Speaker 1: We're back. We're together. Look at this.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming out from San Diego. Hey, it's really
Speaker 1: good to be in person. I'm excited about that to
Speaker 1: see you.
Speaker 3: Come on, come on, are we rolling? Both of them?
Speaker 3: And this too is rolling? Everything's rolling. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: it's happening.
Speaker 1: It's totally happening. Hi everybody, and welcome back to another
Speaker 1: episode of Off the Beat. As always, this is your
Speaker 1: host Brian Baumgartner today. Yeah, very special, live in person.
Speaker 1: The Man, the myth, the legend. He's a New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling author. He is the host of his
Speaker 1: new show, Geography of Bliss, and I'm sure you have
Speaker 1: all of his other credits memorized. That's right. Rain Wilson
Speaker 1: aka Dwight Shrut is joining me today.
Speaker 3: Hey, Brian, Off the Beat, get it Off the Beat.
Speaker 3: Today's episode is Off the Beat.
Speaker 4: Farm Bubble and Squeak. I love it, Bubble and Squeakna
Speaker 4: Bubble and Squeak. I could get every mole left over
Speaker 4: from the nine before.
Speaker 1: Hi Brian, Hi buddy, this is cool.
Speaker 3: What what's happened?
Speaker 1: Well? You know, I mean we hadn't seen each other
Speaker 1: in so long and now twice in a few weeks.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. I love it. Yeah, I need more. I
Speaker 1: need to come to your farm for sure. I really
Speaker 1: want to come to your farm.
Speaker 3: You need to bring the kids out to my little.
Speaker 1: Farm, to your farm. Yeah, it's like a petting zoo.
Speaker 3: Bring the children out to the farm and there's a
Speaker 3: it's like a little petting zoo, and there's fruits.
Speaker 1: Do you let any children come to your petting zoo?
Speaker 3: All the children?
Speaker 1: You don't invite the children? Yes, I really.
Speaker 3: I walk down the streets of Oxnard, California playing the
Speaker 3: flute and the children follow, and there's magical animals and yeah.
Speaker 1: You're the pied Piper of ox and ard of Oxnard, California.
Speaker 1: Was that a dream early on to be the pied
Speaker 1: piper of Oxnard, California?
Speaker 3: That that was out of my wheelhouse? It was out
Speaker 3: of my imaginary field of being.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great to see you.
Speaker 3: Nice to see you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like really, I started watching your show, which we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about later. Obviously you are very this
Speaker 1: is going to be a running theme of this conversation. Okay,
Speaker 1: that you're very open. I have been very open about
Speaker 1: your history, your personal history. Uh huh. You grew up
Speaker 1: in Washington and like in almost the first line of
Speaker 1: the show said you had an unhappy childhood. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: first off, why was it unhappy?
Speaker 3: You're going right to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going right to it. No, I'm going right
Speaker 1: to it because it's fascinating that you are so open
Speaker 1: in all of your work. I mean, you're open as
Speaker 1: an artist, as an actor.
Speaker 3: I don't understand why more people aren't as open to me.
Speaker 3: It makes total sense to be open. I guess maybe
Speaker 3: I've been in therapy for twenty years, so I'm just
Speaker 3: really used to kind of excavating this stuff. And I've
Speaker 3: done a lot of therapeutic work in lots of different ways.
Speaker 3: So listen in a lot of senses. You know, my
Speaker 3: childhood was normal and happy. You know, I wasn't starved,
Speaker 3: but I was love starved. And I think it has
Speaker 3: to do with, you know, my dad, God rest his soul.
Speaker 3: He died a couple of years back. He was really
Speaker 3: traumatized as a kid. I mean he had like a
Speaker 3: like a Charles Dickens childhood. He was beaten, tortured, like
Speaker 3: his dad would take off for weeks at a time,
Speaker 3: leaving him to raise his younger sister when he was
Speaker 3: like thirteen, and he had to like borrow food from neighbors.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was really bad shit, and so that'll
Speaker 3: mess with you, right, So he wasn't so good at
Speaker 3: the whole intimacy thing. He was a very sweet man.
Speaker 3: He was a soft natured man. He wasn't like hard
Speaker 3: scrabble abusive, but he was very cut off. And when
Speaker 3: my mom left him and me when I was about
Speaker 3: a year and a half or two years old, I
Speaker 3: didn't really see her again until I was about fifteen,
Speaker 3: and then I was kind of raised by my step
Speaker 3: mom and they just had a terrible marriage. And you know,
Speaker 3: just to cut to the chase. When I was writing
Speaker 3: my autobiography, The Bassoon King a couple of years back,
Speaker 3: I asked him, I said, when did you know that
Speaker 3: your marriage was bad and that you shouldn't have gotten married?
Speaker 3: And they both said, like, oh, within about six months
Speaker 3: of being married. And they stayed together for fourteen fifteen
Speaker 3: more years. And then you know, I grew up a
Speaker 3: member of the Bahai faith, which you know I've spoken
Speaker 3: about a lot here and there, but one of the
Speaker 3: things that has been most difficult for me to kind
Speaker 3: of understand and rectify is that in the Bahih faith,
Speaker 3: everything is about love. It's about peace, it's about unity,
Speaker 3: it's about serving others and being open and serving humanity,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And so we had a lot of talk
Speaker 3: about love. We talked about love all the time, right,
Speaker 3: but there was zero love in the room, right. It
Speaker 3: was a really fractured So it's for a child, it's
Speaker 3: incredibly gaslighting to kind of be like, we should all
Speaker 3: love each other and serve each other and be kind
Speaker 3: to one another. And then my parents weren't loving or
Speaker 3: kind to each other. And I was kind of stuck
Speaker 3: in the middle.
Speaker 1: Were you Were you aware of that in the moment?
Speaker 1: Like were you aware?
Speaker 3: Okay, No, I was, And this is you know, and
Speaker 3: this created in me a big a sense of anxiety, loneliness, alienation.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what the hell was going on. It
Speaker 3: didn't make any sense to me. Like I remember several
Speaker 3: times my parents would be fighting and then we would
Speaker 3: have a Bahai spiritual gathering at our house. So it
Speaker 3: involved like saying prayers or singing or meditating or studying
Speaker 3: you know, mystical works of various religious faiths or of
Speaker 3: the Bahaigh writings themselves and like my stepmom like breaking
Speaker 3: dishes in the sink and there's guests over, and then
Speaker 3: her stomping through our tiny little living room about the
Speaker 3: size of this podcast, both because we didn't have any money,
Speaker 3: and going to the door and like slamming the door,
Speaker 3: and sometimes you'd even hear screams from the other and
Speaker 3: then my dad going okay, well shall we say some prayers?
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm nine years old, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is I know this isn't right right, but everyone's
Speaker 3: pretending it's normal. Maybe this is normal. Is this how
Speaker 3: other people act?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So all of this is, you know, it's Christ for
Speaker 3: the mill. And I've said it before and I'll say
Speaker 3: it again. I don't think I play kind of weirdo
Speaker 3: alienated characters as well. If I don't have that Petrie
Speaker 3: dish of an experience growing up. It did give me
Speaker 3: some mental health issues that I've kind of dealt with
Speaker 3: through my adulthood. And that's been part of the journey too,
Speaker 3: So you know, I see it all interwoven. I have
Speaker 3: a psychological personal journey through therapy and recovery. I have
Speaker 3: a journey a spiritual journey as a behigh and seeking
Speaker 3: kind of spiritual meaning and purpose in my life. And
Speaker 3: I'm an artist too, and I transform and I play characters,
Speaker 3: and I draw on all of this complexity in history
Speaker 3: and the playing of those characters, and all three of
Speaker 3: those journeys are intricately intertwined.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you, like,
Speaker 1: do you feel like your work as an artist, even young,
Speaker 1: that you used that, even if you couldn't articulate that
Speaker 1: things were maybe not quite right at home, as you said,
Speaker 1: or that you weren't fully happy, do you feel like
Speaker 1: you used the arts and creating characters and beginning your
Speaker 1: sort of passionate journey along those lines you used that,
Speaker 1: I think, so I think you use it.
Speaker 3: You don't, you're not even aware you're using it right
Speaker 3: when you're starting out in acting.
Speaker 1: But I always played misfits better.
Speaker 3: I always played odd balls better, people that didn't fit in,
Speaker 3: people that were kind of tortured, And so I definitely
Speaker 3: drew on that. When I was in acting school, I
Speaker 3: swiftly realized, like, oh, I'm incapable of playing someone well
Speaker 3: balanced and popular, and you know, but the more twisted
Speaker 3: the character the better I would do.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you know, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have I wouldn't have played quite true had
Speaker 3: I had a you know, normal balanced childhood. It's all,
Speaker 3: it's all part of the beauty and complexity of being
Speaker 3: a human being.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just had a conversation with Garrett Dilla Hunt.
Speaker 1: Yes you're old Powell, Yeah, who described you as a
Speaker 1: legend at you dub He was slightly younger, just behind you.
Speaker 3: Legend yuh, but yes.
Speaker 1: A legend kind of a legend in the theater department there.
Speaker 1: I mean, did you were you having success? Did you
Speaker 1: feel that in yourself when you were in college?
Speaker 3: Not at all. So I started acting later in high
Speaker 3: school when I went to this kind of very wealthy,
Speaker 3: artsy high school called New Trier north of Chicago. And
Speaker 3: I was really grateful because I had some amazing theater
Speaker 3: teachers there. I got to be a part of some
Speaker 3: incredible productions very early on, very young. And then I
Speaker 3: went to Tufts University in Boston. I did a year.
Speaker 3: I did a bunch of theater there and that was good,
Speaker 3: and I did some plays and then my parents were
Speaker 3: getting a divorce my dad and my stepmom and I,
Speaker 3: you know, as messed up as their marriage was, I
Speaker 3: was still very connected to them, right and I was
Speaker 3: kind of having a breakdown as they were having a breakdown.
Speaker 3: So I went back to Seattle. Then I ended up
Speaker 3: at University of Washington, where I met my now wonderful wife,
Speaker 3: Holiday Rhynhorn, and met Garrett, Dilla Hunt, Matt Ross, Lynn Shelton.
Speaker 3: A lot of great artists were there at that time
Speaker 3: and started doing plays, and I don't remember at all
Speaker 3: being a legend Universon of Washington. I played, you know,
Speaker 3: a couple of leads, but a couple of smaller parts
Speaker 3: and some different plays, and I think Garrett was I
Speaker 3: had been acting for a while and Garrett was literally
Speaker 3: just starting. So I saw Garrett in his very first play,
Speaker 3: and he was so talented, but he was so tense
Speaker 3: I thought, I just thought, oh my god, he's going
Speaker 3: to explode. The veins on his face are so tight,
Speaker 3: you know. But he was just kind of ruggedly handsome,
Speaker 3: other worldly, like kind of ethereal David Bowie cowboy from Yakima,
Speaker 3: Washington and doing these experimental plays. But he was just terrific.
Speaker 3: And then I went to n YU and then two
Speaker 3: years later he went to the NYU Graduate Acting Program.
Speaker 3: So we kind of followed each other and have both
Speaker 3: had pretty nice careers. He's he's an outrageously talented actor.
Speaker 3: I love his stuff. But I will say I just
Speaker 3: wanted to tell this little story. So I had had
Speaker 3: because your question was about the success that I had.
Speaker 3: I had success in high school and in two colleges,
Speaker 3: and I kind of thought, oh, maybe I'm really good
Speaker 3: at this. Okay, I should go be a professional actor.
Speaker 3: I should go audition. So I was in Seattle University
Speaker 3: of Washington, and I like went down the university avenue
Speaker 3: to the photography studio and I got I still have
Speaker 3: some of these really cheesy headshots from nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, you know, and and I typed up
Speaker 3: a resume. I had my dad helped me type up
Speaker 3: like the high school and college plays that I had done,
Speaker 3: and I just started submitting myself for I looked in
Speaker 3: the newspapers and you know, on the ads and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, and I started submitting myself and I started
Speaker 3: getting some auditions, and I auditioned around at a lot
Speaker 3: of little, not community theaters, A semi professional and professional
Speaker 3: theaters there, and after about four or five auditions, and
Speaker 3: then I auditioned for the Orgon Shakespeare Festival and the
Speaker 3: guy there was like, listen, you need to either come
Speaker 3: to the organ Shakespeare Festival and like carry a spear
Speaker 3: and understudy roles and do that for five or six years,
Speaker 3: or you need to go to like New York and
Speaker 3: get acting training. You should do one of those two things.
Speaker 3: But it became really clear, like, oh shit, I am
Speaker 3: the tiniest fish in a very big pond now, and
Speaker 3: I'm really not good enough and I don't have the
Speaker 3: skill set to be good enough to act professionally at
Speaker 3: that point. And that was twenty nineteen or twenty at
Speaker 3: that point, and I'm really grateful that I had the
Speaker 3: wherewithal to kind of have that ability to kind of
Speaker 3: see myself to kind of go like, oh, you're not
Speaker 3: good enough yet, because some actors never have that right.
Speaker 3: I kind of think that they're ready for Broadway and
Speaker 3: there and there, they just they don't have it right.
Speaker 3: So I was like, I need to train, And that's
Speaker 3: when I went to NYU for actor training.
Speaker 1: When did you decide, I mean, this is slightly different
Speaker 1: a different question. When did you decide it's what you
Speaker 1: wanted to do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So my best friend at the time, John Valades, and
Speaker 3: we had grown up together since third grade and we
Speaker 3: ended up going to NYU together. We went to University
Speaker 3: of Washington together. We were like really good friends through
Speaker 3: our youth. He was going to India for a year.
Speaker 3: He decided to take a year off and just go
Speaker 3: to India and he was going to do some service
Speaker 3: projects and travel and he's like, come on, man, come
Speaker 3: to India, let's do it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't know.
Speaker 3: And I was doing these plays and I was really
Speaker 3: thinking about acting and whether or not to make it
Speaker 3: a career. My parents were supportive but wary. You know,
Speaker 3: how am I going to pay the bills?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 3: And I had a spiritual, transformative experience that made me
Speaker 3: decide to commit one hundred percent. And that was I
Speaker 3: was visiting my birth mother, who I was just getting
Speaker 3: to know at the time in Boston. I think it
Speaker 3: was over Christmas break, sophomore year of college, and the
Speaker 3: movie version of A chorus Line was playing in a
Speaker 3: little theater in Boston and I just walked in by myself.
Speaker 3: I don't know I was wondering in Boston. I saw
Speaker 3: it and I just went in. I watched it by myself. Now,
Speaker 3: this is a legendarily bad movie version of a musical.
Speaker 3: It's really and I knew even when I was watching it.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, this is terrible, but it's all
Speaker 3: about acting and actors and it's how much I love
Speaker 3: the theater and I really need this job, please God,
Speaker 3: who am I? Anyway? Am I my resume? You know
Speaker 3: those kind of songs. And I was there and I
Speaker 3: just started sobbing and just tears were pouring down my
Speaker 3: face and I was like heaving, supplet.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 3: And then the theater was empty because the movie was terrible.
Speaker 3: And I went outside and it was sunset because i'd
Speaker 3: seen a matinee and it was a red sunset. Snow
Speaker 3: was falling through kind of a red sunset, and I
Speaker 3: had like tears on my face and I was like,
Speaker 3: that's it. I'm going for this. I'm all in.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm all in.
Speaker 3: I know this is going to be a ten year commitment,
Speaker 3: but the only way to do it is to just
Speaker 3: completely fully commit. I want to be an actor in
Speaker 3: the theater. And that's when I auditioned for these UH
Speaker 3: training programs and I was lucky enough to get into
Speaker 3: nWay NYU.
Speaker 1: For you, it was about theater. Yeah, and that's what
Speaker 1: you wanted to do? Is that where? Because that was
Speaker 1: for me, that's where I saw my life. That's what
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to do forever and ever. Yeah. Amen?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: When did that start to change for you? Because your
Speaker 1: career was successful, You're traveling around at major regional theaters
Speaker 1: and working in New York. What for you made you
Speaker 1: transition and decide to move to Los Angeles? And did
Speaker 1: you view it as a career change? Because I did?
Speaker 1: You did? I did? I didn't think about it until
Speaker 1: I decided to fully change, which was say no to
Speaker 1: any acting roles in the theater. I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to move to Los Angeles and really recommit
Speaker 1: myself to what I viewed as a career change. Was
Speaker 1: it the same for you or no? It wasn't the
Speaker 1: same for me. I mean I was so in love
Speaker 1: with the theater and devoted to the theater, and I
Speaker 1: had done you know, after three years of theater training
Speaker 1: at NYU, I did nine or ten years of NonStop
Speaker 1: theater in New York and regionals. I did a company
Speaker 1: called the Acting Commpany, which was a tour bus and
Speaker 1: truck touring company of Shakespeare. When I first got out
Speaker 1: of college and I was on the road with Jeffrey Wright,
Speaker 1: you know who's in West World and has been War
Speaker 1: nominated and the French Dispatch Angels in America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's an incredible actor. I was Demetrius, he was
Speaker 3: Puck in The Midsummer Night's Dream. And we got back
Speaker 3: at the end of a six month theater tour, just
Speaker 3: exhausted but draggled. We go and pick up our mail
Speaker 3: at the headquarters of the theater company and I opened
Speaker 3: up my bank statement and I have like twenty three
Speaker 3: hundred dollars in the bank after six months of work
Speaker 3: on the road.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh fuck.
Speaker 3: And then Jeffrey Wright's opening his mail and he's like, yeah, whoa.
Speaker 1: I'm like, jeff, what's going on. He's like, check it out.
Speaker 3: I got a residual check and he had this check
Speaker 3: and it was for thirty five hundred dollars and he
Speaker 3: had done two days on a Harrison Ford movie and
Speaker 3: he got more money in rezials for those two days
Speaker 3: that I had for six months of working and right
Speaker 3: then and there is like in my head. I remember
Speaker 3: it was like, Okay, this is.
Speaker 1: I got it. This is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: You know, if I am ever going to pay off,
Speaker 3: forget buying a house, if I'm ever going to pay
Speaker 3: off my student loans, I have to do TV and film.
Speaker 3: See actors in New York. And I do think there's
Speaker 3: a you know, a handful of David Costable's when we
Speaker 3: both know that do it all. And I love that
Speaker 3: about New York and actors in London that they can
Speaker 3: do a play here and a TV show here, and
Speaker 3: a movie here and a commercial.
Speaker 1: Here and you get to do it all. You know,
Speaker 1: LA doesn't really work like that.
Speaker 3: There's a very few theaters, they're far away, they don't
Speaker 3: pay very well, etc. And it's hard to do that
Speaker 3: anywhere else. A little bit in Chicago, maybe DC, a
Speaker 3: couple places like that, but it's very hard to kind
Speaker 3: of balance all of it. But I really was like,
Speaker 3: I want to do enough television and films so that
Speaker 3: I can come back to New York and get cast
Speaker 3: in leeds in plays, right, because that's what was happening
Speaker 3: all the time. You'd have like James Vanderbeek just did
Speaker 3: Dawson's Creek and he got offered Hamlet, you know, because
Speaker 3: he's been on Dawson's.
Speaker 1: Creek, you know. And that's the reality of the theater.
Speaker 3: They got to sell tickets, right, So I was like,
Speaker 3: I want a TV show so I can come back
Speaker 3: and play Hamlet in New York. It hasn't really worked
Speaker 3: out that way. I've been here in LA for over
Speaker 3: twenty some years now.
Speaker 1: But now my son is going off to college.
Speaker 3: Can you believe it?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Walter was born. Walter was born during the Hot Girl,
Speaker 3: Perse Girl episode of season one. That's right in a
Speaker 3: really traumatic berth.
Speaker 1: Yes, you ran from set to go to the hospital
Speaker 1: because there was a medical issue. Yes, I know.
Speaker 3: And now he's going off to college, so I'm going
Speaker 3: to have more time to do theater.
Speaker 1: He's the physical embodiment of how long we all were together.
Speaker 1: Just as he grow Oh, it was like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: we've been together a long time. And now he's going
Speaker 1: off to college, which is nuts.
Speaker 3: Nuts yeah, just not nuts. Yeah. But once he's gone,
Speaker 3: he's our only kid, and then I've got a little
Speaker 3: more freedom, so I can go do theater for very
Speaker 3: little money, for six months here or five months there.
Speaker 3: So I'm very excited about about doing that because for me,
Speaker 3: you know, I always have a little bit of the mystical,
Speaker 3: spiritual nature in me, and for me, acting is about
Speaker 3: there is a magic about transforming into characters. Yes, and
Speaker 3: people always are like you know, Dwight gets so much
Speaker 3: attention and focus about who I am as an actor
Speaker 3: and as a person, and that's great. I'm so grateful.
Speaker 3: Those nine years were magical, amazing, what a great character.
Speaker 1: The writing, the cast.
Speaker 3: The thought, the you know, the producers, everything like that,
Speaker 3: the fans, the support, it's it's it's been incredible. But
Speaker 3: people don't realize this, and a lot of people aren't
Speaker 3: in the acting world. Like I played dozens of characters
Speaker 3: before I played Dwight, and since I've finished Dwight, I've
Speaker 3: played another couple dozen characters. So for me, it's about
Speaker 3: transforming into characters and telling stories. I played Hamlet in school.
Speaker 3: I did Eugene O'Neil at the Arena stage. I did
Speaker 3: Philadelphia Here I come at the Guthrie.
Speaker 1: I did you know?
Speaker 3: I did Shakespeare tours. I've done lots of little I
Speaker 3: played the creepy guy in Supermarket and CSI.
Speaker 1: But they're all characters.
Speaker 3: They're just like you know, I hope that when I die,
Speaker 3: people will Yes, I look at Dwight, but be like, wow, look.
Speaker 1: At all crazy different characters.
Speaker 3: This guy played like this was a panopoly of a
Speaker 3: very different characters, dozens and dozens and dozens over his life.
Speaker 3: And I love that act of transformation. It's so satisfying
Speaker 3: to me to just to build and develop and play
Speaker 3: a character and then play a completely different character, you know,
Speaker 3: than the month after.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel I really feel this way that for
Speaker 1: you and I, I think we have a unique bond
Speaker 1: and excitement about what you just talked about, like actually
Speaker 1: creating the physicality, the inner life, the external differences from
Speaker 1: ourselves and melding that with who we are. That that
Speaker 1: for me as well, that is really my favorite thing
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah, Like just it's I keep using
Speaker 1: the word transformation.
Speaker 3: Yes, you walk different, you speak different, you think different,
Speaker 3: you see the world different, you have a different kind
Speaker 3: of energy. All of these things need to transform to
Speaker 3: create a character. Now, of course I'm it's the basic
Speaker 3: building blocks of Rain Wilson. So I'm going to be
Speaker 3: using this big, weird ungainly body, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: always see things through a certain lie, so you're always
Speaker 3: going to see Rain Wilson in those characters. And that's
Speaker 3: also a magical thing. But that's that's what I love
Speaker 3: about the theater. And I think why, you know, people
Speaker 3: have always loved the theater and they love to see
Speaker 3: their favorite actors transform.
Speaker 1: Do you resent that people only want to see you
Speaker 1: be Dwight?
Speaker 3: Sometimes I do to be really honest, you know, to
Speaker 3: be perfectly frank. It's just like I'll do an independent
Speaker 3: film that I worked my ass off on and play
Speaker 3: a villain or you know, played something completely different than me,
Speaker 3: you know, unhinged person or something you know, really funny
Speaker 3: or whatever, and I'll promote it on like social media.
Speaker 3: They'll be like, hey, Dwight, Yeah, yeah, Dwight and exactly
Speaker 3: and it's and it's it's like, guys, I get it,
Speaker 3: I got it. You love the show.
Speaker 1: I do too.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, But also can you respect me as an
Speaker 3: artist and that I'm trying to do some other things
Speaker 3: here too. But at the end of the day, I've
Speaker 3: been really lucky because I even think, like the last
Speaker 3: ten years since I got out of the Office. I've
Speaker 3: done a lot of really cool stuff. I did this
Speaker 3: show Backstrom, No one really watched it. I did the
Speaker 3: show Utopia.
Speaker 1: Backstrom is the role you stole from me. That is God.
Speaker 1: I wanted to play that role so bad, and they
Speaker 1: just really wanted you. I wanted to play that role.
Speaker 1: I mean we've discussed this. It's not in a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but literally, when I look at your at your at
Speaker 1: your when I looked at your sheet and I see Backstrom,
Speaker 1: I'm like, motherfucker that one. That one's still yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's another version of Backstrom. There's another.
Speaker 3: A lot of maybe it would have worked and been
Speaker 3: better and stayed on the air with you as the h.
Speaker 1: No I as the cop.
Speaker 3: That's true. Well, but the point I'm making is that
Speaker 3: you know this show Utopia and Amazon. I did Harry
Speaker 3: Mudd on Star Trek and a bunch of independent films
Speaker 3: and some theater, and like, I really love the actor's
Speaker 3: life that I've had post office. Yeah, people haven't given
Speaker 3: a shit about any of it.
Speaker 1: Like, no one is like what, But.
Speaker 3: It's been really Uh, it's been fun for me. And
Speaker 3: these have been some really great, satisfying characters. And then
Speaker 3: part of me has thought recently, like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: the life I always wanted. Like, I'm living the life
Speaker 3: I always wanted. I'm getting to play all of these
Speaker 3: cool roles.
Speaker 1: People haven't really vibed with them.
Speaker 2: That's okay.
Speaker 1: I just started watching Launched today. I know this is
Speaker 1: not going to come out today, but Geography of Bliss, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is there a part of you? Is there a conscious
Speaker 1: thought within you to show yourself? We're all performing all
Speaker 1: the time. We're performing with our family, with our friends,
Speaker 1: with our coworkers, depending on what the relationship is, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like everyone, not actors. Everyone is performing in
Speaker 1: one way or the other. Is there a part of
Speaker 1: you that wanted to show yourself really in Rain Wilson,
Speaker 1: I mean you are Rain Wilson in Geography of Bliss.
Speaker 1: Was there a part of you that wanted that? You know?
Speaker 3: It just it was not something that I wanted. It's
Speaker 3: just this kind of world of like people want to
Speaker 3: know about the guy who played Dwight, and so I
Speaker 3: talk about my life story and people really resonated with
Speaker 3: me talking about mental health issues and that was really
Speaker 3: people like oh wow, and they that because it's such
Speaker 3: a big deal right now, for young people, this mental
Speaker 3: health epidemic that young people are going through, it's just
Speaker 3: it's staggering. It's preposterous, it's deadly. It's so any kind
Speaker 3: of celeb says, hey, I have struggled, people are like,
Speaker 3: tell me more, because it really can help people. So
Speaker 3: when I saw like, oh, me sharing my story is
Speaker 3: helping people, and so I started sharing it more. And
Speaker 3: your first question is like, Wow, you're so upfront about
Speaker 3: sharing this stuff. And you know, maybe it's because I said, like,
Speaker 3: I've been in therapy, so I talk about it every week.
Speaker 3: It's not that big of a deal to me. It's
Speaker 3: just stuff that I work on, right, And I'm very
Speaker 3: blessed with some kind of character trait in me that
Speaker 3: I never just kind of settle. I'm always trying to
Speaker 3: dig deeper. I want to get to know myself better.
Speaker 3: I want to get to know the universe better. I
Speaker 3: want to figure out why we're alive deeper. I just
Speaker 3: have an insatiable curiosity around that stuff I'm not able to.
Speaker 3: I wish I kind of could just be like, hey, bro, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: a mellow whatever. Maybe it's maybe it's being wired with
Speaker 3: that anxiety that I talked about as a kid. So
Speaker 3: just more and more over the years, talking about myself,
Speaker 3: telling my stories, people being interested writing about myself and
Speaker 3: the bassoon King, and now in this new book Soul Boom,
Speaker 3: and then people knowing me as Dwight. It's and part
Speaker 3: of me is kind of like, I guess I'm a
Speaker 3: celebrity now. I'm like Suzanne Summers doing her diet books
Speaker 3: and her aerobus eyes or something like that. It's like, right,
Speaker 3: So this is the first time I've done a big
Speaker 3: hosting thing, kind of being myself yourself on a TV show.
Speaker 3: So it's hopefully I can do it all. I'll hopefully
Speaker 3: still keep acting and also get to be myself. I
Speaker 3: don't know, we'll see what happens well.
Speaker 1: Geography of Bliss on the Peacock. You were nice enough
Speaker 1: to give me some episodes. I didn't wake up at
Speaker 1: two o'clock this morning and start binging them. I love
Speaker 1: it because you were embracing the office in the show.
Speaker 1: I mean several times I almost like like I almost
Speaker 1: like drew my breath in because it's not you. This
Speaker 1: is not something that you do. Is talk about Dwight,
Speaker 1: and I feel like they exchange the exchange with the
Speaker 1: Bulgarian cab driver where you start hummaking the theme song,
Speaker 1: like trying to plug him into like who you know who?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: There was something so refreshing about that and an openness
Speaker 1: to your journey of trying to find happiness. How did
Speaker 1: you choose where you were going to go? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it was a crazy story.
Speaker 3: My manager at the time just got an email from
Speaker 3: this young producer who said, Hey, I got the rights
Speaker 3: to this book called The Geography of Bliss that was
Speaker 3: a bestseller about this journalist going around the world trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what made people happy in various cultures.
Speaker 3: And he said, I think this would be a great
Speaker 3: travel documentary series, and I think Rain would be perfect
Speaker 3: for it. I had spoken a little bit about some
Speaker 3: mental health stuff with me and my search for well
Speaker 3: being and meaning in my life, and you know, nine
Speaker 3: times out of ten, I'm not going to respond to
Speaker 3: anything that comes in just cold call like that. But
Speaker 3: I was like, he's kind of riot.
Speaker 1: This is interesting.
Speaker 3: So I sat down with him and this other young
Speaker 3: producer they're both like twenty eight years old, Casey and Evan,
Speaker 3: and just totally vibed with them. I read the book.
Speaker 3: It was great. It's just just one of those things
Speaker 3: that fell together in such a beautiful way. And then
Speaker 3: we brought on Radical Media, which is a really top
Speaker 3: production house and great showrunner Melissa Wood and great director
Speaker 3: in Niharika Desai, and we pitched it around and Peacock
Speaker 3: bought it, and then it was like where are we
Speaker 3: going to go? At first we were going to go
Speaker 3: to Finland and Moldova, and then a little thing happened,
Speaker 3: which is the invasion of the Ukraine. So Finland borders Russia, okay,
Speaker 3: and Moldova borders Ukraine, and they were like, jeez, we
Speaker 3: can't because what if we go shoot there and then
Speaker 3: six months later they've been invaded.
Speaker 1: And we can't use the footage because it would just
Speaker 1: be weird. So like eugh.
Speaker 3: So our Finland alternative was Iceland. Our Moldova alternative was Bulgaria.
Speaker 3: We could tell a similar kind of story about those
Speaker 3: because Moldova is the unhappiest place in Finland is the
Speaker 3: happiest place, so we went to like the second happiest place,
Speaker 3: Iceland and the second unhappiest place, Bulgaria. And then we
Speaker 3: really wanted to showcase Africa of course, and Ghana has
Speaker 3: some amazing statistics about it's optimism. It's one of the
Speaker 3: most optimistic places on the planet where people really do
Speaker 3: believe that in ten or twenty years their children are
Speaker 3: going to have it way better and that they're going
Speaker 3: to build a better and better life there. And in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways they have. Ghana has been one
Speaker 3: of the great success stories of the world, you know,
Speaker 3: economically and educationally. It's a beautiful culture, English speaking, which
Speaker 3: is very helpful. I highly recommend anyone go to Ghana.
Speaker 3: It's so much fun, food's great, people are wonderful. And
Speaker 3: then Thailand has a spiritual compone it with its Buddhism
Speaker 3: that will be very intriguing to us. And then here's
Speaker 3: a funny story. We were gonna go we were gonna
Speaker 3: shoot in Ghana, and then we were going to go
Speaker 3: to Dubai and do an episode called like Can Money
Speaker 3: by You Happiness, And the day before we flew to
Speaker 3: Dubai Real Housewives of Dubai. It's a show aired in Dubai,
Speaker 3: and Dubai has a royal family, and the royal family
Speaker 3: saw Real Housewives of Dubai and they were flabbergasted and
Speaker 3: incensed at all the drunken bacchanalia, backstabbing shenanigans of those
Speaker 3: real housewives of Dubai.
Speaker 1: And so they shut down all productions.
Speaker 3: We literally showed up in Dubai with our camera.
Speaker 1: Bags and our producers.
Speaker 3: And they're like, sorry, your permit's been pulled. So we
Speaker 3: had to like shift. So our final episode we did
Speaker 3: back in Los Angeles, which I really like. And the
Speaker 3: final episode is about you know, Ken rain else and
Speaker 3: find happiness back in La. Can he come back to
Speaker 3: La and you know, put into practice what he.
Speaker 1: Learned out in the world. So would you do more? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh my god, I've said it before, I'll say
Speaker 3: it again, Like I never thought i'd have a better
Speaker 3: job than the office, but getting paid to travel the
Speaker 3: world and talk to people about happiness and wellbeing and
Speaker 3: meaning is just, oh my god, it's so awesome.
Speaker 1: It's so great. Do you feel like you were changed?
Speaker 1: Were you able to forget the cameras and you're an
Speaker 1: intensely interesting and interested person. Were you able to open
Speaker 1: your be open enough while shooting the show to really
Speaker 1: change and have discoveries?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. It's a weird thing to
Speaker 3: have a camera pointed at you and like, hey, go
Speaker 3: have a discussion with this taxi driver about happiness. And
Speaker 3: you're like, okay, it's it's an interesting challenge. And I
Speaker 3: got self conscious a lot, and like, am I saying
Speaker 3: the right thing?
Speaker 1: Is?
Speaker 3: This? Is this right? But I would say over the
Speaker 3: course of the show, I definitely loosened up and had
Speaker 3: a good time and was really able. And remember I
Speaker 3: was connecting with the people even when the cameras weren't
Speaker 3: rolling too so. But I do feel like I was changed.
Speaker 3: And the takeaway that I have from Geography of Bliss
Speaker 3: is really pretty simple. When I was writing my book,
Speaker 3: I came across this very famous study called the Grant
Speaker 3: Study out of Harvard University, and it followed three hundred
Speaker 3: men over eighty years from like nineteen thirties on about
Speaker 3: happiness and well being and what it means to live
Speaker 3: like a good life. And they studied every aspect of
Speaker 3: you know, family life, divorces, health, mental health, spirituality, exercise, travel, income,
Speaker 3: et cetera, on and on, and they boil it down
Speaker 3: to one thing, and one thing only to which is
Speaker 3: a good life, and that is community and connection. That's
Speaker 3: all that It's about and I think we've learned this
Speaker 3: in COVID. We need to stay connected, We need community.
Speaker 3: We thrive in relation to one another. We don't thrive
Speaker 3: kind of on our own in our bubble steering at
Speaker 3: our phones.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We thrive and this is part of the mental health epidemic.
Speaker 3: We thrive in community and connection. And that's what they
Speaker 3: that's what eighty years of study of hard data by
Speaker 3: the top scientists, you know, social psychologists in the world
Speaker 3: arrived at. And that's what I arrived at. It's pretty simple,
Speaker 3: it's pretty obvious. But seeing these incredible thriving communities, whether
Speaker 3: it's a tribe or a family, or a work collective
Speaker 3: or people that love to do polar plunges together or
Speaker 3: you know, have a band together, but humans thrive in connectivity.
Speaker 3: And so that really is like, oh, I need to
Speaker 3: lean into that more in my life because you know,
Speaker 3: I have groups of friends here, here, and there, but
Speaker 3: it's time for me to lean into lean into that
Speaker 3: because that's where the greatest and deepest satisfaction lies.
Speaker 1: Isn't that so interesting? Because connection and community and how
Speaker 1: much joy and happiness people find in the office. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because at its core, we were a community, and we
Speaker 1: were connected as characters but also as people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that palpable energy I believe because I'm told goes out
Speaker 1: into the world and makes people happy. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what I've said many times. The greatest gift for me
Speaker 1: that the show gave me is thats Asuals. The second
Speaker 1: greatest thing that the show gave me, no, is when
Speaker 1: someone comes up and I always describe it this way.
Speaker 1: It's not that they're they want their tell they're telling
Speaker 1: me how much the show means. It's that they have
Speaker 1: an overwhelming feeling of need to communicate to me how
Speaker 1: much the show means, right, like they are.
Speaker 3: Sometimes that can be a bit much though, right, Sometimes
Speaker 3: when you're at an event, it's settings, it's setting, it's
Speaker 3: all settings. The twelfth the twenty seventh person like grabbed
Speaker 3: your arm and been like, no.
Speaker 1: You understands there is settings, but that but that's but
Speaker 1: that's what you're talking about, Like that is that is
Speaker 1: them wanting this connection and community that they found from
Speaker 1: the show. But you're absolutely right to bring that up.
Speaker 3: And I just want to say that what you're talking about, like,
Speaker 3: so you me, John Jenna, Bjy Angela, the whole Gang, Oscar.
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on, like.
Speaker 3: We loved each other. Yeah, and there was a joy
Speaker 3: that Greg Daniels helped create the environment for that and
Speaker 3: the casting and then that that joy and that love
Speaker 3: may not have been between Dwight and Kevin and Angela
Speaker 3: and Ryan and whatnot, but you can it bleeds in,
Speaker 3: you feel it, and people can tell. And then that
Speaker 3: is what people are responding to at the end of
Speaker 3: the day. And you know, Pam says to end the series,
Speaker 3: you know, there's beauty in the small things. Isn't that
Speaker 3: what it's really all about? And I think that's what people.
Speaker 3: People aren't watching thirty Rock over and over again. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, they're not watching a lot of different shows
Speaker 3: over and over again, but they come back to the
Speaker 3: office for that. And do you remember there was a
Speaker 3: director I have to look up his name. I can't
Speaker 3: remember his name.
Speaker 1: We were in season like seven, and we would come
Speaker 1: in in the morning.
Speaker 3: Laughing, hugging, high fiving, kissing each other, you know, tickling
Speaker 3: each other. We and he's like, what the fuck is
Speaker 3: going on?
Speaker 1: You've been seven years and you guys are acting this
Speaker 1: way with each other?
Speaker 3: Like he goes you don't understand. I just came off
Speaker 3: the set of Desperate Housewives and half of the cast
Speaker 3: won't talk to the other half of the cast, and
Speaker 3: they won't come out of their trailers until this person
Speaker 3: is like on the set and they don't want to
Speaker 3: cross that person, and they this person won't do scenes
Speaker 3: with this other person, and it's like and there's so
Speaker 3: you hear that about so many different TV shows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, do you think travel brings happiness experiencing places,
Speaker 1: whether there are happy places or unhappy places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think travel is one of my favorite things,
Speaker 3: and I think it's uh, it's beautiful. It works on
Speaker 3: a lot of different levels. Like you you're interacting with
Speaker 3: a different physical environment, right, it's an advent. You're out
Speaker 3: of your comfort zone, so you're your your senses and
Speaker 3: your brain is kind of firing in a whole different
Speaker 3: way because you're you know, you're in Greece, or you're
Speaker 3: in a mountain range, or you're in London or a
Speaker 3: different city or a different language or whatever. So that's
Speaker 3: all really exciting. I think the important thing about travel
Speaker 3: is a lot of Americans, not just Americans, people from
Speaker 3: all of the Western world kind of want to travel
Speaker 3: and have an experience that's very similar to their home life.
Speaker 3: So they travel and they go to a resort that
Speaker 3: has a buffet and has the same foods you know
Speaker 3: that they eat at home, and they sit by a pool,
Speaker 3: and then they watch HBO on their iPads and then
Speaker 3: they go back and that's their vacation. Now, there's nothing
Speaker 3: wrong with having a relaxing vacation for hardworking folks, But
Speaker 3: if you're traveling to different cultures, it's so important to
Speaker 3: embed with the culture. Whenever you can do to take
Speaker 3: a tour, go with guides, visit with a family, you know,
Speaker 3: go on an adventure, like try and speak the language
Speaker 3: and respect a culture. And that's when travel really comes alive.
Speaker 1: That is such a great point because I travel quite
Speaker 1: a bit, and there was a period of time that,
Speaker 1: like my first question when going to my hotel was
Speaker 1: where's the nearest Starbucks? Like where, because in the morning,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna want coffee, yeah, and I'm gonna want And
Speaker 1: by the way, folks, I'm surprised this is a small one.
Speaker 3: Brian walks around with a big like ice car and
Speaker 3: he will nurse.
Speaker 1: He will nurse something like this, Like I don't know
Speaker 1: how he does, like six hours. Yeah, it'll take him
Speaker 1: some ice in.
Speaker 3: There, and he's just all day. You just see Brian
Speaker 3: like swirling his little ice. It's a little that's for
Speaker 3: the people listening in the audio.
Speaker 1: But it's not a Starbucks. It's not it's not a Starbucks.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I don't go to Starbucks. And Starbucks please,
Speaker 1: if you need to spend your AD dollars anywhere, please
Speaker 1: off the beat is available to you. But my point
Speaker 1: is because I wanted the same, right it was. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about Starbucks, but it was about well, Starbucks are everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I know what that tastes like. Sure, and I
Speaker 1: want the same to your point, and now I try
Speaker 1: to do the opposite, like what is the what is
Speaker 1: a local coffee shop? And sometimes it's awful and sometimes
Speaker 1: it's mind blowingly amazing because coffee shops are like they
Speaker 1: they reflect in a lot of ways, especially independent coffee
Speaker 1: shops like a community. It's different the food, the way
Speaker 1: the coffee is and anyway, I think what you say
Speaker 1: is really important because you're right, and through your experiences
Speaker 1: on geography Bliss, we see you do that over and
Speaker 1: over and over immersing yourself into the culture and to
Speaker 1: the people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I'm so blessed. It's I'm so fortunate to
Speaker 3: be able to travel in that way because they they
Speaker 3: hook up families for me to stay with, and people
Speaker 3: for me to spend the day with and have and
Speaker 3: eat meals with and walk through the woods with, and
Speaker 3: so I get to go much deeper and have made
Speaker 3: some really delightful friends and connections.
Speaker 1: There's another part that though, that I really liked, which
Speaker 1: was you connecting in these different places with at times
Speaker 1: people that you knew already. The actor in Iceland, iked
Speaker 1: Sarria Olifson. Yes, it's fun to see you relax in
Speaker 1: a way with people you have a familiarity. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: people you don't know, that's amazing too. But seeing you
Speaker 1: with these people that you have met over your life
Speaker 1: and now spending time with them in their homeland or
Speaker 1: the place that they live now, that was really fun
Speaker 1: for me. M Yeah, that was great. It was a
Speaker 1: great addition. Did that just happen or was that planned?
Speaker 1: Were you like, oh, I know someone here in Bulgaria.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew this psychologist in Bulgaria through the Bahaigh faith. Community,
Speaker 3: which was really interesting and the producers were very resistant,
Speaker 3: and I was like, we got to talk to her
Speaker 3: because she's been living in America for thirty years, but
Speaker 3: she's Bulgarian, so she really knows and she's a psychologist,
Speaker 3: she really knows the Bulgarian psyche Like, well, trust me,
Speaker 3: we're going to want to talk to her. And it
Speaker 3: was a key interview there to really understand the Bulgarians.
Speaker 3: And then dari It does the same thing. They become translators.
Speaker 3: Anthony Bourdain did it so beautifully. God rest his soul,
Speaker 3: like the people that he would meet and the chefs
Speaker 3: and the guides and stuff. And you'd go back to
Speaker 3: Vietnam and meet the guy that had been there twenty
Speaker 3: years earlier when he had been to Vietnam, and it's
Speaker 3: such a great entree into culture and food and connection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you go deeper, though, and I feel I feel
Speaker 1: you searching for the answers to these questions. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you've written books about life, life's
Speaker 1: big questions that there truly is no answer, but that
Speaker 1: searching that to me is really compelling, Like the searching
Speaker 1: for something as opposed to an experience, which there are
Speaker 1: two different things, and Anthony god Rest his soul Yes
Speaker 1: was brilliant. I felt like that was more having an
Speaker 1: experience this. I feel you searching for something, which to
Speaker 1: me is more interesting.
Speaker 3: Oh good, thanks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you founded soul Pancake and now you have your
Speaker 1: new book, soul Boom. How have you? How is the
Speaker 1: questions that you're looking to answer changed from your time
Speaker 1: with soul Pancake. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So soul Pancake was a digital media company, mostly a
Speaker 3: YouTube channel. We worked and created a lot of short
Speaker 3: form video content and a lot of social media content
Speaker 3: about life's big questions. But it was always with an
Speaker 3: aim to inspire and uplift and bring people together. That
Speaker 3: was kind of the focus of the platform itself. We
Speaker 3: ended up selling the company to Participant Media, so it's
Speaker 3: kind of been folded into what they do as a
Speaker 3: media company and a film production studio. So sol Boom
Speaker 3: is a little bit different because this is me kind
Speaker 3: of writing a book on big spiritual ideas about the
Speaker 3: meaning of life. As I say in the book, I'm
Speaker 3: throwing a bunch of spiritual spaghetti at the wall and
Speaker 3: we'll see what sticks. And I talk about life and death.
Speaker 3: I talk about consciousness, the journey of the soul, sacredness God.
Speaker 3: I have a chapter on God called the Notorious Good,
Speaker 3: and then I talk about can we use spiritual tools
Speaker 3: for social transformation? How can we use these big, deep,
Speaker 3: rich spiritual ideas that have been in every faith tradition
Speaker 3: on the planet from the dawn of time? Can we
Speaker 3: use those ideas to help us transform collectively? Because we're
Speaker 3: hurting so much right now, there's so much disunity, there's
Speaker 3: so much venom, toxic social media and partisanship. How can
Speaker 3: we learn from the Bible, How can we learn from
Speaker 3: the baghavad Gita, from the Torah, you know, from the
Speaker 3: damapatas of the Buddha, And can we use those tools
Speaker 3: for a kind of We think a lot about spirituality
Speaker 3: as personal transformation, like, Oh, I'm going to I'm gonna pray,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna meditate, I'm gonna read holy words, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: try and be a better person. That's that's part of
Speaker 3: our spiritual path. But can we also use them for
Speaker 3: social transformation? So it's a it's a big idea book,
Speaker 3: and at the same time it's I try and make
Speaker 3: it funny and light and readable at the same time.
Speaker 3: It's not a dissertation or.
Speaker 1: Anything like that. No, it's beautiful and I feel like
Speaker 1: with Soul Pancake you are searching for the answers to
Speaker 1: life's big questions. This to me feels deeply personal, much
Speaker 1: more personal to me in this book and exploring the
Speaker 1: questions that are in the world today through your own
Speaker 1: specific lens, which is always the case, but being so
Speaker 1: open again and sharing your past experience gives it just
Speaker 1: a real power. Wow.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. That's that's very kind. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: I I tried to share my experience whenever I could.
Speaker 3: I just find that people are more receptive to ideas
Speaker 3: when you share it personally, you know, when you make
Speaker 3: it say here's what I went through. You know, my
Speaker 3: chapter on death, which is called Death and How to Live,
Speaker 3: it is framed by the death of my father, which happened,
Speaker 3: you know, six months into COVID and he died of
Speaker 3: heart disease at age seventy nine. And it was, you know,
Speaker 3: like I said, my mom took off when I was,
Speaker 3: you know, a toddler, so my main parental bond was
Speaker 3: with my dad, and I'm you know, most bonded to
Speaker 3: someone who was really really bad at intimacy because he
Speaker 3: had been so traumatized. So that was a conundrum but
Speaker 3: heartbreaking nonetheless, So I wanted to really share deeply, like
Speaker 3: what I was going through, what I was feeling. I
Speaker 3: tell a very comedic story in it about we were
Speaker 3: preparing the body for burial in a Bahigh tradition, which
Speaker 3: is very similar to a Jewish tradition, where you wash
Speaker 3: the body and wrap the body in preparation for burial,
Speaker 3: and the funeral home didn't have any nice bowls. It
Speaker 3: had like some tupperware containers or a teapot, and that
Speaker 3: we were up against it because the funeral was starting soon,
Speaker 3: and I had to run to a target to buy
Speaker 3: glass bowls. It was the middle of a heat wave,
Speaker 3: and I'm pouring sweat and it's COVID and I'm sobbing
Speaker 3: snots running down my nose, and I'm trying to find
Speaker 3: glass bowls to wash my dead father's body. So we
Speaker 3: have a good.
Speaker 1: Time along the way. You talk about your behigh faith,
Speaker 1: You have always been very open about that you left
Speaker 1: in your twenties and then returned to it later on.
Speaker 1: How important was that for you? The leaving and the
Speaker 1: coming back and what brought you back.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a key story for me. It's maybe the
Speaker 3: most important story of my life. Was that kind of
Speaker 3: twelve year journey where I left the ba High Faith
Speaker 3: to go to New York to be an actor. I
Speaker 3: just wanted to do theater. I didn't want to think
Speaker 3: about religion, spirituality, God certainly not morality. I wanted to
Speaker 3: kind of party and do what I wanted to do
Speaker 3: when I wanted to do it. And a lot of
Speaker 3: kids do this, you know, this is a very common things.
Speaker 3: Probably probably eighty percent of kids who grew up in
Speaker 3: some spiritual tradition, when they go off to college or
Speaker 3: go off to live in the city and have a life,
Speaker 3: they jettison their faith, the faith of their childhood. So
Speaker 3: I'm not special in this regard. I think what happened
Speaker 3: for me, however, is I started really coming up against
Speaker 3: some of these mental health issues that I've been talking about.
Speaker 3: That's when my anxiety kicked in. I used to have
Speaker 3: I mean, I can't even tell you how crippling these
Speaker 3: anxiety attacks were.
Speaker 1: That I would have.
Speaker 3: I mean I would fall on the floor, shaking and sweating,
Speaker 3: and I was like I'm having a heart attack. I'm
Speaker 3: going to die. I'm literally dying. Came so close on
Speaker 3: a half a dozen occasions of calling nine one one.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was just and then all the many
Speaker 3: anxiety attacks I was having, and then depression, addiction issues,
Speaker 3: and and this forced me to reinvestigate spirituality. Okay, it's
Speaker 3: interesting because I had a conversation with BJ and and
Speaker 3: BJ was very frank. He's like, that was great that
Speaker 3: you had that it forced you go on a spiritual path.
Speaker 3: But what would you say someone like me, Like, I'm
Speaker 3: interested in spirituality and I'm struggling, and I want to
Speaker 3: get to know it more and I want to figure
Speaker 3: out my life a in a But my life is
Speaker 3: fine right now. You know, I'm I'm fine, I'm functioning,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty happy, I'm doing great projects. So how do
Speaker 3: you how do you do that? And you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know what the answer is. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: it's to just get more curious and to read a
Speaker 3: little bit, which will fuel that curiosity. But I was
Speaker 3: really fortunate in a way, like I kind of hit
Speaker 3: bottom so bad in a number of ways in my twenties,
Speaker 3: and I was really dissatisfied that it forced me to
Speaker 3: look at spirituality again, and I read a lot of
Speaker 3: the holy books of the world, and I studied and
Speaker 3: journeyed and read and journaled and did some therapy. And
Speaker 3: because I felt in my bones like I think that
Speaker 3: there's probably a spiritual solution to this misery that I'm in,
Speaker 3: and that by jettisoning my religion and my spirituality, I
Speaker 3: have done myself a disservice. And I bet this will
Speaker 3: lead to greater happiness and fulfillment if I re explore
Speaker 3: that dimension. It was a very long time coming. I
Speaker 3: mean I was still exploring early on in the office,
Speaker 3: but came back to the faith, the bhy faith from
Speaker 3: my childhood, which has brought me and my wife a
Speaker 3: lot of solace and connection.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The themes that you explore in the book, they
Speaker 1: seem to have a lot in common with geography of bliss,
Speaker 1: self awareness, self improvement, self acceptance. What do you see
Speaker 1: as a relationship between soul Boom and geography of Bliss
Speaker 1: And is there an is there an overall message or
Speaker 1: are you trying to just put people on their own journey? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Great, great, great question. So I knew the book was
Speaker 3: coming out. What month is this May April, so it
Speaker 3: was coming out in late April. And then Peacock was like, Hey,
Speaker 3: good news, We're gonna we're going to release Geography of
Speaker 3: Bliss in September. And I was like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 3: whoa what? No, no, No, I have a book coming
Speaker 3: out in April that's about this theme and I'm going
Speaker 3: to be promoting it. I'm going to be out there
Speaker 3: on the road. I'd love to talk about Geography of
Speaker 3: Bliss as well. And they were great about it. And
Speaker 3: I also said, and also think about it, like, think
Speaker 3: about releasing the show right before people are trying traveling
Speaker 3: over the summer. It's a post COVID show. It's kind
Speaker 3: of launching into the summer traveling the world. People are
Speaker 3: going on vacations, like, and they're thinking about being more expansive.
Speaker 3: Maybe they've traveled traveling for the first time, like it all.
Speaker 1: And they were great about it, and Peacock was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, you're right, then Snell, there you go.
Speaker 3: They shifted the release date.
Speaker 1: They said that, they said, you're right.
Speaker 3: I have to say they've been an amazing partner and
Speaker 3: team on this and it's funny Brian Sidebar. There was
Speaker 3: this article in the Onion Avy Department and it was
Speaker 3: like Peacock is using its former sitcom stars to have
Speaker 3: documentary series and they they they mentioned some other actors
Speaker 3: that had been on like Parks and Rec and some
Speaker 3: other shows that were doing some kind of documentary series
Speaker 3: on Peacock and they it was like the article was
Speaker 3: like this scandalous article, like we've exposed this.
Speaker 1: It's like, duh, what do you think? Like they're trying
Speaker 1: to get people, They're trying to get people to watch
Speaker 1: the Peacock.
Speaker 3: But not only that, Like there are office fans turning
Speaker 3: to Peacock and they like Rain. They tend to like
Speaker 3: Rain Wilson and then they turn it on and then
Speaker 3: they see that I've got this show, and it's it's
Speaker 3: win win, Like it's that's how television works.
Speaker 1: It's how it's always worked, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like, you know, uh, TV stars of CBS or TV
Speaker 3: stars of HBO do other shows on that. You know, Uh,
Speaker 3: Patricia Arcat is doing a new show on Apple after
Speaker 3: severance because they have a nice relationship and people that
Speaker 3: go to Apple like Patricia Arcat. It's oh my god,
Speaker 3: give me a break. So, so what is it about it?
Speaker 3: To me, It's all about you. You you brought it
Speaker 3: up before. It's all about asking questions. I'm not a guru.
Speaker 3: I don't have any answers. I'm a schlubby, chubby, weird guy.
Speaker 3: I still struggle. I've learned a few things, but I'm
Speaker 3: not presenting myself as like some kind of guru, know
Speaker 3: it all self help guy, like a lot of folks
Speaker 3: do on social media and whatnot. I'm just I'm a
Speaker 3: fellow journeer. And let's dig into these big ideas. Let's
Speaker 3: look at what makes us happy. Let's examine cultures around
Speaker 3: the world and where we can find great well being
Speaker 3: from them and have a blast along the way. And
Speaker 3: in the book, like, let's dig into what it means
Speaker 3: to be alive? And is there a God? And do
Speaker 3: we have a soul? And how do we find what
Speaker 3: is sacred and holy in our lives? And what is
Speaker 3: the miracle of consciousness? And how do science and spirituality intersect?
Speaker 3: And where do we you know, where do we go
Speaker 3: from here as a society. I don't have the exact
Speaker 3: answers for it, but it all dovetails. So the universe
Speaker 3: seems to be pushing me in this direction to be
Speaker 3: telling these kind of stories. Who knows what's next the book.
Speaker 1: If you haven't gotten it, get it read it. I've
Speaker 1: known Rain twenty twenty plus. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: was at least aware of you for much longer, but
Speaker 1: known each other twenty plus years.
Speaker 3: We have to talk about three sisters a little bit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, three sisters. Well, let me finish this legitimate
Speaker 1: pitch for the book. I learned about Rain by reading
Speaker 1: this book, and Rain is a very open person. Rain
Speaker 1: is I've said this before, I'll say it again. I'll
Speaker 1: say it till the day I die. He is the lewdest,
Speaker 1: most inappropriate, most If there was a Dundee Award for
Speaker 1: most likely to be sent to HR in today's culture,
Speaker 1: it is Rain Wilson, no question. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: the kindest, the person that everyone would go to if
Speaker 1: something were really happening in their lives that they needed
Speaker 1: vice and input in. Thoughtful, always curious, and the book
Speaker 1: reflects that amazingly.
Speaker 3: You're so kind.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's very nice to see. Yes, well, I
Speaker 1: mean it. And as for geography of Bliss, it's funny,
Speaker 1: it's funny and will make you think about your own life.
Speaker 1: And it's beautifully shot, by the way, which you had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with. So you But it's my parents
Speaker 1: went to Ice. I've been to. I have been to
Speaker 1: the Reikievik airport on a layover, so I spent you know,
Speaker 1: three hours in the middle of the night. Never thought
Speaker 1: of ever leaving the airport or going there again seeing it.
Speaker 1: Even just the shots of you guys driving around, the's incredible,
Speaker 1: is unbelievably beautiful.
Speaker 3: It's I've been five times. That's one thing that was
Speaker 3: a lie we told in the show. It made it
Speaker 3: seem like I was going there for the first time.
Speaker 1: I had been four times before. Oh, just as a person,
Speaker 1: just as a as a traveler.
Speaker 3: Yeah, liars, and I love that play.
Speaker 1: I would.
Speaker 3: I was very seriously talking to my wife about, like
Speaker 3: what would it take for us to go.
Speaker 1: Live here because it is recently or years ago?
Speaker 3: Two? Three years ago?
Speaker 1: Yeah no, but not when you were just there for
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 3: No, okay, But it's the black sand beaches, glaciers, volcanoes.
Speaker 3: It's I say, like our last trip there as a family,
Speaker 3: we went and like parked under like a five hundred
Speaker 3: foot waterfall in our camper van and like we're cooking
Speaker 3: dinner and looking out, like it's pretty nice, pretty nice waterfalls.
Speaker 3: Like we've seen way bigger. We've seen the three thousand
Speaker 3: foot waterfalls and like coming off of the side of
Speaker 3: a glacier and the you know, Onyx Cliffs and this one,
Speaker 3: and it was like, wait a minute, I'm parked under
Speaker 3: a five hundred foot waterfall and I'm like it's like
Speaker 3: ho hum, you know, it's it's incredible, super fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Three Sisters, Three Sisters.
Speaker 3: So before the Office and in the early days of
Speaker 3: the Office, I was directing one of my very favorite plays,
Speaker 3: Checkov's Three Sisters, and I met Brian through some mutual friends.
Speaker 3: I had seen you in a play, although in a
Speaker 3: small role in Minneapolis, and I was like, oh, this
Speaker 3: guy's perfect for Andre and three Sisters. And we did
Speaker 3: this kind of ongoing workshop production that we were The
Speaker 3: plan was we were going to perform the whole play
Speaker 3: in people's living rooms. We got to perform the first
Speaker 3: couple acts a couple of times. You were so great
Speaker 3: in the role, just perfect combination of heartbreak and comedy,
Speaker 3: and it was really fun and arduous because we would
Speaker 3: just meet on Sunday mornings and like rehearse for three
Speaker 3: hours every single week and do little chunks of it.
Speaker 3: And we all had to like pitch in some money, like, hey,
Speaker 3: everyone put in twenty bucks to go at the rehearsal
Speaker 3: space and stuff. But you were you were great and
Speaker 3: sad and beautiful and I hope you'll do more theater.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, thank you. Those were really fun times. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think. I couldn't put the time
Speaker 1: table together, so it was literally before the office. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then.
Speaker 3: And then early on, like when we had shot the
Speaker 3: pilot we had started it. Yeah, and then we shot
Speaker 3: the five more episodes of the first season and we
Speaker 3: kept going. By the time we were into like the
Speaker 3: second season, other people moved from LA to New York
Speaker 3: and we were kind of losing the cast and stuff,
Speaker 3: and then we got really busy and it it kind
Speaker 3: of petered away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should produce it.
Speaker 3: Should should. You're a little old f andre now, sorry,
Speaker 3: am I.
Speaker 1: It depends on how old everyone else is. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've got to feel sorry.
Speaker 1: Sorry twenty years ago. It was twenty years ago. Yeah, Wow,
Speaker 1: it's always great to see you. I'm gonna come by
Speaker 1: the farm, Come.
Speaker 3: By the farm. We've got pigs to pat and a
Speaker 3: pea hen.
Speaker 1: Pigs, a pea hen, a donkey.
Speaker 3: Still, yeah, the donkeys that is at my wife's where
Speaker 3: she has her horses.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: And then we have a donkey named Chili Beans, a
Speaker 3: rescue donkey. He's adorable, chili beans. Oh, he's so huggable.
Speaker 3: He's got fuzzy, big ears. It's like if you've ever
Speaker 3: nuzzled a donkey. And that's not a dirty euphemism, but
Speaker 3: I would love for you to nuzzle my donkey.
Speaker 1: I'm n even bushes chili beans. Chili beans, you can
Speaker 1: make chili out of him. Oh, that's see. Dark, It
Speaker 1: all comes around, that's all dark. It sure does, Rain.
Speaker 3: Wilson, everybody, bomb Gardner, everybody bringing it week after week.
Speaker 1: Like we just looked. I'm gonna look into the camera.
Speaker 1: Oh we didn't do any takes to the camera. A
Speaker 1: hundred and four thirty one of these puppies you are,
Speaker 1: this is number one forty one, which is anyone, which
Speaker 1: is a significant number, not at all?
Speaker 3: Could you have called me like it's not in the
Speaker 3: first like thirty or forty, because.
Speaker 1: Hello, well, no. I mean. The funny thing is is
Speaker 1: the very first time I ever sat down for a
Speaker 1: podcast interview with me was with you at the old
Speaker 1: iHeart studios in Hollywood. And I called you and I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I'm thinking about putting this thing in
Speaker 1: oral history of the Office together. And you were, as
Speaker 1: always like very accommodating with restrictions. You said, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: have to do it next week because I'm gonna maybe
Speaker 1: shoot this movie and the show and I'm gonna be busy,
Speaker 1: so next week, so you don't even know any of
Speaker 1: this scrambling started, no what we the team hadn't done
Speaker 1: a brief at that point. We didn't know what the
Speaker 1: hell we were doing. And I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: we have to have rain. So we scramble. So we
Speaker 1: go to IHEARTA, we go to iHeart.
Speaker 3: I thought you were like in production.
Speaker 1: No, this was like no, this was like I'm making calls, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm thinking about doing, and yeah, you
Speaker 1: were just very clearly like, aps, whatever you need, but
Speaker 1: next week only. It was sent. And we sat down
Speaker 1: that day over two hours and I left the room
Speaker 1: and you left and you said hello, nice to everybody.
Speaker 1: You left and everyone was like, we have a show,
Speaker 1: we have one. You didn't suck, meaning me, like, you
Speaker 1: didn't suck, guys.
Speaker 3: You guys did it. You did it right, I mean
Speaker 3: you did. You interviewed everybody, every and you spent hours
Speaker 3: and you you got into the minutia and the seasons
Speaker 3: and the and the pre the office. How'd you sell?
Speaker 3: I mean it was it was an incredible accomplishment. It
Speaker 3: became like a cultural document and it was awesome. You
Speaker 3: guys just kicked ass with that thing.
Speaker 1: Man, it was. It was beautiful. Thank you, well, thank you.
Speaker 1: And now we sit back together. Oh and let's we
Speaker 1: won't it won't be, bestie, it won't be.
Speaker 3: We used to play tennis together. And then you just
Speaker 3: went that's a dark side and just went completely over
Speaker 3: into golf.
Speaker 1: Horrible, horrible man. Yeah, thanks Rayin, Thanks Brian, talk to
Speaker 1: you later, Hie, everybody bye. Off The Beat is hosted
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive
Speaker 1: producer Ling Lee. Our senior producer is Diego Tapia. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris, and Emily Carr. Our
Speaker 1: talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary and our intern is
Speaker 1: Sammy Katz. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by
Speaker 1: the one and only Creed Bratton and