Speaker 1: I am all in. I want to kiss you. I
Speaker 1: am all in with Scott Patterson and I Heart Radio podcast.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, we are going to talk to
Speaker 1: Mary Lynn Rashka, who appeared on Gilmore Girls as Kirk
Speaker 1: girlfriend in the first film by Kirk uh in episode
Speaker 1: nineteen Teach Me Tonight. Uh. She is also an actress, comedian, writer,
Speaker 1: best known for playing Chloe on the Fox drama twenty four.
Speaker 1: Many movies. You've seen her in Little Miss Sunshine, Legally Blonde,
Speaker 1: to Punch, Drunk Love. She's been on Gray's Anatomy, Larry
Speaker 1: Sanders Show, Girlfriend Experience, Always Sunny in Philadelphia. She is
Speaker 1: a fascinating woman. She's on a stand up comedy tour.
Speaker 1: She's written a book called Famish I s h and Uh.
Speaker 1: We're gonna bring her in and talk to her. She's
Speaker 1: gonna tell us all about her comedy and her book
Speaker 1: and her experience on Gilmore Girls. So let's let's bring
Speaker 1: in Mary Lynn. S Mary, are you almost choked on?
Speaker 1: How you doing? Mary Lynn? Nice? I'm doing. I'm doing
Speaker 1: exceedingly well. Um, Listen, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: You just have the most incredible resume and You've been
Speaker 1: in so many great things that I'm going to be
Speaker 1: all over the map wanting to talk about all of them,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that we can talk about all
Speaker 1: of them. Tell me about it. I'm all over the map.
Speaker 1: But it's wow. I mean, you are truly and I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the stand up comedy and the
Speaker 1: performance art because it's just fascinating. One of the funniest
Speaker 1: things I saw you say on an interview was you
Speaker 1: taped up your You taped up your and your private
Speaker 1: parts and said, what what was the line? When? Just
Speaker 1: for you? Okay, first of all, what possessed you to
Speaker 1: do that? You know, it's something that comes from deep inside.
Speaker 1: Why do you because you did you know it would
Speaker 1: be funny, and you did that as a performance piece.
Speaker 1: You did that. You did that, you went up on
Speaker 1: a stage and did it, or you were in a
Speaker 1: bar or something and this was part of a performance
Speaker 1: piece and you started it out like that. I knew
Speaker 1: it would be funny. I believe I was coming from
Speaker 1: art school, so I was making fun of performance art.
Speaker 1: So you know what it what? You know what it is.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you're even asking this because I haven't
Speaker 1: thought about this and forever, but now I realized it
Speaker 1: was back in my day in art school. You know,
Speaker 1: you do study performance art, which is this this genre
Speaker 1: which includes a lot of female strong you know, um
Speaker 1: doing stuff with their genitals, monologuing. So I was basing
Speaker 1: it on pieces I had learned about, but imagining that
Speaker 1: this woman it was more of like a cry for
Speaker 1: help then so her art piece and that that was
Speaker 1: funny to me. I was just you talking about in
Speaker 1: the interview made me fell fall off the couch. It
Speaker 1: was just really funny stuff. I don't even remember talking
Speaker 1: about that. You did, you must have done some interesting
Speaker 1: I looked at a couple of interviews I was, I was.
Speaker 1: I was interested to see, you know, how your brain
Speaker 1: worked and what you thought it was funny and what
Speaker 1: was going on and performance are to me, you know,
Speaker 1: my experience living in New York, I was exposed to
Speaker 1: you know, the Wooster Group, which I can cited performance
Speaker 1: art for the most part, um, uh Lori Anderson who
Speaker 1: incorporated more music and uh and Eric Bagozian right, so
Speaker 1: he was more of a monologuist. But I mean there
Speaker 1: was some performance art aspect. Who are your big influences
Speaker 1: just coming from work. I guess that that part piece
Speaker 1: in particular, I was thinking of like Karen Finley and
Speaker 1: Lydia lunch. Oh my god, so so you. The thing
Speaker 1: that fascinates me about stand up comedians is the courage
Speaker 1: that it takes to get up there, because you're just
Speaker 1: standing there naked with a microphone and man, you don't
Speaker 1: know how it's gonna go. How do you? And it's
Speaker 1: the one thing that I've always wanted to do, but
Speaker 1: I never had the guts to do it. Um, what
Speaker 1: got you up on stage in the first place was
Speaker 1: that the performance aren't and then you you liked the
Speaker 1: feeling of being up there as a performance artist and
Speaker 1: it just sort of, you know, what you wanted to
Speaker 1: say as a performance artist happened to be funny. So
Speaker 1: you just you went into straight stand up comedy. Yeah
Speaker 1: kind of. I uh, I just had a need to perform,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, I think it was kind of
Speaker 1: a survival mechanism to figure out how to express myself
Speaker 1: in a but in a very trial by fire kind
Speaker 1: of a way. And that's what you know, moving towards
Speaker 1: stand up allowed me to and I'm still doing that
Speaker 1: come closer and closer to you know, you have to
Speaker 1: be really clear and what you're saying. And when I
Speaker 1: was doing the performance art stuff, it was more abstract.
Speaker 1: So that's the allure for me, is the commitment that
Speaker 1: it takes to what you want to say in order
Speaker 1: to tontinued to want to do it right right. Um.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of stand up comedians. Um. I
Speaker 1: saw Jay Leno in Huntington Beach before he took over,
Speaker 1: and he was it was two hours of just gut
Speaker 1: wrenching humor. It was fantastic. Yeah, I was stunned. Um. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: so you're currently on tour. You're you're launching a nationwide
Speaker 1: tour stand up. Um, when does that start? Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about that, because I want you to
Speaker 1: get the plug out. Yeah, it's sort of has started
Speaker 1: already and it's kicking into high gear at the end
Speaker 1: of March. And yeah, I post I posted on my
Speaker 1: socials every you know, every not a few days, probably
Speaker 1: once the week with the list of the cities. But
Speaker 1: it's been really interesting because I have a booking agent
Speaker 1: and it was almost like once she once the word
Speaker 1: was out that I was doing it and I was
Speaker 1: really it into it then people then other people were like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we'll book her, Oh yeah, we'll book her.
Speaker 1: And she hit me up and I'm like yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And so now I've said yes to all these gigs.
Speaker 1: That's taking me for like the next eight months. But
Speaker 1: I'm also it's you know, I'm doing my stand up
Speaker 1: which I would be doing anyway, but I also wrote
Speaker 1: a book during the pandemic, so I'm using the stand
Speaker 1: up tour to help launch the book as well. So
Speaker 1: that's a really exciting aspect. I mean, talk about great
Speaker 1: merch to have it a show, I'll be able to
Speaker 1: have you know, that actual book, Yeah, hard copies of
Speaker 1: the book. And that's famoush s h. That's the one
Speaker 1: my life, that's the one I've I've only written one
Speaker 1: book so far. Yes, smart, satirical, relatable, new meaning of
Speaker 1: the word icon as as you navigate show business against
Speaker 1: the backdrop of your own idiosyncrasies. Oh that is that
Speaker 1: much encapsulated? Um, and you made out with Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: for forty five minutes on a couch within without tongues
Speaker 1: according to this book? Is that? So tell us tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that? That was for the
Speaker 1: movie Magnolia, or he plays that um T J. Mackie
Speaker 1: that's self help or not self help, coaching guys and
Speaker 1: how to get women. So I was a flashback in
Speaker 1: his head as he's coaching these guys how you treat
Speaker 1: women to get them on your side even though you're
Speaker 1: being a dick, How to get them to be sympathetic
Speaker 1: to you. So he tells the story of like, if
Speaker 1: you're late and you know the woman is going to
Speaker 1: be mad at you, here's what you do. You show up,
Speaker 1: you bring cookies, you say you hit a puppy on
Speaker 1: the way over, and all these like manipulative things which
Speaker 1: end in making out with the date. So he's always
Speaker 1: he's coaching the guys how to get to clothes with
Speaker 1: the ladies. And I was the example date right, But
Speaker 1: it didn't make it in the movie because there was
Speaker 1: so much information. The movie was already so dense that
Speaker 1: this was like a thing in his mind, so that
Speaker 1: it was like a trim the fat thing. But I
Speaker 1: had this experience of doing a real scene for I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think I can't. I think we shot
Speaker 1: for two days. I shot for two days with him,
Speaker 1: one or two days, So let's talk Gilmore. Okay, you
Speaker 1: were Kirk's girlfriend in the debut film by Kirk Um,
Speaker 1: so you were probably in involved in one of the
Speaker 1: most iconic moments of the entire at Gilmore Library. What
Speaker 1: was that like and did it feel like it at
Speaker 1: the time? Why is it one of the most iconic
Speaker 1: moments filmed by Kirk? Yeah, I mean that just that
Speaker 1: sends the fan base. So the build up to it
Speaker 1: because the film, the film by Kirk was probably I
Speaker 1: mean in terms of comedy, there's there's probably nothing funnier
Speaker 1: in the whole the whole series. Oh interesting, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the fans consider a film by Kirk to be you know, sacred. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's in the Land of Sacred. They actually made the film.
Speaker 1: So you're watching the show and the fact that we
Speaker 1: made it and they showed it in the episode, and
Speaker 1: it's very It's got like a David Lynch. There's there's
Speaker 1: nothing funnier. There's nothing more absurd or funnier in that
Speaker 1: entire series. I feel very proud. I definitely remember enjoying it.
Speaker 1: You know, always when I'm on a show like that,
Speaker 1: it's like, I wish I could do more. So I
Speaker 1: tried to relish in just the one off of it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to enter into a world that's
Speaker 1: so special and just be like hi bye. Um and
Speaker 1: I and I could tell at the time that it
Speaker 1: was not the norm. Just everybody was was kind of
Speaker 1: giggling about it. And it was a fun piece, I
Speaker 1: think for them to shoot because it was outside of
Speaker 1: their normal you know, set and scene structures. It was
Speaker 1: you know, it was like a little an art project.
Speaker 1: Um and uh, right up your alley. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: very it was very cool. Yeah. I was in many
Speaker 1: student films and why are student films that were exactly
Speaker 1: like that? You were? So did you get to school
Speaker 1: for acting? And yeah in New York, I said it
Speaker 1: in New York. Yeah. What do you remember about filming
Speaker 1: a film by Kirk? What do you remember about doing that?
Speaker 1: How did they shoot that? Um? I'm trying to decide
Speaker 1: if I should try to make something up. I think
Speaker 1: it was twenty years ago. It may have been. It was,
Speaker 1: and I probably did a day, probably a half of
Speaker 1: an afternoon where they were trying to fit in this
Speaker 1: extra thing. Um. I remember it being outdoors, um, pleasant, easy, silly,
Speaker 1: um a mood I felt. I felt very much at
Speaker 1: home with the crew and the cast and Kirk. Yeah, Sean,
Speaker 1: was it hard to keep it? Was it hard to
Speaker 1: keep a straight face through the whole thing that we
Speaker 1: were definitely giggling for sure. Just one of it was fun.
Speaker 1: I mean it felt like a student feel. It was fun. Right,
Speaker 1: So you got that very specific direction from the director
Speaker 1: and said, listen, this is oh yeah, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: coming from, you know, the background that I did. And
Speaker 1: Amy Sherman Palladino was has always been a comedy fan
Speaker 1: back then, and I was very comfortable with her, even
Speaker 1: though I don't know her well. I felt like we
Speaker 1: had a shorthand where it's like, oh, she gets it.
Speaker 1: Like I felt like I was in very good hand
Speaker 1: and that I understood what it was without too much direction.
Speaker 1: For sure. The humor of it and the oddness of
Speaker 1: it was very natural to me. Right, Yeah, Amy gets it?
Speaker 1: Yeah she Uh. I don't know. I don't know how
Speaker 1: she ended up in TV, but she did, and she
Speaker 1: changed TV. Thank god. She definitely changed TV and continues
Speaker 1: to change right, exactly stunning. I mean, I'm glad she
Speaker 1: ended up in TV because she was made for the
Speaker 1: team of them. Both is phenomenal. Um, so a lot
Speaker 1: of people know you as Chloe on twenty four to
Speaker 1: shift Gears a little bit. Uh. Did you think there
Speaker 1: is any chance someone saw you Gilmore Girls and knew
Speaker 1: that you were perfect to play Chloe? No, but I
Speaker 1: can lie and say yes for the sake of this
Speaker 1: podcast and the fans of Gilmore Girls. Oh, I have,
Speaker 1: um a factoid. I auditioned to play Suki. You're kidding? Really? Really? Yeah? Wow?
Speaker 1: That was yes? Yeah, Alex when we found out that
Speaker 1: Alex that that what was the show she was on
Speaker 1: that Fox show, that funny kind of variety show on Fox. Um,
Speaker 1: Alex was on that show and they wouldn't let her
Speaker 1: out of her contracts. So I don't know how she
Speaker 1: got to film the pilot and be so great on
Speaker 1: the pilot as the harpist Drella. But they had to
Speaker 1: recast that obviously, and you were part of that. So. UM,
Speaker 1: how many auditions was that for you? What do you
Speaker 1: remember about that? It was just it was just one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about Chloe a little bit. She's such an
Speaker 1: iconic character. Um. What was that like for you? That
Speaker 1: was Evan cats right? You were working with were you
Speaker 1: working with Evan Katz. Yes, and what was that like
Speaker 1: for you? UM? Amazing and life changing experience. Um, something
Speaker 1: I didn't think I would be a part of at
Speaker 1: all because I didn't really do drama at that point,
Speaker 1: and I tried to not go to the audition. And
Speaker 1: when I went to the audition there was not really
Speaker 1: any material written. And speaking of someone seeing me on
Speaker 1: The Gilmore Girls and saying we want to cast you
Speaker 1: as this, the producers had actually seen me in Punch
Speaker 1: Drunk Love, which is another Paul Thomas Anderson movie that
Speaker 1: I was in, and they saw me in that and
Speaker 1: I was kind of bitchy for lack of a more eloquent,
Speaker 1: overbearing sister Adam Sandler, and they said, we love your quality.
Speaker 1: We have apart coming up in this next season. It's
Speaker 1: not written yet. Um we well we I know, I
Speaker 1: know there's nothing on the page. I mean it was
Speaker 1: the sides that they gave me were literally like yes, Jack, no, Jack,
Speaker 1: I know there's nothing here, but we're going to write more.
Speaker 1: We want to write apart for you. We think you're
Speaker 1: great as like we have there's an opening for up
Speaker 1: tech computer tech, and I just remember truly be being
Speaker 1: overjoyed because as an actor, any type of validation that
Speaker 1: points you in the direction of someone seeing you and
Speaker 1: appreciating what you've done. Quite honestly, that was enough to
Speaker 1: keep me going for another six months to a year.
Speaker 1: I did not believe they would write a part for me,
Speaker 1: because that's not what happens usually. You know, at that level,
Speaker 1: they're exploring and they're putting pieces together, and the chances
Speaker 1: of that actually happening I thought were so small, and um,
Speaker 1: he wasn't kidding. And it was Joel sir Now in particular,
Speaker 1: who did most of the talking, as I remember in
Speaker 1: the room saying that, professing that that we're gonna write
Speaker 1: more material, and you know, and they did. And I
Speaker 1: thought it was gonna be four episodes. I thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be six episodes. And it just kept going
Speaker 1: and going. I mean that one how many years was
Speaker 1: that seven? Was eight or nine years? And then it
Speaker 1: went away and came back. I mean I started on
Speaker 1: season three. I think there were eight seasons. Want to run, man,
Speaker 1: That's how Gilmore was for me. I was a guest
Speaker 1: star in the pilot and they offered to and we
Speaker 1: said no. When they offered for we said no, and
Speaker 1: I was very nervous about that because I needed the
Speaker 1: money badly. And my manager called me. Um one day,
Speaker 1: they come out of lunch and here I'm Manila Envelope
Speaker 1: had a six year deal on for the show. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe. I think I wept and I wept um,
Speaker 1: but it was yeah, yeah. I was the opposite in negotiations.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you'll take me for two so I
Speaker 1: was just no. I was the same way, but the
Speaker 1: manager was the hardass saying no, I'm gonna get Gavin
Speaker 1: to go to the network and get the money right.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, really, because one of my buddies back
Speaker 1: in New York had turned down UM an iconic film
Speaker 1: role and never turned into I mean, he really, like
Speaker 1: really regretted it. And you know, Brad put Pitt took
Speaker 1: the role in the rest of history. UM not saying
Speaker 1: that would have happened to him, but I remember those
Speaker 1: times thinking, Jesus, you know we better take you know,
Speaker 1: especially after saying no to four episodes, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, wow, that's awesome. It was like I
Speaker 1: didn't want it. I would I would have taken the
Speaker 1: for man if it was just up to me. I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, sure, I'll take it. I love that.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear it. Um, you know what,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about some of your comedy influences.
Speaker 1: Who did you grow up? How did you end up
Speaker 1: in art school? A Who were some of your big
Speaker 1: influences and in art and comed that that that made
Speaker 1: you the artist that you are today. Um? Well, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't really a huge fan of stand up comedy.
Speaker 1: I do remember seeing Whoopie Goldberg's One woman show on HBO,
Speaker 1: and I really wanted to do that, And I think
Speaker 1: I always wanted to do acting, but I was scared
Speaker 1: to study it and I didn't want to go to
Speaker 1: school for it, so into art school instead. I didn't
Speaker 1: think it was something that you could do. Um. I
Speaker 1: was always really drawn to a solo performer on stage. Um,
Speaker 1: that's why I enjoyed the performance art stuff. And to me,
Speaker 1: that was an entry into it because it wasn't a
Speaker 1: guy in a suit going like, here's what I think
Speaker 1: about this, Because I couldn't relate to that. I was
Speaker 1: somebody who wasn't very comfortable speaking my mind or understanding
Speaker 1: who I was in the world or what I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about, So that's why I was more interested
Speaker 1: in art. One thing I had to learn, which took
Speaker 1: me a long time too, was as an actor, I
Speaker 1: tend to automatically go to like when I asked something out,
Speaker 1: you're gonna feel it. And I had to learn how
Speaker 1: to temper that doing stand up so that the audience
Speaker 1: felt okay. I was always shocked. I'm like, you guys
Speaker 1: are really feel bad about this. This is funny to me,
Speaker 1: But you have to like adopt this narrator so the
Speaker 1: audience knows it's okay to laugh because they will go
Speaker 1: with you if you're in a motive person on stage,
Speaker 1: which also speaks to the technician part of it, because
Speaker 1: if it's someone who's a technician, you're not worried about
Speaker 1: them because they're not showing you their emotions and I
Speaker 1: so I had to temper that back because my tendency
Speaker 1: is to show probably much emotion, especially for joke telling.
Speaker 1: So that's been really fun too, because that's a way
Speaker 1: to like build my own confidence and way to do it,
Speaker 1: you know, righting audience. So and then you get different
Speaker 1: audiences and they're not going to respond the same way.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just like you almost have to be, um,
Speaker 1: you know, completely intuitive on stage per performance, because it's
Speaker 1: never going to be the same reactions, same, very maddening.
Speaker 1: And I feel like you're very you're very clued into
Speaker 1: it mentally. I can see you going there imagining doing
Speaker 1: that because that's exactly each performance. I mean, similar ish
Speaker 1: to acting. But you're jumping but you know right, it's yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're different that you know certain things don't work in
Speaker 1: front of certain audiences and you don't know why. Um,
Speaker 1: but with you know, you can't be I mean, you
Speaker 1: can be somewhat intuitive with live acting performance. But boy,
Speaker 1: I tell you that's that's the beauty stand up comedy. Man.
Speaker 1: You can just be. I mean, you can just sort
Speaker 1: of adapt, can't you. I mean, do you find your
Speaker 1: you find yourself adapting from show to show, and there's
Speaker 1: all that freedom to do it. You have to, you
Speaker 1: have to because you really are being given. I mean
Speaker 1: it's I'm I still marvel at like the insanity of it.
Speaker 1: Four shows in Colorado Springs, and each one I was like, what,
Speaker 1: like what now? What now? Like a drunk guy going
Speaker 1: I support you and handing his nachos to me, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in this show? You know, this couple,
Speaker 1: whatever they got or whatever his deal is. You know
Speaker 1: the third show. Okay, the audience is good, they're not
Speaker 1: too drunk, they're paying attention, they're interested. And then five
Speaker 1: minutes in, Uh, there's a fourteen year old and audience
Speaker 1: what what now? I love people, especially in the arts,
Speaker 1: who possess courage, and I think it takes a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of courage to get it. I mean, you still
Speaker 1: have this need and you still need to get up there. Um,
Speaker 1: but boy, it takes a lot of courage to do this.
Speaker 1: And maybe one day I'll I'll grow a pair and
Speaker 1: get up there and and try it. But it's scary.
Speaker 1: It's just so scary to me. Anyway, Listen, I could
Speaker 1: talk about this forever. They're cutting me off. We've got
Speaker 1: to do more episodes after this. But fascinating to you
Speaker 1: on stage doing stand up. Let's I'm ready. Let me
Speaker 1: see you first. Okay, let's let's do that. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: been a real pleasure. I please come back. I want
Speaker 1: to talk get in greater depth. I'll try not to
Speaker 1: be so heavy, but you're a fascinating You're fascinating actress,
Speaker 1: fascinating performer. UM go see her on tour. UM Mary
Speaker 1: Lynn all the best, Thanks for coming on, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. You got to see you next time. Bye,
Speaker 1: all right bye, Hey everybody, and don't forget follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at I Am All In podcast and Emailie
Speaker 1: at Gilmore at I heart radio dot com. Oh you
Speaker 1: gil More fans. If you're looking for the best cup
Speaker 1: of coffee in the world, go to my website for
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