Speaker 1: I want to see where you guys land on this
Speaker 1: because I think it's a product of having grown up
Speaker 1: without television. I cannot be in a room with a
Speaker 1: television on, like if there's a TV on, like, I
Speaker 1: can't go to a restaurant or a bar with it.
Speaker 1: I stare at it the entire time. Like, so there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as comfort TV for me. Like, well,
Speaker 1: you've talked about going to sleep with the television, like
Speaker 1: I will saut it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm the same way, writer. I can't stand it.
Speaker 2: It's to me, TV is not background noise. It's the focus.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna watch it, it needs to be the
Speaker 2: entire focus. And I want everyone else reading for it. Yes,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, guys, this show is on, but if
Speaker 2: you'd like to talk, we can turn it off. I
Speaker 2: have no problem with either of them, but like, it's
Speaker 2: not for me background noise.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: And you walk into some people's houses, like my in laws,
Speaker 1: you know, they they just are one of those houses.
Speaker 1: They just always kind of had the TV on. It's
Speaker 1: mostly sports, like my father in law watches sports, but
Speaker 1: oh my god, it drives me crazy. And like I
Speaker 1: walk into the house and everybody else acts as if
Speaker 1: like nothing's happening, and I'm like, do you see this
Speaker 1: TV screaming at us right now? It is begging to
Speaker 1: be watched. What are you doing there? Wonderful in your ear?
Speaker 4: That's what it's doing.
Speaker 5: We we we were not one of It's funny because
Speaker 5: you would think we would be one of those families.
Speaker 4: We weren't.
Speaker 5: We were not a lot like TV during meals stuff
Speaker 5: like that. TV was oh no, we were not allowed
Speaker 5: to have any of the well, yeah, that's the thing,
Speaker 5: and then we'd all, you know, gather around the old
Speaker 5: boob too. But no, to me, it's weird because I
Speaker 5: Sue and I are different in that she likes to
Speaker 5: sleep with the TV on too, but it has to
Speaker 5: be something she's seen ten thousand times, so she doesn't
Speaker 5: want to stay up and walk. Whereas even if I'm
Speaker 5: rolled over on my stomach, chances are I'm still watching.
Speaker 4: It in my head.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: No, So when I hear mash or cheers or Seinfeld
Speaker 5: or something behind me, like Danielle you recently, you and
Speaker 5: I were flying somewhere and you put Cheers back on
Speaker 5: on the flight and I was like watching my screen
Speaker 5: but glancing over and watching Cheers on Danielle's screen with
Speaker 5: note like not being able to hear it, but still
Speaker 5: watching Cheers, and now it's I'm completely back into Cheers.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so funny because you.
Speaker 4: Just turned it on. So it's like all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: I'm back.
Speaker 5: But I will like and Sue will test me sometimes
Speaker 5: Seinfelder Mash will be on and I'll be literally on
Speaker 5: my stomach with my arms like falling asleep, and she'll go,
Speaker 5: what's happening on the screen right now? And I'll be like,
Speaker 5: George is sitting down, He's wearing a red shirt. He's
Speaker 5: on a couch and he's holding a cracked magazine with
Speaker 5: a bus on front.
Speaker 4: And She's just like, how do you do that? It's like,
Speaker 4: I'm still watching it.
Speaker 2: Did I already tell you the story writer about when
Speaker 2: Will and I were flying together and he put the
Speaker 2: tea so he has a screen in front of him
Speaker 2: on the seat and he goes to the TV. And
Speaker 2: what it was that you put on? It was weep
Speaker 2: weep Okay. He puts Veep on and I see I go, oh,
Speaker 2: he's watching veep okay. And I'm just sitting next to him.
Speaker 2: I've got an audiobook in whatever. Oh no, I was
Speaker 2: watching something too. I put something on and then Will
Speaker 2: turns it on. He watches it for maybe two minutes,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, he goes, lowers his
Speaker 2: hat down over his eyes, leans back in his seat,
Speaker 2: goes to sleep, and I go, oh, well's gonna sleep.
Speaker 2: A few minutes later the episode ends, Will still asleep
Speaker 2: and I go, oh, that's nice. TV turned off. He
Speaker 2: can go to sleep. He goes, lifts up his hat,
Speaker 2: goes back to the thing, turns on a second episode
Speaker 2: of Weep, and then lowers his hat an episode of Veep.
Speaker 2: What is he doing? And then I realized, oh, he
Speaker 2: actually woke up because the TV show stopped, and now
Speaker 2: in order to put the little baby back to sleep,
Speaker 2: he has to put the episode of Veep back on it.
Speaker 2: He did it like four or five times. I was like,
Speaker 2: this is the worst sleep ever I did. Miserable.
Speaker 3: That's awful. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: Torture You're literally tortured and yourself awake every.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: Twenty two minutes. Yeah, what about commercials? Can you guys
Speaker 1: handle commercials?
Speaker 5: I'm not a fan of commercials, That's why I Yeah,
Speaker 5: the DVDs, especially, like the advent of I could get
Speaker 5: all my favorite shows on DVD was just a revelation
Speaker 5: for me. The play all button was just like, oh,
Speaker 5: every time I hit playing, I.
Speaker 1: Find commercials so jarring and bizarre, and like when I'm watching,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just can't They're like train wrecks. I
Speaker 1: just don't like I have to watch them, of course
Speaker 1: because the TV's screaming, I mean, and often with commercials,
Speaker 1: they are literally screaming at you, right, And then I
Speaker 1: just like the world present, especially like because I've been
Speaker 1: on the road now, so we are in hotel rooms
Speaker 1: every once in a while, like when we were on
Speaker 1: doing our shows, and it's the first time watching commercials within,
Speaker 1: you know, sitting next to me, and like, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that somewhere over the last like twenty years, basically
Speaker 1: a quarter of all commercials are pharmaceuticals m I think,
Speaker 1: which are accurate? Yeah, mind boggling to me. Like every
Speaker 1: fourth commercial, I'm like, what is happening. This is a
Speaker 1: new thing that I didn't know I had a problem
Speaker 1: with that I need to be solved by this pill
Speaker 1: that I need to ask my doctor about. And this
Speaker 1: is then and suddenly I've gotten a glimpse of somebody's
Speaker 1: life and their pets and their kids and like what
Speaker 1: they do for a living. And it's like four minutes,
Speaker 1: and you know, and India is just like this is
Speaker 1: a thing, and I'm like, oh god, yeah, like this
Speaker 1: is a thing. Apparently we all have diarrhea.
Speaker 2: And we need help on the fence about TV commercials,
Speaker 2: But boy, do I love podcast commercials?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: I think podcast commercials are great, very true. They're funny,
Speaker 2: they're engaging, you know, they're clever. I don't even notice
Speaker 2: person yeah personal, Yeah, I feel like it's just you know,
Speaker 2: my friends sitting.
Speaker 1: Like a warm, comfy blanket.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Television.
Speaker 4: I saw one last night.
Speaker 5: SOO and I were watching TV last night and I
Speaker 5: literally saw one where the first side effect was death.
Speaker 5: Why do you need to hear the rest of them
Speaker 5: after that?
Speaker 1: Dud? Does it?
Speaker 5: Does it matter that your skin's gonna itch if the
Speaker 5: first thing that happens is you die.
Speaker 2: Like, if you don't die, you may still itch. That's
Speaker 2: why they want you to know. You may not die,
Speaker 2: but you may be itchy with loose bowels itchy exactly.
Speaker 4: Isn't that just what being in love is like.
Speaker 2: Come on, yikes, welcome to pod meets Loose Bowels. I'm
Speaker 2: Dan yell Offishal.
Speaker 5: I'm right or Strong, and I'm Wilfordell Secure.
Speaker 4: Doctor is right for you.
Speaker 2: We're taking the show on the road and visiting over
Speaker 2: a dozen cities as Pod Meets World is coming to
Speaker 2: a city near you.
Speaker 1: Next up is Philadelphia on September thirtieth at the met
Speaker 1: for our biggest show yet.
Speaker 5: We'll be joined by Treeta McGee great person, Matthew Lawrence,
Speaker 5: great person, and Tony Quinn who's a horror garbage human being.
Speaker 2: No you don't mean that, will.
Speaker 5: Oh No, it's the great smelling kind of garbage, you know,
Speaker 5: like outside of Pope Refactory.
Speaker 4: I love you, Tony.
Speaker 1: Tickets are still available right now at Podmeatsworldshow dot.
Speaker 2: Com and you can see our entire schedule, which includes
Speaker 2: stops in Cleveland, Toronto, and Pittsburgh in October, and.
Speaker 4: So much more, including the release dates in Texas.
Speaker 1: Podmeatsworldshow dot Com right now get your tickets to see
Speaker 1: us live in a city near you.
Speaker 2: Well, if you have listened to the first two seasons
Speaker 2: of Podmeats World, you know that we talked a lot
Speaker 2: about the writer's room and the dynamics that lived inside it.
Speaker 2: We've joked numerous times that our podcast is more Raschamon
Speaker 2: than Rewatch, since everyone saw everything differently, and yet the
Speaker 2: truth lies probably somewhere in between all of our memories.
Speaker 1: Everyone named Tapanga good exactly.
Speaker 2: We already know how many stories about that there are.
Speaker 2: But one thing we always pointed out and we love
Speaker 2: to see on screen was the name. Susan Estelle Jansen,
Speaker 2: a rare female voice on the show. Her contributions to
Speaker 2: Boy Meets World are undeniable. In season one, she wrote
Speaker 2: Killer Bee, Santa's Little Helper, and It's a Wonderful Night.
Speaker 2: In season two, The Uninvited Fear strikes Out, Sierra No,
Speaker 2: and Wrong Side of the Tracks. Then we're getting a
Speaker 2: little ahead of ourselves. But one of her two other
Speaker 2: scripts are in season four, and one is Hair Today,
Speaker 2: Goon Tomorrow, the legendary hair catching some big episode right banners. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So to say she helps steer the pop culture ship
Speaker 2: that was Boy Meets World would be an understatement. She
Speaker 2: was one of the sales The Harvard and usc Film
Speaker 2: School grad also wrote on Home Improvement and another Michael
Speaker 2: Jacobs show You Wish. Then she was the executive producer
Speaker 2: for Lizzie McGuire and the writer of the Lizzie McGuire movie,
Speaker 2: and also she penned the live action Brats movie. But
Speaker 2: she couldn't escape us because she came back and wrote
Speaker 2: for season one, the season one finale of Girl Meets World,
Speaker 2: which was called Girl Meets First Date. She's had quite
Speaker 2: a career, and all during a time when you couldn't
Speaker 2: say quite a career for very many female writer producers
Speaker 2: in the industry. And today we are thrilled to reunite
Speaker 2: with her. Let's please welcome Susan Estelle Jansen to our podcast. Wow,
Speaker 2: how are you?
Speaker 3: My god, it is so good to see all of you, guys.
Speaker 3: It's crazy, it's so good to see you.
Speaker 2: We were just talking about in your in your intro
Speaker 2: that you wrote the season the season finale of season
Speaker 2: one for Girl Meets World. But also I remember you
Speaker 2: on set during our pilot.
Speaker 3: I was there, I checked, I ran into came, I
Speaker 3: totally kim undvited. I crashed it. I like that. I
Speaker 3: ran into Michael in the lobby of the Disney Channel building, okay,
Speaker 3: and he told me that he was doing it. I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I would love to stop by. And
Speaker 3: then I showed up for the pilot re and then
Speaker 3: I just stayed all week. Oh man, it all week
Speaker 3: to help out because it was kind of a little chaotic.
Speaker 2: Oh you think I'm That's what I was saying. I
Speaker 2: was like, you decided to stay. If anything, thank god,
Speaker 2: I don't have to be here.
Speaker 3: No, it was like, it was so amazing to see everybody,
Speaker 3: and even though it was chaotic, to feel a little
Speaker 3: bit of that old magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you were the uninvited, just like the script.
Speaker 3: I was totally the uninvited. It couldn't it very badly?
Speaker 2: Thankfully it did not. So let's start with the easiest
Speaker 2: question we have. What got you into writing for TV?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 3: My god, so funny. So I had an uncle at
Speaker 3: Paramount who worked in the legal department and had negotiated
Speaker 3: all the contracts for the writers on Star Trek. Okay
Speaker 3: to be sweetheart, if you can be funny, you can
Speaker 3: make a nice living.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 2: I deserted writing script.
Speaker 3: That was literally it. Because I'd always saw of myself
Speaker 3: as sort of a very you know, dark, moody person,
Speaker 3: and I'd never really tried to write comedy, and oh
Speaker 3: my god, this was a funny thing. Up until this point,
Speaker 3: literally up until that point, I did not own a
Speaker 3: television and had never watched television. And I went out
Speaker 3: and I bought this little funeye, this off brand TV
Speaker 3: with a little VCR thing in it, and I bought
Speaker 3: the Funeye, and I bought a copy of I bought
Speaker 3: a copy of TV Guide, and I like looked up
Speaker 3: things that I should be watching on TV Guide, and
Speaker 3: I like set myself out like I'm going to watch
Speaker 3: popular shows for a week. And then the president of television,
Speaker 3: a paramount like, said well, you know, this is our
Speaker 3: new show. And I think it was it was called
Speaker 3: down Home.
Speaker 2: It was okay, so.
Speaker 3: Called down Home. And he gave me a pilot episode
Speaker 3: of down Home and he said, well, this is what
Speaker 3: this is what a script looks like, you know, and
Speaker 3: this is how you write it. And I went out
Speaker 3: and I bought the script writing software and I put
Speaker 3: it on my computer, and five days later I turned
Speaker 3: in a script. And he had never expected to see
Speaker 3: me again, and I turned in the script and he
Speaker 3: read this and he said, you know, against all odds,
Speaker 3: I think you may actually be able to do this. Wow,
Speaker 3: I am going to turn you over to somebody who's
Speaker 3: like appropriately sized. I took this meeting as a favor,
Speaker 3: far too important to waste my time with you, But
Speaker 3: I'm going to turn it over to somebody appropriately sized.
Speaker 3: He turned me over to another development executive named Maria Krenna,
Speaker 3: Richard Krena's daughter, and she helped me put together a
Speaker 3: slate of specscripts and help me find an agent.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 3: I believe it was still I was still in folk
Speaker 3: school at the time time.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're also where you were at Harvard or.
Speaker 3: Harvard and then usc Film School, which I did not
Speaker 3: even know was a competitive admission.
Speaker 4: Is Harvard is at a university or idiot?
Speaker 3: It's a small private college, Baggie.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, okay. Interesting.
Speaker 2: What was your major?
Speaker 3: English? And American literature and language? And my mom was
Speaker 3: so disappointed when I got into the industry, so disappointed.
Speaker 2: What did she want you to do?
Speaker 3: A poet? She wanted me to be a poet?
Speaker 7: Wow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I studied poetry. I want a National Endowment for
Speaker 3: the Arts award when I was seventeen for poetry. And
Speaker 3: he wanted me to like be a poet because words
Speaker 3: always I'm got to give repea Words always meant so
Speaker 3: much to me. I was always, always, always loved writing.
Speaker 3: In fact, my earliest memory I went to school with
Speaker 3: Tatum O'Neil crazy pushed it through a rosebush bitch. I
Speaker 3: went to start and they asked me if I felt
Speaker 3: bad about it, and I'm like, no, absolutely not. She
Speaker 3: totally deserved it.
Speaker 2: What happened, tell me the story, what happened when she
Speaker 2: did so.
Speaker 3: It was Montessori school and we, like we were supposed to.
Speaker 3: There was like a big deal about who was first
Speaker 3: in line after playground for a class I think we
Speaker 3: were like four, right, so, but like being that first
Speaker 3: person in line after recess to walk into the classroom
Speaker 3: and be first was a huge deal if very seldom
Speaker 3: got it. I managed to make it first, and Tatum
Speaker 3: decided that she was going to cut in in front
Speaker 3: of me, and the front of the line happened to
Speaker 3: be right next to rose bushes.
Speaker 2: Well, so she was asking for.
Speaker 3: It, asking for it, asking for it. But that was
Speaker 3: my first memory of writing. Because at the school when
Speaker 3: we came back, they said that we should write about
Speaker 3: Christmas vacation, right, So we were supposed to write like
Speaker 3: three sentences about Christmas vacation on that on the big
Speaker 3: paper with the you know, the double lines. Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: we all remember. So I wrote about Christmas vacation and
Speaker 3: they put it up on the board and I remember
Speaker 3: looking at it and reading it over and thinking I
Speaker 3: didn't get it, Like I didn't really capture.
Speaker 2: I didn't nail the Christmas vacation story.
Speaker 3: On Christmas vacation? Fully?
Speaker 4: Did you?
Speaker 1: Have you done a rewrite? Self disappointment? So you were
Speaker 1: paid to be a writer.
Speaker 3: Speaking of which I brought a souvenir self disappointment souvenir.
Speaker 3: So I don't think you guys even knew existed, it,
Speaker 3: says dear ABC Channel seven ray boy Meets World. We
Speaker 3: really enjoyed Friday evening shows. But what is it with
Speaker 3: the writers for Boy Meets World? The storylines are boring,
Speaker 3: whereas Cooper and step by Step are interesting and challenging.
Speaker 3: Get new writers for Boy Meets World. Thanks be Creesy.
Speaker 1: What is a fan letter?
Speaker 4: LARISI that's my pen name.
Speaker 3: And she actually, you know, it's so funny. I never
Speaker 3: wrote back to her, but I do have her regrets.
Speaker 2: Well maybe she's still there.
Speaker 6: Let's let's make it up there.
Speaker 3: I say that because I remember something show that to me,
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I am taking that, I am framing that,
Speaker 3: I am putting out of my house, and I'm keeping
Speaker 3: it forever.
Speaker 2: I love it. So how do you then, so they
Speaker 2: end up hiring you at Paramount? How do you end
Speaker 2: up on like the biggest show at that time, Home Improvement?
Speaker 2: And was that your first TV writing job?
Speaker 3: Well, my first TV writing job was actually on it
Speaker 3: was almost on the art. Do you remember the Arsenio
Speaker 3: Hall Show? Yes, yeah, but he but it wasn't just
Speaker 3: the Arsenio Hall Show. There was like another ancillary show
Speaker 3: that was like our Sineo or something, and they wanted
Speaker 3: me to do that, and I showed up and they
Speaker 3: just I don't think I was quite as urban as
Speaker 3: they had envisioned. They decided that they didn't actually want
Speaker 3: to hire me, So that was kind of hugely disappointing.
Speaker 3: And then I got hired to do one episode of
Speaker 3: this random show called Teach.
Speaker 2: Yep, I remember Teach too. Why do I remember that show?
Speaker 2: I feel like.
Speaker 4: Somebody else on the podcast has talked about Teach.
Speaker 3: Teach was the show about the black teacher at the
Speaker 3: White Kid the White Boys boarding school back East.
Speaker 2: Mentioned Teach.
Speaker 5: Somebody else has mentioned Teach on this podcast. I don't
Speaker 5: know who, but somebody else has yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, so teach. So maybe Teach was like an
Speaker 3: amazing theater show for everybody. But then I got the
Speaker 3: interview with the the three guys who did home improvement,
Speaker 3: and they hired me on and I had no idea
Speaker 3: how huge it was going to be, but I had.
Speaker 3: It was before the Internet, and I had this insane
Speaker 3: mind for trivia and just remembered random stuff. So I
Speaker 3: was like the voice of Wilson. I was a person
Speaker 3: that they could always count on to pull some like
Speaker 3: strange piece of information out of my head. I love
Speaker 3: that guy. He was so nice. He drank brown liquor,
Speaker 3: and he was married to a woman who was an
Speaker 3: ordained minister.
Speaker 2: Oh oh that's cool, that's very cool. What's the brown liquor?
Speaker 1: Bourbon like bourbon or whiskey.
Speaker 3: I mean it was just like he was just in
Speaker 3: an dressing room and drank brown liquor.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: Another one of your scripts was for an episode Calledhunting
Speaker 2: of Taylor House. Do you remember working with a young
Speaker 2: pre sean Hunter, right or strong a minute?
Speaker 1: She wrote that episode you kise yes, yes.
Speaker 2: Episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm the kid who the brad who calls it
Speaker 1: full time and gets kicked out of scared by the
Speaker 1: haunted house. Are you serious? We never made this connection.
Speaker 1: It was only like two years later.
Speaker 3: He never made this connection.
Speaker 1: I believe that you wrote my episode of Home Improvement.
Speaker 3: I love that launched your career. I'm so happy. That
Speaker 3: actually makes me really really really happy.
Speaker 4: That's cool.
Speaker 7: My god, that's so funny.
Speaker 2: Isn't that funny? Especially because Home Improvement was probably one
Speaker 2: of the reasons you were called in for Boy Meets World.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I was really close to being a regular
Speaker 1: on Home Improvement. I went back. I auditioned for every brother,
Speaker 1: like when they were doing the pilot, you know, and
Speaker 1: I was like sort of in between ages. I'm like, ye,
Speaker 1: slightly older than Jonathan or actually Zach was younger but
Speaker 1: just bigger. I remember they kept like shuffling all of
Speaker 1: us around, and like, I just remember reading for Home
Speaker 1: Improvement like six times. I don't think I ever networked
Speaker 1: for it, but I got close, and I remember being
Speaker 1: like ugh and then getting the guest star whatever. A
Speaker 1: year or two later. And then yeah, and then that
Speaker 1: like that awareness of me as an ABC kid actor
Speaker 1: probably did lead to boy Met's work. Yeah, sure, it's
Speaker 1: so funny.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so, Susan, how did Boy Meet's World come into
Speaker 2: your life?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: How was it pitched to you? Were you aware of
Speaker 2: the show before I came in?
Speaker 3: Right after the pilot was shot, So I saw the pilot,
Speaker 3: there was. I did two years on Home Improvement and
Speaker 3: then they let me go, So I was, which was
Speaker 3: it was a really really really bad moment for me.
Speaker 3: They let me go. They just they they didn't renew
Speaker 3: my option for the third year. Wow. And so I
Speaker 3: was looking around and I interviewed on a couple things,
Speaker 3: and I really liked my phone, And honestly, it was
Speaker 3: I think my career wound up being so much better
Speaker 3: than it would have been if I had just continued
Speaker 3: working for the guys on Home Improvement on Home Improvement
Speaker 3: because they were very, very insular, and I was not
Speaker 3: involved with anything outside of the writer's room. And once
Speaker 3: I moved over to Boy Meets World and Michael, he
Speaker 3: was all about growing talent. He was really all about
Speaker 3: you were involved in anything, You were involved in the
Speaker 3: casting of your episode. You know, when your episode is shooting,
Speaker 3: you can go down, well, if you could find time,
Speaker 3: you could go down to the stage.
Speaker 2: So how did you meet Michael in that process? Okay,
Speaker 2: the in the hiring process for Boy Meets World.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, literally in the hiring process.
Speaker 2: Wow. So we have obviously dissected that first season writer's
Speaker 2: room a lot, so we don't need to go deep
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 3: And I said, I said to your husband, it's Russia
Speaker 3: on It's like totally different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because one has a totally different.
Speaker 3: Take on your origin story. Okay, it's on BuzzFeed, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Totally Okay, what's your take?
Speaker 3: Okay, So my take was that you came in. We
Speaker 3: had a show that was like a science fare show,
Speaker 3: and there were two girls who would doing some like
Speaker 3: hippie skippy ecological project about it.
Speaker 2: I was one of those, Yes, we're one of those.
Speaker 3: No lines, I had a couple of lines. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: you did not.
Speaker 2: I did because I auditioned with Monday.
Speaker 3: No and Monday. You may have auditioned for them later,
Speaker 3: but on Monday you had You may have auditioned, but
Speaker 3: you did not have lines on Monday. Well.
Speaker 2: It also wasn't a Monday, it was a Friday. We
Speaker 2: started our weeks on Fridays. We taped on Thursdays because
Speaker 2: Michael left for the Sabbath on Friday night, so a Monday. Forgot,
Speaker 2: it was only there on a Saturday. Correct, you worked
Speaker 2: on Saturdays. I've got it was a different schedule. So
Speaker 2: again set roushamont. Okay, So Friday, so we're reading on Friday.
Speaker 3: You I don't remember you having lines on Friday, but
Speaker 3: I remember David Traynor coming to us, I guess Monday Tuesday,
Speaker 3: saying that I would love Riley was not working out,
Speaker 3: but that he had real faith in you and it
Speaker 3: was giving you lines, and we're like, okay, we'll come down.
Speaker 3: We'll come down to run through and see how it goes.
Speaker 3: We completely agreed with him, and by Thursday taping you
Speaker 3: had all the lines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not at all what happened. No, no, it's
Speaker 2: not it all. What happened Friday, I was at the
Speaker 2: table read I had like maybe two lines, one in
Speaker 2: the classroom, one in the cafeteria, and it was Marl
Speaker 2: and I. Friday afternoon, before I went home, I auditioned
Speaker 2: for Tapanga. On the way home, they called me and
Speaker 2: said you have the role of Tapanga. On Monday, I
Speaker 2: came back in as Tapanga and did the run through.
Speaker 2: I did the whole day as Tapanga.
Speaker 3: Remember her having a name in that epoch.
Speaker 2: So yeah, she did. She had a name from the
Speaker 2: audition I remember, I remember because I auditioned for Topanga.
Speaker 2: I just didn't get it.
Speaker 3: It's so crazy because I would have thought that if
Speaker 3: you went and looked at his script, because we had
Speaker 3: we we had no interest in the character at all
Speaker 3: until you Danielle.
Speaker 2: Like, the character wasn't big? Was that whole episode was
Speaker 2: about basically about Tapega and her name was in it
Speaker 2: from from the beginning. So yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 2: It's just memories are weird.
Speaker 3: I remember it. This is again't russiam On. This is
Speaker 3: how I remember. I remember it that it started out
Speaker 3: as this nothing role. You didn't have lines. You were
Speaker 3: given the lines of the other actress who kind of
Speaker 3: fell by the wayside, right that you got the lines,
Speaker 3: and that after the episode, as we are watching it,
Speaker 3: tape magic was happening and we're.
Speaker 2: Like, well I believe that part. I do think that
Speaker 2: Tapanga wasn't ever even after I got the part. Topanga
Speaker 2: wasn't expected to become a mass part of the show.
Speaker 2: And I do know stories because my parents and my
Speaker 2: grandparents were there at the live studio audience tapings and
Speaker 2: they would watch from the stands, but where they would
Speaker 2: sit in the stands where it was very close to
Speaker 2: video village, and my grandfather used to tell me every
Speaker 2: single thing Michael said about me while watching the screen.
Speaker 2: And I know that there were on that first taping,
Speaker 2: Michael was like right in front of the camera pointing
Speaker 2: at me and going, there's something there, There's something there.
Speaker 2: And so I do one hundred percent know that after
Speaker 2: I booked the role and we started we recorded that episode,
Speaker 2: light bulbs were going off that maybe there could be
Speaker 2: more for this character and this actress like that for sure, Yes,
Speaker 2: that's for sure. No one, no one has even questioned
Speaker 2: that Tapega was not supposed to be some like you know, I.
Speaker 3: Have to remember you having a name until we started
Speaker 3: writing you into scripts.
Speaker 2: Tapeka was already in the script. I just wasn't her
Speaker 2: on the first day. Somebody else was. And then I
Speaker 2: took over the role on that first day Monday, the
Speaker 2: run through day, and and it stayed the same Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's interesting because I wouldn't I wouldn't have thought
Speaker 3: that we would have given those few lines a name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I auditioned for them and they did well.
Speaker 3: The lazy I.
Speaker 4: Know now, Yeah, she was.
Speaker 5: She was named by Bill Lawrence or Michael Jacobs Orman or.
Speaker 4: Or so. We've heard different stories.
Speaker 3: Everyone's taking credit. I'm going to go with I'm going
Speaker 3: to go with Mike Jacobs because he drove past to
Speaker 3: Panga Canyon every day back and forth to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the story. That's the story heard that Michael tells.
Speaker 2: And everybody has their own. Everyone has their own.
Speaker 4: Bill Lawrence got one.
Speaker 2: Yep, Bill Lawrence has got one. That Lawrence is because
Speaker 2: of his last name. That guy. So what was it
Speaker 2: like for I mean, a rare female writer in what
Speaker 2: has everyone admitted was just a big boys club at
Speaker 2: the time, like the nineties writers rooms were big old
Speaker 2: boys club. What was your experience?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 3: It was rough? It was, it was well, it was
Speaker 3: a lot of things. I mean, I will not betray
Speaker 3: the sanctity of the writer's room because like that was
Speaker 3: the thing about the writer's room was it was this
Speaker 3: incredibly insulated space. Like literally as soon as the door
Speaker 3: opened and somebody walked in, it was silent. Yeah, as
Speaker 3: soon as the door closed, it took back up again.
Speaker 3: And what I will say in defense of the Writer's
Speaker 3: Room was that anything went like there. It had to
Speaker 3: be a place where you could pitch anything, anything and
Speaker 3: feel like you could say anybody could say anything. Yes,
Speaker 3: So for better or for worse, that's kind of a
Speaker 3: rough environment to be in as a you know, I
Speaker 3: was in my twenties.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I.
Speaker 3: Was younger than Yeah, I was young.
Speaker 2: I mean you were like twenty some odd years younger
Speaker 2: than we are now.
Speaker 3: So I was. So it was it was a lot
Speaker 3: to be thrown into, and it was it was. It
Speaker 3: was crazy.
Speaker 2: Did you feel heard? Did you feel like you were okay? Good?
Speaker 2: You felt like your voice mattered?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah, great, that's great.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I felt like I felt like I really felt
Speaker 3: like from the jump, Michael really thought I had a
Speaker 3: lot to offer, right, So that really so I felt
Speaker 3: really really good about that. And I just adored the show.
Speaker 3: But you remember there were years that I was gone
Speaker 3: from it because me off to do like other projects
Speaker 3: with him.
Speaker 2: Yep, that happened with a lot of people. That's how
Speaker 2: you know, that's it. We had different sh runners for
Speaker 2: periods of time because Michael was off doing you know,
Speaker 2: a bunch of other shows, which when you strike while
Speaker 2: of irons Hot Baby, you know.
Speaker 1: So I have I have a question for you.
Speaker 4: Said you came in at the pilot at the.
Speaker 5: The pilot had been shot, so at the after the pilot,
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm sorry, do you were you involved in
Speaker 5: my casting at all?
Speaker 4: Because I know that they were, they changed everything up
Speaker 4: after the pilot.
Speaker 3: No, I remember Rusty was a huge question mark afterwards.
Speaker 4: But that was it you you so you were.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to remember who was actually in the room
Speaker 5: when I was like auditioning or screen testing, and I
Speaker 5: was didn't know if you were there or not.
Speaker 3: I honestly can't remember. The one that I remember, really,
Speaker 3: really really being involved with was recasting the dad recasting Rusty.
Speaker 2: For Rusty yeah, because the dad there was a different dad, Yeah,
Speaker 2: recasting and we're yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I just want to remind everybody about some of
Speaker 2: our favorite storylines from season one. We have in Killer Bees,
Speaker 2: Eric tries to take a date to an Aerosmith concert,
Speaker 2: but is scared that he's going to run into his parents.
Speaker 2: In It's a Wonderful Life, Eric fails his driver's test
Speaker 2: and pretends to pass while Corey and Sean rents, I'm
Speaker 2: blowing up your head Part five Stumpy's Revenge.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a bluff unscrappt.
Speaker 2: I know, right, it does. Where were your ideas coming from? Like,
Speaker 2: especially since you had worked primarily in family television, do
Speaker 2: you what was your like, where were where was your
Speaker 2: inspiration coming from?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it was it was always it was
Speaker 3: always kind of relationship based. I mean, it was always
Speaker 3: the and Michael always had such a sense of wanting
Speaker 3: to have a great message at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: but not being so dogmatic that you didn't have fun
Speaker 3: getting there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure, it was always like some weird, crazy journey and
Speaker 3: at the end of it you wound up with, you know,
Speaker 3: be a better brother, don't lie to your parents. Right.
Speaker 3: So I think that it was just remembering my childhood,
Speaker 3: like you just kind of go back and you remember, like,
Speaker 3: what were all the things that I was struggling with
Speaker 3: when I was in sage? What were my hopes, what
Speaker 3: were my dreams. I mean, because I think that when
Speaker 3: you become an adult, you often forget the richness of
Speaker 3: the internal life of children. And it is a rich,
Speaker 3: interesting internal life and more you know, grown up than
Speaker 3: people often give it credit for. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: there's a rule infantalization, and I think that I hopefully
Speaker 3: we got around some of that, and hopefully we really
Speaker 3: you know, talked about things that kids were struggling with.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of that, we talked a lot about the
Speaker 2: big change in focus between season one and season two,
Speaker 2: and we talked about the big shift in the writer's
Speaker 2: room as well, with April not coming back. So what
Speaker 2: do you remember about that time about the aging up
Speaker 2: between season one and season two?
Speaker 3: Well, I remember we also didn't we also lose Mincas.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah right, he was gone.
Speaker 3: Ye yeah, manas I missed because he was again he
Speaker 3: was part of this kind of younger world. And it
Speaker 3: was funny because I was talking to my son about
Speaker 3: this and he was he was asking me to like
Speaker 3: tell him about the show, and I, you know, I said,
Speaker 3: it started as really a kid show, and then as
Speaker 3: the kids grew up, the show kind of grew up
Speaker 3: with them. Yeah. I think that was that was sort
Speaker 3: of it was clear to us that you guys were
Speaker 3: growing up and we had to and we really had
Speaker 3: to deal with that moving forward. I mean, the one
Speaker 3: I remember was when you called up Danielle and You're like,
Speaker 3: I want to go by here.
Speaker 2: It was during the summer. Hey guys, so it's summer
Speaker 2: and I really want to cut my hair. And Michael's like, what.
Speaker 4: Don't you talk about?
Speaker 3: I know episode, I know that is live. That episode is,
Speaker 3: I will say, one of my favorite Hollywood memories and
Speaker 3: I to this day tell the story of it.
Speaker 2: Do you okay? I want to know from your perspective,
Speaker 2: because again, Russiamon, we all have our own. Did you
Speaker 2: feel like an enormous sense of responsibility behind me, like
Speaker 2: cutting off my hair? What was going on behind the scenes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so I felt an enormous sense of responsibility
Speaker 3: for you cutting off your hair because I remember, like
Speaker 3: I was the girl with like the crazy I always
Speaker 3: had the crazy long hair, and I remember that I
Speaker 3: decided that I wanted to get the Dorothy Hamill haircut.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it was. I looked like the late
Speaker 3: great Elvis Presley.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 3: So when you said you wanted to cut your hair.
Speaker 3: I had this sense like this was going to be
Speaker 3: more emotional than you realized. Yeah, you know, does that
Speaker 3: make sense.
Speaker 2: Totally that you were like, Oh, she thinks it's going
Speaker 2: to be no big deal, but there's a big sense
Speaker 2: of identity there that she doesn't realize.
Speaker 3: Is why it was so important for us to do
Speaker 3: the episode and not just have it be oh, she
Speaker 3: cut her hair, because it's like, it's it's huge, And
Speaker 3: I knew that all any mom who had ever had
Speaker 3: long hair was going to be like lued to the screen. Yes,
Speaker 3: and I remember it was it was it was only
Speaker 3: about you cutting your hair, very very peripherally, because it
Speaker 3: was about Corey and about his sense of who he
Speaker 3: was and what his looks were and how he presented
Speaker 3: to the world. And you grabbing your hair and in
Speaker 3: the bathroom and just hugging it out to prove to
Speaker 3: him that that your physical being was not your internal being,
Speaker 3: that like the person you were was not a function
Speaker 3: of how you looked.
Speaker 2: Right, And then of course she proves him wrong because
Speaker 2: she immediately becomes a totally changes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, the whole total meltdown, but that but eventually
Speaker 3: it comes around, right, so I remember you having literally
Speaker 3: before you you grabbed your hair, you grabbed the scissors,
Speaker 3: and you melt it down. I remember we stopped taping.
Speaker 3: Do you remember that?
Speaker 2: No, Oh, but I do. I do remember that. It
Speaker 2: was a real stop and start. There was the you're
Speaker 2: you know, you're gonna grab your hair and you're gonna
Speaker 2: cut your hair, and then and and we'll let you
Speaker 2: know when you can actually do it. And in the
Speaker 2: between times Jeff McCracken would yell stop or Michael would
Speaker 2: yell stop because we could only cut my hair like
Speaker 2: one good yell cut which and then the way I
Speaker 2: was gonna get to go and finish it was just
Speaker 2: they weren't gonna yell anything. And so I was like,
Speaker 2: I even remember then when nobody yelled anything. I was like,
Speaker 2: I remember crying that.
Speaker 1: Day, but I don't why. I don't remember you crying.
Speaker 1: That's what That's what I thought. You were crying because
Speaker 1: it was taking so long. You were getting yelled at.
Speaker 1: I feel like you were getting yelled at.
Speaker 2: I was getting yelled at. I remember getting yelled at.
Speaker 1: It wasn't because you've cut your hair. I think you
Speaker 1: wanted to cut your.
Speaker 2: Hair to cut my hair. It was just.
Speaker 4: At this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember you not I remember you not being
Speaker 3: sure that you could do it. I remember going back
Speaker 3: into the makeup area with you, and and I remember
Speaker 3: this is how I remember that. You were like, I
Speaker 3: can't do this, this is too much, it's overwhelming. I
Speaker 3: just can't. And we stopped, and I remember going in
Speaker 3: And I don't know if I was the only one
Speaker 3: who spoke to you. I can't imagine that I was
Speaker 3: the only one who spoke to you at this point,
Speaker 3: and like your mom would have been there talking to you. Yeah, probably,
Speaker 3: But I remember talking to you and trying to walk
Speaker 3: you through the lesson of the episode, which was its hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I promise you there was nothing I
Speaker 2: wanted more at the time than to cut my hair.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to cut my hair. I was so
Speaker 2: sick of my long hair. I felt like it's like
Speaker 2: a child with long hair. I wanted to cut it.
Speaker 2: I do remember that the actual filming of it was
Speaker 2: very stressful, and I remember Michael coming up to me,
Speaker 2: and probably because he had heard your story of you
Speaker 2: cutting your hair and you saying, you know, you look
Speaker 2: like Elvis. After Michael coming up to me, and going
Speaker 2: show me where you're gonna cut it, Show me where,
Speaker 2: show me where on your short Where are you gonna
Speaker 2: cut it? When you say you want short hair, where
Speaker 2: are you gonna do it? And being like I'm gonna
Speaker 2: cut it to hair and said no, you're gonna do
Speaker 2: it here, do it here, do it down here, and
Speaker 2: being like okay, and like grabbing my hair and figuring
Speaker 2: out where the scissors were going to go. And again
Speaker 2: it was you know, when I wasn't supposed to cut
Speaker 2: my hair, they would yell stop and somebody would come
Speaker 2: running in and it'd be like, okay, I didn't cut
Speaker 2: my hair. I didn't cut my hair. And we did
Speaker 2: that so many times. We had to make sure we
Speaker 2: had all the shots we needed. And then when I
Speaker 2: was supposed to go, just nobody said anything, and then
Speaker 2: I just took the scissors and started hacking away at it.
Speaker 2: And then that night I got to go home with
Speaker 2: half cut hair, and all I could remember was thinking, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm just so excited to have this haircut done tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I'll have this good professional haircut tomorrow, which was very,
Speaker 2: very exciting for me. Yeah, So how much when you're
Speaker 2: writing a script and you come up with an idea
Speaker 2: and the writer's room gets it and they start, you know,
Speaker 2: putting it all together. How much detail goes into a
Speaker 2: script and how much of the thought that like we've
Speaker 2: heard from, you know, when we would sit in note
Speaker 2: sessions and Michael would tell us about this is really
Speaker 2: what this is about and it's about this and all
Speaker 2: the different layers. How much of that is talked about
Speaker 2: in the writer's room while you're putting together the script.
Speaker 3: Okay, so there's there's a few processes to putting together
Speaker 3: this script. So there's there's sort of this initial germ
Speaker 3: of an idea, and sometimes the germ of an idea
Speaker 3: is generated by the writer and sometimes by the room,
Speaker 3: and if it's generated by the room, it gets assigned
Speaker 3: to somebody. If it's generated by the writer, you usually
Speaker 3: get to hang on to that germ of an idea
Speaker 3: and kind of go with it. Right, So you have
Speaker 3: the germ of the idea, you sort of lay out
Speaker 3: the the react structure and the you know, the basic
Speaker 3: movement and kind of what it's about, and then the
Speaker 3: writer goes home and writes the script.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all on their own.
Speaker 3: And then you come back and then they rip your
Speaker 3: baby to pieces and like bring ands dining in and
Speaker 3: giving it a electro shock, and yeah, yeah, Michael was
Speaker 3: notorious for that because I remember, and it was all
Speaker 3: always the same. I love the Manta death, but it
Speaker 3: was always the same. He would I would come in
Speaker 3: and he would tell me what an amazing job I
Speaker 3: had done and how much he loved the script, and
Speaker 3: then he would put it up on the screen and
Speaker 3: erase yep, erase it, and then we would start again.
Speaker 3: Why did I go out? Like why did I?
Speaker 2: Hey, why did I do that?
Speaker 3: Why did I do that?
Speaker 6: Why did I do it?
Speaker 3: But I will tell you what I really admire about Michael,
Speaker 3: and what I really admired about the other guys I
Speaker 3: worked for, which was not an industry standard, was he'd
Speaker 3: never put his name on.
Speaker 2: Scripts, right, Yeah, sure, he never.
Speaker 3: Put He did so much work and so much writing,
Speaker 3: and he never put his name on scripts. And as
Speaker 3: you know now from all those little green envelopes that
Speaker 3: come to you, there's a financial cost to that, right,
Speaker 3: He never ever ever did it. And I remember when
Speaker 3: I went on and I did Lizzie and I did
Speaker 3: other things, same thing. I refuse to do it. I
Speaker 3: just I am not putting my name. I don't care
Speaker 3: how much work I put into this. I'm this is
Speaker 3: for the writers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like a political speech writer, where it's you know,
Speaker 5: you're never going to take credit for any of the
Speaker 5: speeches that any of the presidents or senators or anything.
Speaker 3: A lot of but a lot of people did there.
Speaker 3: There were other there were other people out there who did.
Speaker 3: And I always really admired Michael that he didn't.
Speaker 5: Now, I know you said you're not going to violate
Speaker 5: the sanctity of the writer's room, and I totally respect that.
Speaker 7: I do.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: Just curiously though, because we've heard a lot about kind
Speaker 5: of season one, the split that was in the room,
Speaker 5: because it was like team Michael and team April.
Speaker 3: I mean all the way. I loathed April Kelly really,
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I loathe that woman.
Speaker 2: Why she was.
Speaker 3: She was not a woman's woman is perhaps the best
Speaker 3: way to put it. Like you would have thought that
Speaker 3: going into the writer's room, I would have had an
Speaker 3: ally in the other woman in the room. She really
Speaker 3: she hated me from the jump. She hated me from
Speaker 3: the jump because Michael liked me and thought I was talented,
Speaker 3: and she found she was one of those zero sum
Speaker 3: people that there's a limited amount of talent and success
Speaker 3: in the world and anyone who had any of it
Speaker 3: was taking it out of her pocket. Hm.
Speaker 4: Wow, okay, yeah, I have.
Speaker 3: I have. There are very few people I don't have
Speaker 3: anything nice to say about. She's one of them.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, hey, we're trying to get because again we're
Speaker 5: not there. We're kids were not in the writer's room.
Speaker 5: We have no idea the dynamic that's happening there. So
Speaker 5: as adults, we're just trying to get as many stories
Speaker 5: as we can and piece everything together. So for the
Speaker 5: most part, we're you know, people April did not want
Speaker 5: to come on but had a kind of read a
Speaker 5: statement on the air. But we've had other people on
Speaker 5: that were quote unquote team April, and then we've had
Speaker 5: people on that we're team Michael. And again, one of
Speaker 5: the things that we always say that was such a
Speaker 5: positive experience for us is we were completely kept out
Speaker 5: of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want you to see mom and dad finding.
Speaker 5: Right exactly, And and that was to the benefit of
Speaker 5: the adults that were around us. There's a lot of
Speaker 5: things that the adults did that weren't great, but that
Speaker 5: was one thing that was phenomenal is they made sure
Speaker 5: that that didn't spill onto the set. We didn't know
Speaker 5: any of it was going on, so we're kind of
Speaker 5: piecing these stories together as we go, and and it's
Speaker 5: it's interesting because some people will come on and say,
Speaker 5: I'm not going to talk about anything that happened in
Speaker 5: the writer's room, and again I completely and totally respect that,
Speaker 5: And then some people will come on and give us
Speaker 5: little nuggets, and then other people will come on and say, like,
Speaker 5: I hated that person. So we're just trying to get
Speaker 5: a glimpse into what the room was like.
Speaker 4: Frankly, So it's it's really.
Speaker 1: We'll never know because so many different perspectives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's interesting because I guess what I was
Speaker 3: saying about. Like with Michael, I always felt like he
Speaker 3: really liked me and liked my work and wanted me
Speaker 3: involved and was and was like really there to to
Speaker 3: incubate talent and to and to get the most out
Speaker 3: of a person. I found very much the opposite from April.
Speaker 3: I found that that she was the one who was
Speaker 3: going to flat out ignore me, flat out not listen
Speaker 3: to anything I had to say, scorn me, mock me.
Speaker 3: I mean like, yeah, okay, she had two writers that
Speaker 3: were hers can Kudah and was the other woman was
Speaker 3: a wasn't even a writer.
Speaker 2: She was our writers assistance, Yeah, writer assistant.
Speaker 3: But she insisted on her getting a script. I think.
Speaker 4: Jeanette.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those were her two people. Those were Jeanette.
Speaker 4: Jeanette came on the pod and and and kind of.
Speaker 2: Was wrote and her scripts were both great.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean she had her scripts were wonderful in
Speaker 5: season one, and we we liked them so much that
Speaker 5: we were like, we have to track her down. And
Speaker 5: she gave us one perspective, frankly, of what it was
Speaker 5: like to be in the writer's room and it was
Speaker 5: very much team April. So you know, we want to
Speaker 5: make sure that we're as balanced and fair as we
Speaker 5: can be.
Speaker 3: And I can really, I can really really see that
Speaker 3: because it is so hard to get a break and
Speaker 3: for and April really did put herself out for these two.
Speaker 3: April really really they were absolutely her hires, her people.
Speaker 3: She asked care of.
Speaker 2: Them, and so was Bill Lawrence, who was another person
Speaker 2: she was really fighting to, you know, get a script,
Speaker 2: and then he pitched us back and it got through Yeah,
Speaker 2: what are your memories of us as kids? Like, how
Speaker 2: did you guys, how did you specifically see us?
Speaker 3: Well, I will say, I just you know, I don't
Speaker 3: feel like I got to spend an enormous amount of
Speaker 3: time with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I I felt like all the time I spent with
Speaker 3: you was kind of working time. But when I did
Speaker 3: get a chance to be with you outside of that,
Speaker 3: I was always so proud. I always felt like you
Speaker 3: guys were such good kids with such good values. I
Speaker 3: remember writer, when you got your first paycheck, you bought books. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you bought beautiful, beautiful, beautiful books. And I'm like, these
Speaker 3: are these are wonderful kids. And I really felt like
Speaker 3: Michael was really a family man and he really did
Speaker 3: try to keep a respectful, family oriented set.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I really admired that. I really admired that, and I
Speaker 3: and when I went on, that was like important to
Speaker 3: me to like, it's got to be a good family set.
Speaker 2: What who are some of your favorite guest stars that
Speaker 2: we had over the years. I mean we had Brittany Murphy,
Speaker 2: Tony Quinn obviously, who was there for all of second season, Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, an a third season also Adam Scott like,
Speaker 2: did you have any favorite guest stars? Was it Trick
Speaker 2: one of the Yeah, one of the guitarists.
Speaker 4: The guitarist from Chick was there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, that was yeah, that was like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 4: That was tongues though he was I think he was.
Speaker 4: Was he one of the tongues?
Speaker 2: He was one of the tongues?
Speaker 4: Okay, he was one of the tongues.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and you worked with Sherman a bunch too, because
Speaker 1: if you went on to You Wish, that was basically YouTube, right.
Speaker 3: You Wish was like, I remember when we finished You Wish,
Speaker 3: my Nina Bargell, I don't know who was my assistant
Speaker 3: and who I took on to be a writer on
Speaker 3: Lizzie she as She came to me with all the
Speaker 3: scripts for You Wish, and she asked what should I
Speaker 3: do with them? And I said, hang on to them
Speaker 3: and if I ever get like two full of myself,
Speaker 3: just bust out these scripts and sholm to me.
Speaker 1: So that was not a great experienced experience. Apparently it was.
Speaker 3: It was so interesting, it was like it was surreal.
Speaker 3: It was absolutely surreal because you know, we had created
Speaker 3: this show with a genie who could do anything. So
Speaker 3: then you had to come up with all the reasons
Speaker 3: why the genie couldn't just solve every problem with like
Speaker 3: the snack.
Speaker 6: Fingers.
Speaker 3: And we and then we kind of a lot of
Speaker 3: times we went down the uh I dream of Genie road,
Speaker 3: which was, you know, the major told her that she
Speaker 3: can't use her right. So but we'd switched the sexes,
Speaker 3: so the we had a female mom and then the
Speaker 3: male Genie. So the mom just came off as the
Speaker 3: depth of all fun. You must not ever do any
Speaker 3: fun right, and it was. And then we spent more
Speaker 3: money on that than we were so insanely over budget
Speaker 3: on that. But I will say that I was the
Speaker 3: one who pitched that he lived in Barbie's dream house,
Speaker 3: which I felt was prescient.
Speaker 2: Huh, there you go.
Speaker 3: I'm like, we are going to build Barbie's dreamhouse and
Speaker 3: that is where the genie is going to live.
Speaker 2: I love that. Well, you left us and you went
Speaker 2: on too EP and scored two Emmy nominations for Lizzie McGuire.
Speaker 2: So what was that experience? Like? Tell us everything about
Speaker 2: being on Lizzie McGuire.
Speaker 3: I loved it. It was the same sort. It was interesting.
Speaker 3: I came in right after the pilot, and the woman
Speaker 3: who had written the pilot got had written two pilots
Speaker 3: that year, one with Gena Davis, and she decided to
Speaker 3: go do the Gena Davis pilot. And Disney asked me
Speaker 3: if I wanted to take over this little show on
Speaker 3: the Disney Channel, and I'm like, absolutely, that sounds like,
Speaker 3: you know, let me come in look at it. And
Speaker 3: it was kind of a train wreck, and I rewrote
Speaker 3: it and reshot it, and we were filming over in
Speaker 3: Hollywood and Disney was over in Burbank. And because it
Speaker 3: was like such this little crappy thing, nobody really wanted
Speaker 3: to drive. So I kind of got to do my
Speaker 3: own thing. And it was really, really, really fun. I
Speaker 3: got to be my own little vision and I just
Speaker 3: loved every minute of it. But at the end, there was,
Speaker 3: you know, there was a certain amount of infighting and
Speaker 3: Hillary really wanted to go on and have a movie career,
Speaker 3: and she forced Disney to cancel the series, which kind
Speaker 3: of broke my heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so how long did it last?
Speaker 3: We were only on for two seasons, and of the
Speaker 3: second season, we went and we did the Lizzie McGuire movie,
Speaker 3: which I did Dector and Strauss great. Brought in Dector
Speaker 3: and Stress to rewrite me because they were like, oh like, well,
Speaker 3: we're going to bringing people to rewrite you. And I'm
Speaker 3: like who, and they said, Doctor and Strauss. I'm like, yes,
Speaker 3: bring them, this is going to be perfect. So we
Speaker 3: got together and did a writer's room and redid it
Speaker 3: and it was. It was the most awesome experience being
Speaker 3: back with those guys. But in order to agree to
Speaker 3: do the movie, she insisted that the series be canceled.
Speaker 3: She wouldn't do the movie unless they canceled the series.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was kind of par for the course at
Speaker 5: the time there where it was it was Miley Cyrus
Speaker 5: and everybody that were kind of wanted to break out of.
Speaker 4: The Disney show.
Speaker 5: So they went and did you know, covers of magazines
Speaker 5: or something where it was, you know, try to be
Speaker 5: provocative in some way to get Disney to let them go.
Speaker 4: So yeah, interesting time.
Speaker 1: Well, back then Disney Channel just didn't It was you know,
Speaker 1: it was like there was Network and then there was
Speaker 1: Disney Channel. And also just even being on a kids show,
Speaker 1: you know, like it was always there was it was
Speaker 1: hard to move out of any of those.
Speaker 5: Realms and if we thought we were on a kid show,
Speaker 5: if you were on a Disney Channel show, you were
Speaker 5: like exact.
Speaker 1: And the budgets, I mean, Disney Is just notoriously did
Speaker 1: not spend money on their shows either, you know, like
Speaker 1: Disney Channel shows would just have no budget compared to
Speaker 1: a network show.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, looking back now thirty years later, as a name
Speaker 2: that is just so ingrained with Boy Meets World from
Speaker 2: the start, what are your thoughts on Boy Meets World today?
Speaker 2: Are you shocked to see that it still resonates all
Speaker 2: these years later despite at the time it being a
Speaker 2: mid level hit.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely not, because there's something so essentially good about it.
Speaker 3: And it really was a show designed for a family
Speaker 3: to watch together. It was really a TGII show. I
Speaker 3: tried to put in enough humor for adults to watch
Speaker 3: and kids to enjoy and never have a moment when
Speaker 3: the parents would be remotely concerned about what they were
Speaker 3: going to see. And so I and honestly I miss it.
Speaker 2: Obviously. W GA is on strike. But what are you
Speaker 2: doing now or are you are? Do you consider yourself
Speaker 2: to be retired semi retired? Would you? Would you? What
Speaker 2: do you want? What do you want to do now?
Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh, what do I want to do? Now?
Speaker 3: I'm doing I'm doing some charity work. I my mom
Speaker 3: and I just my mom is still a lot ninety
Speaker 3: years old.
Speaker 2: Has she has she forgiven you for not being a poet?
Speaker 3: No? He literally still harps on it, literally to this day,
Speaker 3: harps on it no matter what.
Speaker 7: Come on.
Speaker 3: I she and I just bought a vet clinic in
Speaker 3: Barstow to offer low cost veterinaries services to the high
Speaker 3: desert community.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great, Wow, that's wonderful.
Speaker 3: That is charity work. And then my college roommate and
Speaker 3: I are just finishing up a novel. My college roommate
Speaker 3: she was also became like kind of famous in her
Speaker 3: own right. She wrote Dying Young, the Julia Roberts movie
Speaker 3: in a movie, so she was sort of a big novelist.
Speaker 3: So we decided to sit down and write and oh,
Speaker 3: my god, this is like, this is crazy. You guys
Speaker 3: don't even know this about me. My great grandmother was
Speaker 3: a serial killer.
Speaker 4: This is.
Speaker 2: How do we not start with that?
Speaker 1: Always lead with serial killer grandma?
Speaker 3: Now you have to have me back, right.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: It was a serial killer. And my thought was like, not, like,
Speaker 3: how do you wind up like kind of doing that? Right?
Speaker 2: How do you get into that sort of work?
Speaker 3: Thank you exactly. So I'm like, there's a story there.
Speaker 2: And so that's what you're writing a novel about. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: well it was nice, docu. It was great to see you.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, can you give us the cliff notes version
Speaker 1: of who this person was and what she did?
Speaker 2: Can we get a little bit about her?
Speaker 3: Okay? So she she We have very long generations in
Speaker 3: my family. We take a long time to like get traction.
Speaker 3: So this was She finally died in Miami in the fifties,
Speaker 3: swathed in jewels and furs.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love it. That's how I want to go.
Speaker 3: Uncaught, Like nobody ever caught her. Seven seven husbands died,
Speaker 3: yes we according to family lore, only six of them
Speaker 3: were intentional.
Speaker 2: Oh, one died of natural causes.
Speaker 3: Well that's okay, right, six maybe, and then she would
Speaker 3: but she got away with it because well once she
Speaker 3: was staggeringly beautiful. So and she was. She was a
Speaker 3: beautiful young woman in a time when beautiful young women
Speaker 3: didn't have a lot of options. She had an unattractive
Speaker 3: cousin who was a mathematician who wrote the mathematics describing
Speaker 3: the surface tension of water. So great grandmother was not
Speaker 3: an idiot, but she was very had very few opportunities,
Speaker 3: and marrying well was a real opportunity.
Speaker 5: Most serial killers are actually pretty smart. Yeah, most most
Speaker 5: serial killers are actually pretty smart. If you look at
Speaker 5: some of the bundies and all the I don't know,
Speaker 5: I know that, but they're all okay, so.
Speaker 4: Well, that's going to be a fun book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sort of, I said it. I brought it, I
Speaker 3: modernized it somewhat. I brought it up into the San
Speaker 3: Fernando Valley in the eighties and sort of made it
Speaker 3: Pilma and Louise meets Casino Coo.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: And now is this?
Speaker 5: Did the serial killer aspect make its way into any
Speaker 5: you Wish episodes or you It's so weird.
Speaker 3: It was always such a it was it was like
Speaker 3: telling somebody that I had blue eyes. Like it was
Speaker 3: just it seems so obvious. I don't know why. I
Speaker 3: always thought it was obvious that people would kind of.
Speaker 2: That you had a serial killer killer grandmother.
Speaker 3: I don't know, like it just seemed like it wasn't
Speaker 3: worth mentioning.
Speaker 4: I always assumed.
Speaker 5: I always assumed you, yeah, someone I didn't want to
Speaker 5: bring it up because I figured everybody knew. But I
Speaker 5: was like, I bet her grandmother was a serial killer.
Speaker 4: I just figured, okay.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly. So I'm working on that. And then, you know,
Speaker 3: I have a fourteen year old son. Wow, I have
Speaker 3: a fourteen year old son who wanted to say hello?
Speaker 3: Did you want to say hello? So excited about.
Speaker 2: How are you? I? Well, what's your son's name?
Speaker 3: My name is Jeffrey, Hi, Jeffrey, Jeffrey. My mom's a legend.
Speaker 5: Did she just break the news to you that your
Speaker 5: great grandmother is a serial killer?
Speaker 3: Great great I was sitting on the chair over there.
Speaker 3: I was just like, oh my god, yeah to know that. No,
Speaker 3: we've been talking about this for years. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: See this is what I all the family dinners that
Speaker 2: I haven't been picking up on this.
Speaker 3: But it's just not like things are starting to make sense.
Speaker 3: But I would say that if you can't really go
Speaker 3: back to television and be a mom.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, but now he's you know, now he's a big guy.
Speaker 3: So now he's old enough, and I'm thinking about maybe
Speaker 3: dipping my toe back in just because it was. It
Speaker 3: was the great greatest. I mean, yeah, now, wasn't it
Speaker 3: the greatest?
Speaker 2: It was. It was a good time.
Speaker 3: Every day you got up and you were so excited
Speaker 3: about showing up, Like there was never a day that
Speaker 3: I didn't wake up thrilled to be going to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great, and.
Speaker 3: Just loving every minute of it, even when it was
Speaker 3: like stressful or annoying. I always knew it was amazing.
Speaker 3: I was always and that's what I was saying about,
Speaker 3: like that hit feeling like that.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Yeah, it was such a positive set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like we were always laughing. We
Speaker 1: were always having a good time.
Speaker 4: I wanted to go to work every day too.
Speaker 2: I was excited same, I couldn't wait. Well, Susan, thank
Speaker 2: you so much for coming on and sharing your experiences
Speaker 2: and your stories with us. It was so great to
Speaker 2: see you again.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yes, and when I finished my book,
Speaker 3: when I finished my Serial Killer book, I will come
Speaker 3: back and I will plug it with you.
Speaker 2: Yes, please, Well, we also want to have you come
Speaker 2: back when we eventually get to a recap one of
Speaker 2: your episodes. We'd love to have you come back and
Speaker 2: do a little recap with us and talk about all
Speaker 2: that when we get to it.
Speaker 3: I would love to do it.
Speaker 2: Talk to you guys later, another reunion in the books guys,
Speaker 2: thirty years, thirty years in the making.
Speaker 1: I think that I think the biggest issue that we
Speaker 1: face with memories with this podcast is Hollywood is a
Speaker 1: place of stories, and everyone not only loves to tell
Speaker 1: you know, everyone is a natural storyteller. If you're in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: whether you're your actor, you're a writer, you're a producer,
Speaker 1: you love stories and you love to tell stories. And
Speaker 1: so a side effect of that is that everyone creates
Speaker 1: stories while you're on set, while you're so it's like,
Speaker 1: so she had, you know, for instance, like the haircutting
Speaker 1: story right right, Like we all have our own version.
Speaker 1: But in reality, like what she's remembering is mostly her
Speaker 1: writing the script and which was the story of that,
Speaker 1: and she's transposed I think what she remembers you being
Speaker 1: upset that day, she's made it about the haircutting story,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's a story on a story and
Speaker 1: a story. So she's been able to tell a version
Speaker 1: of that, you know, as part of her career, part
Speaker 1: of her the writing experience she had. Whereas, of course
Speaker 1: you had a much more like visceral reaction to like
Speaker 1: grown men yelling at you while you're cutting your hair.
Speaker 1: That's when you were crying.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to cut your hair.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to cut my hair. And I was asked,
Speaker 2: could you please wait to write an episode about it?
Speaker 1: But she has thirty years of storytelling.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, she wrote her hair was very an
Speaker 2: emotional experience. So no matter what happened with what with
Speaker 2: the screaming, or why I could have been yelling somewhere,
Speaker 2: she would have thought. She doesn't know it, but she's
Speaker 2: also very emotional about her hair, like for her because
Speaker 2: that was her experience. And so what she has remembered
Speaker 2: from that is that I was so emotional about losing
Speaker 2: my hair.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode
Speaker 2: of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow our
Speaker 2: Instagram pod meets World Show. You can send us your
Speaker 2: emails pod meets World Show at gmail dot com. And
Speaker 2: we have merch.
Speaker 4: Turns out on merchandise. This is a serial killer.
Speaker 2: Oh what a surprise. Podmeetsworldshow dot com and we will
Speaker 2: see you all next time. Will send us out.
Speaker 4: We love you all. Pod dismissed.
Speaker 5: Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast produced and hosted
Speaker 5: by Danielle Fischel, Wilfredell and Ryder Strong Executive producers, Jensen
Speaker 5: Carp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo,
Speaker 5: producer and editor, Taras Sudbach, producer, Jackie Rodriguez, engineer and
Speaker 5: Boy Meets World superfan Easton Allen. Our theme song is
Speaker 5: by Kyle Morton of Typhoon and you can follow us
Speaker 5: on Instagram at Pod Meets World Show or email us
Speaker 5: at Podmeets Worldshow at gmail dot com.