in a musical theater production, I was not turbulent at all. And I wasn't thinking about popularity or, you know, divorces or anything like that. It was just a, it was an escape.

And it was also something I felt very good at. Yeah, confident. Yeah. And one of the things that was on this tape because you had memorized different things is you had remembered line for line a very famous Lee Presson nail commercial, which I don't know if it aired all over the country.

It certainly aired about 300 times a day in the Detroit metro area. Yeah. And could you just refresh my memory of how that goes? Yeah, sure.

It goes like this. These are the amazing Lee Presson nails. They press on in seconds. No gluenomess.

They press on Lee's super sick tabs. Then press on Lee Presson nails. That's all easy on, easy off. Use them again and again.

They just won't break or chip polish and they're nearly impossible to chip. Lee Presson nails in a variety of colors for a quick, easy split. Press on. What's so amazing about your memory that you've already referenced.

Oh, you've already referenced natural and glamour lengths. You've referenced several times already that you have a bad memory and I can attest to that. There's like vacation. You don't remember we've taken.

But your, your ability to remember that type of thing because you haven't done your Lee Presson nail commercial for me in about a year. Yeah, it was right there for you. Yeah. And then you are the exact same with the lyrics, right lines from movies.

Because I do think it's very confusing. I think a neurologist would have a real field day studying studying your brain. When I'm watching something, there's something about me that is more present, I guess. I'm an observer, which is strange because I, it seems like I like to be in the center and making things up.

But really, I think that my true personality is an observer and I'm just sort of regurgitating a bunch of weird things I've experienced when I'm acting. I think that's false modesty. I think you're much better than all that. So, I think another unique thing about you, I'm basically just going to go through all the things I find very unique and attractive about you.

You have a kind of unique mix of good girl, bad girl. And that, I mean, you love rules. You were, you followed them to the, the T, the letter of the law. And yeah, you also, yeah, and yeah, you also had sex with people.

You weren't hung up about that, right? Yeah. You had some promiscuous sex. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I like that.

And you also like with try drugs. Yeah. Minimally. Yeah.

I, I've tried, I smoked a lot of pot in college. Right. I also tried ecstasy, but it didn't work. It's my memory because look, I tried mushrooms and they were not real mushrooms.

So, yes, my intention was to try mushrooms with a bunch of friends that have done them before. Yeah. And then I guess they didn't work. And I only knew that because the girls that were with were like, these don't work.

These are just like yard. And you don't have an addictive bone in your body. When we met, you were a smoker. And then all of a sudden a month went by and I reminded you, you had not smoked in a month and you just quit, but I didn't, didn't you realize.

Well, because sometimes I would, when I was in my twenties, I would smoke cigarettes when I was really stressed because it made me feel like that was something to take the stress away. I think it was just like the movie cliche version of what I should do. Right. Like post sex.

Yeah. And then also, you're right. When I started hanging out with you, I wasn't stressed anymore. And then you were like, don't you smoke?

And I just didn't remember that. I had to remind you that you were a smoker. I wasn't really, and I really, like on and on, like I would buy a pack of cigarettes throughout my twenties every couple months, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. And one time in college, someone got x to see and I tried it and I can't be sure it wasn't a tic-tac. Right. But we did go to a Dave Matthews band concert that's where the confusing memories start to layer.

Because you don't know if you're just high on the performance. Totally. Yeah. Totally.

You love Dave Matthews. Yeah. Crash of the UB. And Martin Sexton.

You really, really loved during that period. But so that's kind of unique. I think people are either goody goodies and they don't really do anything or they're like me and they're scumbags. So you're kind of in the middle.

You're open to trying things. Yeah. You generally follow the rules. How do you make those decisions?

Like, why is it that sometimes you would go, fuck it, I'm going to do ecstasy. I'm going to go to Dave Matthews and I'm going to pound some Molly because it's to me. It's my using my own barometer of what is good and bad for me. It's also promoting happiness, reducing suffering.

If I'm with my friends and someone has weeder mushrooms or something and I'm in my 20s, I'm not raising kids. Like, great. But am I going to go rob a liquor store or am I going to like, you know, I can't, I literally can't even think of anything else bad, but like do other bad things. If my thing is, am I causing someone else suffering?

If I'm not, if I want to have sex with someone and I'm in college and I'm consenting and he's consenting and we don't want to have a relationship and it turns out to be one time, no one suffers there. Right. You know, so and we're both interested for a second and then it goes like that's, no one's suffering. To me, it's happiness versus suffering always.

Right. You don't, but do you think there was any point where, so you went to this, this Catholic school and your mom's conservative and then you went away to NYU and do you feel at all like when you were at NYU, you were like, I'm going to rebel? No, it wasn't a rebellion so much as a blossoming because when I was in school, the sort of baseline of what you're taught is there is good and there is evil and I just don't believe that anymore. And when I went to New York, you know, you're taught all these things in a small town at a parochial school about good and evil and people who drugs are bad and this is bad and that is bad and this is what's good.

Gay people. Yeah, they were high on the list back then. Big time and then I went to New York and all I met were these like, I'm amazing. Drug taken, queer, lovely, gay musical theater boys and I was like, oh well, here's my answer.

It comes from life experience. It doesn't come from whatever religion teacher told me was good or bad. It comes from me seeing these like lovely individuals that sometimes dress up like women or love Broadway shows or whatever the, you know, my, all my gay friends were into. I was like, oh, this is happiness and when there's happiness, I don't run from it.

So I was like, right, these people are lovely. It's all. The smoke weed. I'm going to try a little.

Yeah, well, which was weird because they didn't even smoke weed, but other friends I had in college who were super happy and balanced and lovely. They weren't like ending up in the gutter. Right. And they were like, we just have weed and this might be fun and more in college.

And I was like, great. Well, and that, yeah, so maybe that's a little bit of the keynote that I think about it is the difference between you and I experimenting with drugs, which is I would. Straight to the gutter. Well, I would imagine that you knew people who did stuff and they, their whole thing was appealing to you and you thought, oh, I'll try that because I like that person.

I trust that person. Whereas I was like, you know, reading Bukowski or whatever I was reading going on the road and they're talking about drugs and I'm thinking, oh my God, I want to experience that. Yeah, I'm not like, I didn't like you were cliche in the fact that you like every other boy read on the road and decided to live in your car for a year. Like that was like super important.

Well, I think many boys went and lived in their cars, but I did and I feel very proud of that. Yeah, and I would not feel proud of that because I don't want to I don't want to drop out of sight. I don't want to know. I don't know.

And not because of a piece of literature, like I'm writing my book of my life and I want to do it by discovery. Well, you were mimicking Disney characters and I was mimicking some authors I thought were really cool. Sure. Yeah.

But then, you know, you come to find out it's probably better on the page than it is waking up at five in the afternoon, recounting. Cop and telling them that the Walmart parking lot even parking for today. I never came to an Walmart parking lot, unfortunately. That's one story that's not there for me.

I never came to. I never came to an Walmart parking lot. So another thing about you that I find very admirable is that you are able to root on your friends who happen to also be competitors of yours in the most, you know, basic dynamic that we are actors and we audition for parts and we have a lot of friends who are also actors and they audition for sometimes those same parts. And you are, it's amazing.

You've witnessed you lose roles to friends or, you know, and you're able to just be very happy for them and cheer them on. And I think that's incredible. It's happiness versus suffering. So I would be sad if I lose a role to everybody else, Emily, if I lose a role, Emily Blunt, which has happened numerous times before.

And by the way, I'm not saying it like it was between me and Emily. Yeah, you guys both were after the same thing. Yeah, along with a hundred other girls in Hollywood and they chose Emily rightfully. So because she's a spectacular actress, to me it's happiness versus suffering.

I might feel sad because I didn't book it, but Emily feels happiness and she's going to do a great job and that movie is going to be great better because she's in it because she's spectacular. It's just happiness versus suffering to me because I kind of weirdly live by what I've discovered to be the Buddhist way of life, which is that, you know, when somebody's about to get hit by a bus, you don't push them out of the way because you're helping someone else, you push them out of the way because that person is you. We're all sort of intertwined and someone else gets the role and I love that person, then great. But to me, that feels a little bit like acting a certain way and then trying to explain it later or after the fact.

So then you attach some principles to it like, Oh, I believe in this, or I believe in this. Yeah, I'm saying I didn't know that was the Buddhist way. And then when I heard it, I was like, Oh, that's kind of what I feel. Right.

But I would argue that you're largely not in control of your emotions and that you don't you just don't have those emotions. And the reason I think you don't have those emotions is you have incredibly high self esteem. I think that's really the base for why you're able to doesn't when someone when Emily Blunt gets that role, you go, Oh, she's great, she'll be great. And that's great.

You don't go. It doesn't make you feel less than you don't go on a piece of ship because she's great, which is wonderful. And so healthy doesn't have she doesn't have that effect over me. She doesn't have anything to do with me.

Right. If I'm a piece of shit, I'm a piece of shit because I'm a piece of shit. I agree. Nothing to do with Emily Blunt.

I've just been clear on that my whole life. Right. But in you, I know from all the stories from your childhood, you seem to have had pretty high self esteem most of your life. You didn't find yourself in situations where you're being taken advantage of and you were not a victim very often.

And I, um, I believe personally that, you know, we think that we get self esteem by accomplishing things like, Oh, I'll graduate from UCLA. That'll make me feel good about myself or I'll be on TV. That'll make me feel good about myself or I'll date this person. And then that'll make me feel good about myself.

But in my experience, none of those things ever made me feel good about myself. Things that made me feel good are esteemable acts. Self esteem is doing a steamable acts. And you actually, by your own judge, you feel good about who you are.

And so I think that you've, you know, I've only over the last 13 years been given an opportunity to like help a lot of dudes get sober. That gives me self esteem. Exercise gives me self esteem. So you have a ton of self esteem, which is very attractive.

And I think it's from doing a steamable act. So what are the things you do that give you that self esteem? I seek a lot of things out. Sometimes to my detriment, I mean, everyone's on a learning curve.

Sometimes I sign up for more than I can swallow. I work for a lot of different charities. When some you always have right? I always have.

And that's because I think everyone is doing the best they can with what they've got. And so when different people reach out to me, like gift of life, which is a bone marrow registry, of course, I'll do your PSAs. That's wonderful. I know a friend of a friend who needed that service and like being an ambassador for baby to baby or for an ambassador for no kid hungry.

Those are all worthwhile things. I think that you went to Brazil as a teenager and helped deliver babies. I did. I helping other people because I see I'm an empath and I see myself and everyone else and I can sometimes feel what they're feeling.

And I would want someone to help me. It's as simple as that. I think it's like, it's counterintuitive. It's counterintuitive to think that you will end up getting everything you want in life by being very selfless and being very of service to other people.

That's not that's the most intuitive thing I could possibly. Yeah, not to me. My thing is like, oh, you have to bend everyone's will around you to your will to get what you want. That's so backwards.

It's the only way you get it. Karma is not bullshit. Like, you can call it you do or whatever you want, but like the energy of the world, that's real life, you know? And I think if you walk into situations with an open heart and someone says like, oh, I'm stressed and you ask them questions about it or oh, I have to move and you say, I'm not doing anything on Saturday.

Do you need any help? You're not saying it because you're trying to like get points in the afterlife or make your life better. You're doing it because you can also look at it like, oh, I can spend the day with this person and make their life a little bit easier. And out of that, I get self esteem, which makes me feel great.

Like, you know, like working for path, which you know, we also rescue dogs. Yeah, I don't think that the that there is a recipe for self esteem. I think it varies for everyone. Right.

So you have your laundry list of things that you value and then you go out of your way and spend time to do that. I have a different list. Everyone's got a different list. And I think it's, it's important to recognize the things you think are important and that are admirable.

And then put some effort into doing those things because it leads to confidence. It leads to loving yourself. Yeah. You can't really.

And it's also it also breeds humility and sort of a humble perspective in that, look, I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be one of the only people who doesn't have to worry about their bills and gets to feel beautiful when she gets her makeup done. Like, I don't deserve that. But I have been put in a position where I was given opportunities and I was born kind of cute and I can read a room really well and act appropriately in social situations.

And those things have led me to get great results out of my life. And I think that that should be spread around. I mean, I am a secret socialist. Like, I want, I want to share things and I don't really think it's fair that I make as much money as I do and I want to sort of spread that around.

I know I think you should make more. I don't. I don't like seeing suffering. You know what it is part of it is that I just have a really hard time with suffering in any way that, you know, that's like when we do the path within this, which is another place I help with people assisting the homeless.

Like I move my friends and I gather my group of friends to move transitionally homeless families into apartments because that's what I should be doing with my time. Yeah. And I, I applaud all that stuff. But I do think I do think everyone selfish.

I think everything selfishly motivated. And I think you can be. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. How happy I am. Exactly. I guess I'm just saying if I were young and I were listening to you, I wonder if I would feel daunted or overwhelmed by the notion that you have to have this desire to do something selfless because you either have it or you don't.