July 18, 2024 • 56 mins
"Younger" and "The Walking Dead: World Beyond" star Nico Tortorella grew up in a hockey family but was bit by the acting bug at the age of nine and never looked back.
The actor, musician, and author joins Sophia for a candid chat about his struggles with fame and alcoholism, using creativity as an outlet, his new music, and his children's book inspired by fatherhood. Plus, he shares how his latest film, "The Mattachine Family," helped him cope with his family's own fertility struggles.
Sophia and Nico find common ground together as they open up about their respective journeys of self-discovery and coming out, and how each of them believes in using their platforms to advocate for others.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hello Whipsmarties.
Today's guest is an incredible multi hyphenet that I think
(00:22):
is not only fascinating as an artist, but fascinating and
courageous as a human. Today I'm joined by Nico Tortorella.
He is an actor, a musician, and an author. You
may know him from Darren Starr's hit series Younger, from
AMC's The Walking Dead, A World Beyond, or the incredible
(00:42):
Apple TV show City on Fire. Most recently, he appeared
in the indie film Matachin Family opposite Carl Lemons Hopkins
and Emily Hampshire, who we just love on this show.
Nico grew up both playing hockey and in the theater
in Chicago. We had an office a lot to talk
about with that theater scene that we both love so much,
(01:03):
and he's leaned into his artistry in the most inspiring way.
Not only has he become an advocate and a leader
in the LGBTQ community, but in finding himself in his voice.
He's also pursued so many other passions as an artist,
going from TV and film to writing. This spring, he's
releasing a children's book called All of It Is You,
(01:27):
about loving and honoring every part of yourself while creating
conversations around acceptance and self exploration. And he also, in
preparation for his first daughter with his longtime partner Bethanie Meyers,
started making music. He's made an incredible album called Born.
We will make sure to link to it in the stories,
(01:47):
which he wrote in advance of his daughter's birth, and
then realized he wanted her to be able to listen
to it anytime she pleased when she grew up. So
it is out for all of us to enjoy. And
I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Hello,
(02:13):
how are you? I'm great. There's like so much for
us to talk about today. We have so many things
going on. I love it before we jump into anyone
of the three projects that I know we have to
talk about. I actually really like to ask people to
rewind with me because I feel like, you know, audiences
(02:36):
meet you when you're doing a TV show or you've
you know, written a book, or you have a movie coming
out or something, and I'm always really curious to know
who these artists that I meet in the present were
as kids. You know, if you look back, like if
you could rewind the like the TVO to see Nico
at eight or nine, would you find, you know, an
(02:58):
artist and a creative? Where were you like a tiny
little athlete or you know, like who was that little kid?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I love that. Yeah, there's something about having children too
that demands you go back and look.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I wondered about that for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I'm experiencing my own childhood through her eyes right now,
which is a really cool thing. Eight or nine, I
was both. I was an athlete and I had found
the stage right about at that time. Really yeah. I
grew up in Chicago and everyone in my family was
a hockey player. We all grew up on the same
all my cousins. And that's just like what I was
(03:36):
made to do pretty much ride out the womb. I
was on the ice and I loved it. But it
was always a performance for me. It's like I would
score a goal and take my gloves off and throw
them in the audience and it was a show, right Yeah.
And then my mom made us audition for the Wizard
of Oz when we were right about eight or nine.
Just like children's theater local Spot cast as a munchkin
(03:58):
and a Flying Monkey, and the rest is kind of history.
Like the second I got on that stage, I just
knew that's what I was going to do for the
rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Wow. Yeah, So how did that then shape the rest
of your childhood and your hockey career and all of it.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, Well, in Chicago, I had like interesting access to
the stage, you know, and I got tapped into the
scene there pretty quickly, and I got an agent and
started auditioning a bunch for different productions, and I got
casts in a show called Over the Tavern, which kind
of hopped around a different a few different theaters in
(04:37):
the Chicagoland area for years, and I wound up being
in that show for almost four years. I played all
three brothers throughout the years. I like started playing the
youngest brother, and just as I got older, I kept
playing the older brother. And yeah, I mean I was
missing school every Wednesday for Matine's and h shows a week,
and you know, you know, being on stage that's a
(04:59):
whole other right, especially that young And I mean I
quickly quit playing sports after I fell on the stage.
Like I was playing soccer, I was playing hockey. And
I made it very clear to all of my coaches
that I was done, and yeah, that one way or
another got me to LA and that's how it all
(05:21):
worked out.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Wow. And so then was younger the first on camera
like big job or were? There were there things in between.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
There were a few other things. I got to LA
when I was nineteen. I went to business school at
Loyal in Marymount for a hot second, which was not
the right place for me, and I dropped out after
like six weeks. Honestly, I was running a raw food
restaurant in Santa Monica and I started modeling. I my
(05:53):
agent in Chicago hooked me up with a sister agency
in La CSD, and I started auditioning pretty quick and
I booked. I was testing for a bit for that
Nickelodeon boy band Big Time Rush. That was kind of
like the first big audition experience that I had in LA.
And then I got Making or Break It, which was
(06:16):
an ABC Family show about gymnastics. Cass is a recurring
on that show, and after we shot the pilot, I
got my first series regular on a CW show called
The Beautiful Life, which shot in New York City. So
I moved to New York when I was twenty. This
all happened very quickly when I started auditioning and we
(06:37):
shot a total of seven episodes. We got canceled after seven,
only three I think aired, and moved back to LA
And like within the year I was casting Scream four
and Younger kind of came a little bit later. It
was like two years after that. Yeah, I was twenty
six or twenty seven when I got Younger. It was
almost like a decade before that.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Isn't it funny they always say it takes a decade
of a coming overnight success.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It's still taking time two decades later, because you know.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
It's so wild. It's one of really the only careers
where like every time you finish a job, you start over.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah. It's uh, you have to just get used to. Yeah,
those those in between phases, the highs and lows. The
highs are like so good when they're there, and you know,
but the most exciting part of it is like you're
always one phone call away from an entirely different life, Yeah,
which like keeps me going, yeah, eail about a breakdown
(07:37):
or something like I can immediately imagine what my next
two years looks.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Like, Right, Yeah, isn't that interesting? And then but to
your point. You know, it's it's so amazing, but it
is also really tricky. I think people kind of forget
that to do this, it's not dissimilar to being an athlete,
like you're expected to pick up and go. You get traded,
you're moving in three days, you book a job, you're
moving to Canada, you're moving to Albuquerque, you're moving to Wilmington.
(08:06):
And I think it can be really hard to like
pick up, leave your whole family, you know, and just
you kind of get plucked and you're gone. And I
know you've you've been really open and vulnerable about like
some of that hardship. You know, you've talked about how
during the first season of Younger you were really struggling
with alcoholism and to be so young and to be
(08:30):
on that real sort of yo yo string of this career.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Do you.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Feel like part of how hard this can be, the
up and downs increased your propensity to struggle there or
do you think that was something you'd maybe been dealing
with for longer and the work schedule and the intensity
of the job helped you come to terms with the
fact that you probably needed to get so at that time.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, I think it was both. I mean I grew
up in a bar in Chicago, surrounded by alcohol and
in my blood for sure. And you know that when
you experienced that level of success at eighteen nineteen years
old in Los Angeles, that lifestyle is just thrown at you,
like you don't even have to think about it. Right,
(09:21):
You're at every event with an open bar, and there's
older folk that are feeding you all sorts of things, right, Like,
it's very easy to get wrapped up in that. The
breaks right ask for high levels of excitement. You just
like you're working all the time or you're not working
(09:42):
at all, and part of staying in in the scene
is going out. Especially at that I think it's different.
It seems to be different now just because of social media.
I look back at that decade of my life and
I'm so grateful that there were not camera phones and
(10:02):
social leads, because it was it was a whole other world.
But yeah, around twenty six twenty seven, I younger was
a very easy job for me, honestly, Like I you know,
it was number seven on the call. She worked like
a day or two a week. I was making good money.
I was living in New York City at that age,
(10:26):
that it like it was still socially acceptable to be
out all the time, right, And I once I started
drinking alone at home, I was like, well this, this
isn't going to end well. And there we're like a
couple instances. Thank god, it never really got in the
way of work. There were like a couple close calls,
but for the most part, like I kept things very separate.
(10:50):
But yeah, I just kind of woke up one morning
I was like that if I don't change this now, like,
I'm not going to survive, both like physically and emotionally.
I want way too much in my life to surrender
to this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, And is it scary to be publicly open about
that or do you feel like, because so many people
now are having more conversations about mental health and identity
and all of the sort of aspects of who we
are as people like you're more safe to do so.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's scary to be publicly
open about anything, really, you know. I mean I was
having a lot of these conversations ten years ago, and
I've found myself as of late, especially in fatherhood, retracting
some from just public discourse. I feel like I've said
it all at this point, like I really like just
(11:50):
caught myself wide open and shared so much of who
I am and who I love and you know how
I believe I fit into this world. And COVID hit
and we were all forced to just restructure, right, and
we were experiencing our own fertility journey and trying to
(12:14):
create life in a time when life seemed the most fragile,
and I just needed to to reclaim, you know, myself,
and I got media for a couple of years, like
I wasn't having any conversations, and yeah, I feel like
I've emerged as a completely different person in the last
(12:34):
few years, especially post daughter.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, how old is your daughter now?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Fifteen months?
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Oh my goodness, she's just like a little smush.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Is a smush, She's she's really something. We got another
one on the way. We were we're having another one
in October.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So congratulation. That's so exciting over here. Yeah, so was
your was your daughter part of the inspia for your
children's book?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, for sure. I wrote it while we were trying
to get pregnant, which is an arduous process, it can't,
you know, And I just like needed an outlet. I
needed to have this conversation with the spirit of a
child while I was attempting to channel and I came
(13:25):
up with this idea for all of that that really
like distilled this larger mantra of my life, that is,
all of it is you, which is this poetry book
that I wrote, that we are the mirror to the universe, right,
And I always knew I wanted to distill that down
to a children's version, like I saw it when I
wrote the poetry book. But it was it was a
(13:47):
way for me, like I said, to have a conversation
with her or him or whoever it was that I
was trying to talk to and like start teaching before
they were even born. You know. Yeah, children's are a
long process, why they yeah, yeah, yeah. It's way more
(14:07):
complicated than the other two books I had written because
the art is such a huge part of it too, right,
Like yeah, you know, there's less than one hundred words
in my children's book. But then you have to create
the entire universe.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Right and find an illustrator who you love, and what's
that like to meet with so many artists and try
to figure out who can draw the thing you are
imagining that doesn't yet exist.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
It's weird because you see their art before you meet
them for the most part, Like you're not having conversations
with these people. Like I was given like twenty samples
and it was like, Okay, pick five that you want
to talk to and three were only available, right, So,
like I kind of just knew when I saw the
art that that's who it was. She was also an
(14:58):
animator at Nickelodeon, and I had an idea of turning
into a cartoon at some point, so like that checked
a box immediately. And her name is Melissa, the artist
on the book, And I mean she really just like
took my ideas and ran with them and made the
book come to life in a way that like I
never even imagined.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, can you tell us the story of the book?
Let our audience know what it's about.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah. All of it is used about a kid named
Alive who is the entirety of the universe, and you
follow her in like a day of her life and
you get to experience how she relates to the world
in all aspects of herself. It's kind of this like
(15:47):
age old idea that you can be anything you want
when you grow up, lifts up on its head, that
you already are everything that exists in the universe, and
what does it mean to tap in to that level
of unfettered freedom?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
And now for our sponsors, do you think that that idea,
that spirit of unfettered freedom, that that notion that children
and really all of us should know that we are everything,
that we carry a piece of everything. It feels to
(16:26):
me like such an encouragement to include more rather than
to exclude or to you know, fall prey to these
really common ideas of binaries, whether they be about you know, love, gender,
what colors are for girls, what colors are for boys, yeah, race,
(16:47):
all of it. Do you think that that sort of
very like inclusive and spiritual awareness comes from, for you,
your own journey of continuing to expand your definition of
who you are who you love. Like to me, it
sounds so beautiful, but I would imagine that, as you said, like,
(17:09):
you've had to be so open and maybe you don't
always want to have to be like it does seem
like it's something that can be hard won sometimes.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, for sure. And I think it even started way
before me even realizing what any of this was. Really
As an actor, that's our job to tap into that
unfettered free right and to continue to be othered always, right,
(17:37):
And that's why I fell in love with it in
the beginning. I could just like, not that I needed
to escape myself at all. I had an amazing childhood,
and but I could experience more in a very short
amount of time as an actor, and so much of
my identity exploration and gender and sexual real is linked
(18:01):
to my ability to transform through art. It always has been.
It's about this limitless access, really, and I always knew that, like,
if I could experience more as a person, I could
(18:21):
deliver more as an actor. And I don't know if
that was always a conscious thought, sure it was there constantly.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Well, and that's why they say hindsight is twenty twenty, right,
because you can look back and you can see the
thread that goes through everything that maybe you didn't see
in real time, but when you look at the past
you can. And I think it's really fascinating, you know,
when we think about privilege and presentation and passing and
all of these things, Like I'm not gonna lie from
(18:53):
the vantage point I said as a woman, I think
it's very cool that a guy like you who presents
as like hyper masculine, you know, Chicago guy hockey player
is like, actually, I'm very gender fluid and I love
who I love And I'm like, wait what and not
to say, like I should like to think that I'm
(19:14):
not a person who really stereotypes, But I don't know.
If I, like bumped into you at a bar and
we didn't know each other, I'd be like that guy
is probably the most open, you know what I mean,
Like I might not have known that, And I think
I think there's something really powerful in your willingness to
be so frank about your own life, because I think
(19:37):
there's a lot more guys that look like you, that
feel like you then maybe admit that they feel like you.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a part of me that
thinks everyone has access to this sort of mentality. But
we do. We just we we all were taught to
limit ourselves.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, was it a strange thing, like thinking about just
the time line, you know, for you to start talking
publicly about that fluidity about And forgive me if I
don't know currently, but if you know you're talking about
at the time being bisexual, being you know, a person
(20:16):
who really can envision himself or feel you know, all
all sides of gender within himself, within themselves, like was
it was it a weird dynamic for you to be
having those conversations while you were playing this like hyper
masculine man or do you feel like because you were
(20:38):
playing that character, it was even more important for you
to have like frank conversations with people about like don't
judge a book by its cover.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I had this anchor that was this character Josh that
I was known around the world. It's like super straight,
say his wife dude, right that like had a shit
together and was like dating older women and was just cool. Right,
this like Brooklyn and a lot of me exploring my
(21:08):
sexuality is tied to getting sober, right, Like, I had
had experiences before I got sober, but I mean the
first like real relationship with a man happened after I
got sober. And I had a couple serious relationships at
the beginning, and I did a play where I was
(21:29):
playing this like really manic character, and I just like
I knew that I needed to start having this conversation
because people were starting to like speculate, right, and I
wanted to get ahead of it. I had to get
ahead of it.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I know that feeling half right, and I.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Had a pot I like started a podcast. My buddy
was launching a podcast network, and I was just like
fuck it, Like if I'm going to do this, I'm
going to go all the way out and just like
I'm having these conversations privately, let's just grab some microphones
and let's just start like exploring all of this in
real time with everybody else. Like I was just putting
myself with a microphone and everybody else was learning it
(22:16):
at the same time that I was. Yeah, which was
really cool, Like in hindsight, yes, very cool. Would I
do that in the same way now? Probably not right, Yeah,
but the I mean going going back to this unfettered freedom.
It was just like I was able to say and
(22:36):
do whatever I wanted and nobody could say anything otherwise.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
It's really special.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I think it's a really interesting thing though, like the
way the world will speculate, like people will really take
your self discovery from you if you're not careful, and
so I think it's really cool that, unlike what happens
to so many of us, like you were able to
get ahead of it. I totally get that. Now you're
(23:07):
like maybe I wouldn't have had all sixteen of those
conversations in public, Like maybe I would have just had
eleven of them. But like it really is brave. It's
really really brave, and like I guess it's part of
the reason that, you know, I of course I want
to ask, like I think it's beautiful and I'm curious,
and I also don't want to. I don't want to
(23:27):
force you to like go back and talk about things
you don't want to talk about anymore.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Well, no, it's all good. I mean, I'm not trying
to like avoid these conversations at all. You know. I
enjoy talking about how I got here for sure. Yeah,
especially with someone that has experienced similar things, you know.
I mean I was I was reading your Glamour piece
before we started, and how long in between, like from
(23:55):
things starting to leak out to you deciding you were
going to write this piece, how long was that and
what made you make that decision?
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Ultimately, I mean what made me make the decision was
knowing that we'd gotten into like a post fact vacuum.
So I was like, what I'm going to do is
sit and just sit and wait. But eventually, what I'm
going to do is clarify very firmly, bit gently what's
(24:29):
real because it matters to me. I didn't appreciate it personally,
but what really frightened me in terms of the public
nature of it was this is so vitriolic and so
violent and so ugly, Like, what's this going to do
to it? Like a young queer girl in Ohio or
(24:50):
Alabama who sees what the internet is doing to people
who she perceives to have a lot more power than her, like,
you can always take your power back, and that was
part of what felt really important to me, was like
I'm going to take my power back, and I'm actually
going to stand up and say the purest and most
special thing that's ever happened to me in my life
(25:11):
has happened to me, and you've treated it like the
ugliest because you're looking at optics and not reality. You're
looking at a narrative you bought into based on the
Internet and not the.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Facts, and like from a place of love, Yeah, really
hard for anybody else to experience the love that exists
between right, Yeah, especially behind closed doors.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
That's the thing to finally be, to finally be so
loved and not to be like trying so hard, like
because when it works, you don't have to try. And
I know that sounds really basic, but like I just
didn't know that I had always had to try so hard,
and I'd always heard that phrase like marriage is hard,
(26:01):
relationships are hard. You have to do the work, and
like the work is supposed to feel constructive, not torturous.
And that's a big life lesson. And I want other
people like, look, if I didn't do this job, would
I talk about any of this publicly? No, also because
nobody would give as But it's like, what I'm not
going to let them do is take it from me,
(26:24):
make make money off of it with like clickbait and grossness,
and then turn around and be like, well you didn't
do it and you didn't say it. And it's like, okay, well,
I'm just gonna I'm going to continue to come back
to like love and power. I'm going to root in
truth and you can come or not. But the reason
it feels important for me to do that with whatever
(26:45):
relative platform I have is because there's kids out there
who don't have platforms at all, who are so scared
to be who they are, and I just want them
to know I don't care if you're fourteen or forty one,
Like you can choose yourself and that feels important, and
like that's why I feel like it's such a cool
thing that you, particularly as a man, we're willing to
(27:10):
subvert like stereotype and narrative and all of it. You know,
I think that that's very brave, and I really like,
I really commend you for that.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Well, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I mean when I started the podcast, I would say
all the time, like, this is for the kids, this
isn't for me. You totally understand that sentiment from an
outside perspective. Yet it does seem very selfish to be
having these conversations yeah, publicly, but like in the truest
form it felt so selfless. Yeah, like it wasn't about me.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Well, and that's the thing. I think what people who
don't do this job don't understand is that we don't
actually have a choice in the public discourse, right, And
like I've noticed that all the bots on Instagram, on
every pride, they're like, ugh, what narcissists, No one cares
who you. This is so narcissistic. Why do you have
(28:06):
to make And I'm like, oh wow, so the bots
are being activated to call queer people narcissists during Pride, okay,
but it's like nobody's out here trying to make announcements.
People are just navigating public life. And if it's public,
you can either be you can either be dragged by
it or you can drive it. And I think we'd
(28:27):
all rather drive than be dragged. And now a word
from our sponsors that I really enjoy and I think
you will too.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Can I ask you another question? Sure, in this new
version of yourself and post you know, post glamor, has
the desire for art or the characters that you play
has that shifted at all? Do you want to be
telling different stories? Well?
Speaker 1 (28:57):
It's so interesting, Like I've always played queer women on
tea yeah yeah, yeah, like for twenty years. Anytime I
get the chance, I do it. And I've always been
really vocal about like I would never play a character
I couldn't represent interesting. But what was really interesting for
me in my twenties was being told by like elder
queers that I respect so much, like well, you're not
(29:18):
gay enough to say you're bye right, And I was
kind of like, oh, well, like what I don't want
to do is hurt the community.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Ever, which is the hardest thing to navigate.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
It's really hard if the seesaw is really hard.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
The gay keeping in this community is so real. It's
ultimately why I retract it, because like I just felt like,
it doesn't matter what I do or what I say,
I will never make all of these people happy.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, well you know what I will say to that,
my darling, is like, welcome to being a woman, because
it's the same you're two thing. You're too fat, you're
too rich, you're too poor, you're too ambitious, you're fucking lazy,
like you run a company. How dare you you're a
trad wife? How dare you you're a mother? Lazy, you
don't have children, frigid bitch Like it's always something, And
(30:03):
so it's really easy to it's really interesting, not easy,
interesting to see the way that magnifies itself and like
shape shifts in queerness because what it really like rings
the bell for me on is any group of people
who has been othered will very often have a subconscious
desire to other another group to save themselves. And I
(30:26):
think that's tribalistic. I think that's human nature. But I
think it's also twenty twenty four, and we're supposed to
be more evolved than like falling prey to our own
lizard brains. But it's like when you see homophobia in
communities of color, or you see really intense sexism in
certain geographical cultures, or you know, you see lesbians eating
(30:50):
their own because you know, they don't really know what's
going on in people's lives. Like there is so much
pain and trauma in communities that have been marginalized that
sometimes I don't think they see when they are projecting
that pain onto other marginalized people. So you see stay
at home moms judging career moms and vice versa. You
(31:12):
see the elder gays judging the bisexual kids. You see
whatever it is. And I think what it really is
is like I have this pain that's built up and
I don't know where to put it, and suddenly like
there's a bottleneck and it's all going to shoot through there.
And you know, maybe that's because we don't have enough
mental health support in our country, or maybe that's because
(31:34):
we're not really willing to like take enough accountability and
do enough self inventory to say like, ooh, that instinct
I have like, actually, is my that I need to
deal with myself? Like I need to not make this
someone else's problem.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, have you had the people language folk who are
very specific about bisexual verse pain sexual verse question? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Oh yeah. Somebody like send me a tweet that was like,
I am so disappointed in you. You're calling yourself queer
just say you're bisexual. And I was like, well it
live what I like? Sorry, what the.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Language winds up hurting?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
The language policing is so weird.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
I'm in this interesting place now because like I.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Was going to ask you this because you married a woman,
So like, are are there all these people that are like, see,
it was a phase totally totally, Oh, it's so annoying unless.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
You they are seeing me publicly in a relationship with yeah,
a man or a gender variant person, Like I am
not a legitimate queer person anymore.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
But by the way, I get it because again, like
I'm I'm sharing things with you about like things I've
known about my identity for over twenty years, and even
like when I finally asked my partner out, which like
to be clear, our friends were like trying to set
her up with someone and I was like if she's
ready to date, she's going on a date with me,
like sorry, like no way, and people were like wait
(33:02):
what And she even said to me, she was like
hold the phone, like I always thought you were straight,
and I was like, I always thought you were happy,
but like we're both in single what are we doing?
And you know it's we were in cackling because I
was like, yeah, dude, I never looked at you as
an option and she was like I never looked at
you as an option. And it's like, well, because we
(33:23):
weren't options, and like, I don't know. I just most
at least most women I know, like are not out
trying to finaggle around their relationships, or I guess I
should say like most monogamous women I know people who
are Poulie obviously are like doing what they're doing because
they're communicating about that. But like, it is a very
(33:43):
interesting thing because even a lot of the queer women
in my life were like, oh, we just like we
knew you were like an ally and like we maybe wondered,
like you know, when we saw like this TV show
or this movie you've done or like whatever, we were like, hmmm,
he doesn't really look like acting, but like we didn't
really know. And I was like, wow, we all we
(34:03):
all do it, like even in our friend groups. We
make assumptions. So I can't imagine for you, as someone
who's spoken so openly about fluidity and identity as the
man you physically present as, to be married to a woman, Like,
I can't imagine the weird blowback you get.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It's a weird thing, you know. I mean also, just
like looking at Pride and the amount of money that
I was making from campaigns for X amount of years
and like now I'm married a woman, all that just
completely goes away. Not to say that that's like what
Pride is, but like it it's been a very strange transition. Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Sure, And how long have you and Bethany been married?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Six years? We're going our seventh. We've known each other
at nineteen yeah, I mean we started dating in college.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Stop it, you've been on and off for nineteen years? Okay,
And then how did you guys decide like, oh, no,
we're really going to do this. We're going to be together,
be together and start a family. And like, what tips
that when you've sort of been in and out of
a relationship with someone for so long.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, and we grew up queer side by side, like
we both started started dating the same sex pretty much
like within a year. And wow, yeah, I mean she's
my best friend and has been forever, you know. Yeah,
and uh, we always got I mean, obviously we always
(35:35):
got in the way of our other relationships that we
had because nobody really knew like what we were to
each other. Right at the end of the day. We
were always each other's emergency contact, no matter we're serious
our other relationships where I'm.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Sure that caused jealousy and other relations for.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Sure for sure, But like years we weren't sleeping together, right,
uh huh. We went to Peru and did a bunch
of yaguasca and had a pretty intense physical experience at
this place beyond the psychoactive experience, and came out of
(36:14):
the jungle and just I looked at her and I said,
we're getting married. Huh. And that was that. Wow, there's
a lot more to the story, but I vet there is.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I'm like, we need to like have a glass of
wine and talk about Well, I'll have a glass of
wine and I'll bring you a sparkling water. I'll talk
about Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's deeply cool. Does that
sort of thing then do you get that like, oh,
this was very destined to be feeling after that sort
of journey And then you're like, oh, of course we
(36:46):
were always each other's emergency contacts. Well, of course we
were maybe like not ready to see how apparent our
real connection was for so long.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
I think we both always knew. Honestly, we just gave
each other the space to explore our own individuals and
like champion each other.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
You know, Yeah, do you think that also that like
that space and that way that you've been so consistent,
do you think that helps you both like as the
humans and the artists that you are, Because I think about, like,
you know, even the movie that you just had come
out on Prime and you know how you you play
(37:29):
one half of this gay couple. Who is you know,
going through this journey about being a foster parent and
then are we going to be you know, parents post
that that foster child experience and like what are your
visions for your future? And I don't know, I feel
like you've probably had to have versions of that with
(37:51):
your partner, like what is our desire for our future?
Et cetera et cetera.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, over and over.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
The journey almost feels like a movie.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah, it should be at some point. That movie came
at a very interesting time. It was post COVID. We
were a year into our own fertility journey and nothing
was working and we couldn't figure out why, which is
almost more frustrating. And we always knew we were going
(38:21):
to have kids, and we were convinced the second we
started trying it would just happen, like this is how
it goes right, And that just was and you know,
a year into the journey, this script came across my desk,
so to speak, and it was about a gay relationship.
(38:41):
But I saw so much of my own experience on
these pages and at home, I was the stable one
in our infertility Bethany was able to experience the emotional
up people in real time and I needed to hold
down the floor, right And I got the script, and
(39:01):
I mean it was a no brainer. I knew I
needed to play this role and I got to set
and I was able to experience the heartache in a
way that I just wasn't at home. Like there was
not a whole lot of acting that went into this movie.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
That's so cathartic.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
God, you know when those jobs commented just as like
there is an absolute reason this is here right now. Yeah,
you did channel so much of myself through this character.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah, that feels like your Iah Oscar journey. You're just like,
this is very divine, what is happening?
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Totally totally and you just got to cry and cry
and like wow it it prepared me to be a
father for sure.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Oh my god, that's so beautiful. Okay, can you can
you give our listeners at home? Obviously I've I've read
all of the things in preparation for today, but will
you give our listeners at home a little overview of
what the movie is, like you like you did for
your kid's book.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, for sure. The Managing Family is by Andy Ballentine
and written by his husband Danny Valentine, and it is
a love letter to their own experience as queer parents
and bringing life into the world. And it is the
story of Thomas and Oscar, who live in Los Angeles.
Thomas is a photographer. Oscar is an actor who had
(40:21):
a troubled outing in his own career early on. I've
been trying to figure out his life after that. And
they have a foster kid early on in the film
that they've spent a couple of years with, and he
winds up going back to his birth mother, which is
an incredible thing, right, But Thomas my character is kind
(40:43):
of left with this, well what now and who am
I without child? And the film tracks really his journey
to make the decision whether or not he wants to
be a parent, and Oscar's pretty dead set on not
(41:09):
bringing another child into the mix. His acting career is
taking off, He's got all of these new opportunities, and
they have to make a decision whether they're going to
choose each other or choose themselves and their own dreams
and desires. And you know, that is something that made
a lot of sense to me and my past relationship
(41:32):
or my current relationship, all the different versions of our relationship. Yeah,
And it's just it's this beautiful. You see a lot
of different queer families in such a short amount of time,
which is not something that we've really seen in film
and television. In a way I read the script, I
was like, how has this movie not been made yet?
(41:55):
Why to go find a comp of just like two
gay dads and their child, And it just like does
it really, it just doesn't exist. I know, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
I mean when you think about the fact that Love
Simon was the first high school story or rom com
to start a gay character, and it came out in
I think twenty fifteen, Like hello, yeah, you know, it's
a really it's a really wild thing when you realize
that a lot of people just don't they don't get
(42:23):
to really see themselves.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
I mean when I look back at my own career
and the conversations that I was having, you know, fifteen
years ago about playing gay roles, like it wasn't an
option on my team. It was like we have to
stay adamantly away from anything queer because it will ruin
your career. When you just like, look at how Hollywood
has changed in our careers, like it's a completely different industry. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Well, and to be clear, like it's not just changing
because look, yes, the cultural conversation is changing, thank god,
but it isn't just changing for like moral reasons or
because representation is important. It's changing because our stories are valuable,
because they do well, because they make money, because the
(43:09):
comedians tours are selling out, like it you know, when
you think about what Hannah Gadsby, did you know on Netflix?
It's like it's, yes, it matters morally for us and
for kids like us to see themselves, but also it's
smart business. So it's like the the evolving I think
(43:29):
is long overdue.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
And we still have a ways, ways, ways to go.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Oh yeah, I mean it's like a drop in the
bucket at the moment, but at least we're beginning to
get somewhere.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
One hundred years from now when they look back at
how the industry and society has changed. You know, your story,
my story is it's part of all of this, and
it really is just at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, it's important, Yeah, sure, hope. So yeah, and now
a word from our wonderful sponsors, how do you in
beth Ay navigate these things? Because I hear what you're
saying about how this felt so cathartic and obviously there
(44:19):
was a happy ending to that fertility journey and you
had your daughter, But because you have been so open
about your sexual fluidity, and I know she's talked about
how you know, prior to you, she probably would have
identified as a gay woman, So like, how how does
(44:42):
that what does that look like? In your conversations about
like intimacy and your future and the sort of parameters
of your relationship as it's clearly like fueling you know,
not just your life and your family, but your art.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Yeah, we're different people post child priorities, dreams, desires, like everything,
the language that we use at home. Yeah, we are
building a family a home, you know. And just when
(45:20):
you have two people directing all of their energy towards
one specific thing and goal, it just magnifies And who
we are and who we sleep with is just or
who we have slept with in the past. It's just
not important to us. Yes, Like we go through periods
(45:41):
of time where we like joke and talk about it, right,
but for the most part, like we're not even thinking
about it.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
No, I totally get that. Yeah, I think about that
a lot with work. For me, Like I love my work.
I have always I derive so much pleasure and passion
from storytelling and creativity and energy on set and like
being in the circus and I love it. And I
have always been willing to travel anywhere, anytime, get on
(46:07):
any plane, whatever it takes, right, And now I'm like,
I don't want to do that. I'm not going to
go there. You want me to go to what absolute Alberta? No,
I'm not going for how long? Absolutely not? And I'm like, oh, oh,
this is interesting that I don't think the answer was
ever no before.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, Like what.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
A beautiful thing. As you evolve and grow to continue
to know yourself more and more.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
There's a lot more nos in this house.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, but you, but that's because your house, your home,
your family is such a yes. Yeah, and like what
a gift to find that in your life.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, no questions. Yeah, you've moved down to Florida, you know,
it's yeah, well world over here.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
And I think that there's something so cool even that
your family, you know, the experience of waiting for your
daughter is what inspired your music. Like again, all this
yes in your house is like bubbling out of you,
movies and books and an album, Like how cool? How
would you describe like beginning to answer the sort of
(47:16):
internal call to make music? And how would you describe
what kind of music you make to our friends at all?
Speaker 2 (47:23):
You're real good at bringing these back into the story.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
So I just really like it. I see it, like,
I see I see how this like like the image
I get is like that the balloon keeps getting filled
with more air for you, and I think that's really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
The art has always been the answer for me. It's
just like where I go. It's where I feel the
most comfortable. I just like making things, you know, It's
like it just makes sense. And music has always been
(48:00):
something that I've wanted to dive towards. But for the reason,
it just like it felt like an arms distance away.
And I was working on an Apple TV show called
City on Fire, and I was playing a rock star
and we recorded an album for the show. And it
was my first time really like in a studio full time.
(48:21):
And you know, on TV, you don't really have time
to like develop a character, especially on set, right you're
just chasing the clock. You're chasing the budget. Things are
moving fast, strong decisions and you have to go quick. Yeah,
to like find this character in the studio, I had
endless amount by myself in the studio finding his voice. Literally,
(48:41):
I just fell in love with the process, Like I did, they.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Get you, like a like a vocal coach or anything though,
like someone to help you like be there.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
That's what That's what I thought was what was going
to happen. But I showed up to a studio in
Brooklyn with a producer who, like I thought for sure,
like we were going to do some vocal exercises a star,
but it was like, record, here's the song, let's.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Go shut up. Oh my god, that's so much.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Pressure, but it was so much fun, like they got
It happened that way because there were not a lot
of cooks in the kitchen. It was just me and
this producer for months on end in the studio finding
these songs, and we would get all these songs said
to us, and we would get to like make our
own version of it. There was little direction at the top,
(49:27):
and he my studio in Brooklyn was hired by the
music supervisor, so we had somebody else to answer to.
But like we were pretty much running our own show, right,
and we just like formed this chemistry together, me and
this producer and half jokingly, at the end of the season,
I knew I was leaving the studio and I was heartbroken.
(49:48):
I was like, I just I don't want to leave
the studio. I was like, can we just start making music?
And he said absolutely, like I would love nothing more
than diff Wow, And we It was right around that
time we found out we were pregnant for the second time.
We were pregnant in January. That same year, we had
(50:09):
a miscarriage, and we found out that we were pregnant
around the fourth of July, and I just started writing
music about becoming a parent, and in the similar ways
that I was writing the children's book about becoming a parent,
I just found a new outlet that is almost more digestible.
(50:31):
I think for so long, I've been really searching for
a medium that I can like distill a message and
that can be consumed regularly, and that doesn't necessarily need
to be explained, you know, similar to poetry, right, you
can kind of dance around the language and with lyric
(50:54):
and with melody and frequency like it, just it hits
different and I experienced for them, I experienced music for
the first time all over again. In writing like it
just I unlocked up portal and I just started having
conversations with my daughter in these songs. And it got
(51:14):
to the point where I was I would I would
go to bed and I would dream and she would
come and we would write songs together. I would hear
all songs in my dreams, melodies and lyrics, and I
would wake up in the morning and I would write
them down, and that's how a lot of his album
was written. Wow. And originally I didn't know that I
was making it for the world. I thought I was
(51:35):
just making it for me and Bethany. We were planning
a home birth. We had a tent built in our
living room that we were going to birth in, and
we would spend a lot of our time in there
just listening to this music together and just having conversations
with the spirit of this child and our daughter. Kilber
Dove was born to the ninth song on the album
(51:58):
called Santa Madre, which is a song in Spanish about
the Holy Mother. Shortly after that, I realized that, like,
I needed to put this music out in the world.
It was it was bigger than myself. It was it
needed to be shared. Just like looking for music that
(52:21):
people can birth to. It doesn't really exist. It's strange
because I think there should be more.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
One of the most common things that happens in the world.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
But it doesn't exist really for me. Yeah, and you know,
it's something that she can always go back to and
re experience the art that helped make her, you know,
and is because of her, and you know, we're pregnant again,
and I am back in a studio here in Florida,
(52:50):
and I'm trying to make new music and I'm planning
the live show for the album that came out in April,
and and you know it's a it's a whole new
thing already. Yeah, performing live is the one thing that
I don't want to say I'm afraid of but makes
me nervous for some reason.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Well, then you have to do it.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
I have to do it.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Yes, when it feels scary, you have to do it.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
I have to do it. I think I'm planning my
first show in La and July right now.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Okay, great, you have to let me know what it
is for sure. It's so fun. I'm so excited for you.
And I mean, I love this, you know when when
our friends at home are like, well where do we
find him? Like, guys, you can go online and listen
to Bourne. You can order all of It is you
and read it to the kids in your family. You
can go on Prime Video and watch the movie. Like,
(53:45):
there's so much that it's not lost on me that
there's so much great art that's come out of you,
like saying yes to your life. I think that's really beautiful.
I just went and made a movie and you know,
post illness recovery and then like post strike, it was
like the first thing, you know, of all the things
(54:07):
I've signed on to do, it is the first thing
that like went after things started wrapping up with the strike,
and it was the most fun I've ever had on
a project. And like, I was the least stressed I've
ever been. And I was like, Wow, this this place
that I me, myself am in right now. This is
a nice place to make art from.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
And this is the longest I haven't been on set
since I started. Yeah, I miss it so intensely right now.
I feel like my entire sense of community is based
off of what we do. Yeah, the Carnie lifestyle and
these relationships with the crew guys, and just like you know,
(54:48):
we show up through pitch a tent, fallen and out
of love and kind of all disperse. And I haven't
had it in so long, and I'm done back to work.
Short answer here.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
Yeah, I get it. By the way, I'm laughing because
my like do not disturb turned off on my phone
and my director from the movie I just did just
texted me. I was like that's not an accident like that,
Like energetically, I'm talking about how nice it was to
go make this piece of art. And now Jeff's like, hey,
because I do want to be mindful of your time,
I'm gonna I'm going to ask you my last and
(55:23):
favorite question. And this could be the live show, it
could be the you know, impending birth of your second baby,
it could be something else completely. I don't know. But
when you sort of look at your life right now
and how good it feels, what feels like you're work
in progress.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
It really is just the family building. We want a
whole pack of cads, you know. Yeah, Like we feel
like we're just getting started, and we know the second
one is on the way, and we want three and
four god willing. And it's just about being the best,
most inspiring dad as I can be, and like doing
(56:05):
the work to show them it's possible that there are
no limits in this life.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
Yeah, they don't have to fit into a box.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Oh not at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Yeah, best dad, I could be beautiful. Thank you, thank you,
This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
This is such a nice chat. I'm so glad we
got to hang today.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Yeah, totally
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hello Whipsmarties.
Today's guest is an incredible multi hyphenet that I think
(00:22):
is not only fascinating as an artist, but fascinating and
courageous as a human. Today I'm joined by Nico Tortorella.
He is an actor, a musician, and an author. You
may know him from Darren Starr's hit series Younger, from
AMC's The Walking Dead, A World Beyond, or the incredible
(00:42):
Apple TV show City on Fire. Most recently, he appeared
in the indie film Matachin Family opposite Carl Lemons Hopkins
and Emily Hampshire, who we just love on this show.
Nico grew up both playing hockey and in the theater
in Chicago. We had an office a lot to talk
about with that theater scene that we both love so much,
(01:03):
and he's leaned into his artistry in the most inspiring way.
Not only has he become an advocate and a leader
in the LGBTQ community, but in finding himself in his voice.
He's also pursued so many other passions as an artist,
going from TV and film to writing. This spring, he's
releasing a children's book called All of It Is You,
(01:27):
about loving and honoring every part of yourself while creating
conversations around acceptance and self exploration. And he also, in
preparation for his first daughter with his longtime partner Bethanie Meyers,
started making music. He's made an incredible album called Born.
We will make sure to link to it in the stories,
(01:47):
which he wrote in advance of his daughter's birth, and
then realized he wanted her to be able to listen
to it anytime she pleased when she grew up. So
it is out for all of us to enjoy. And
I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Hello,
(02:13):
how are you? I'm great. There's like so much for
us to talk about today. We have so many things
going on. I love it before we jump into anyone
of the three projects that I know we have to
talk about. I actually really like to ask people to
rewind with me because I feel like, you know, audiences
(02:36):
meet you when you're doing a TV show or you've
you know, written a book, or you have a movie coming
out or something, and I'm always really curious to know
who these artists that I meet in the present were
as kids. You know, if you look back, like if
you could rewind the like the TVO to see Nico
at eight or nine, would you find, you know, an
(02:58):
artist and a creative? Where were you like a tiny
little athlete or you know, like who was that little kid?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I love that. Yeah, there's something about having children too
that demands you go back and look.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I wondered about that for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I'm experiencing my own childhood through her eyes right now,
which is a really cool thing. Eight or nine, I
was both. I was an athlete and I had found
the stage right about at that time. Really yeah. I
grew up in Chicago and everyone in my family was
a hockey player. We all grew up on the same
all my cousins. And that's just like what I was
(03:36):
made to do pretty much ride out the womb. I
was on the ice and I loved it. But it
was always a performance for me. It's like I would
score a goal and take my gloves off and throw
them in the audience and it was a show, right Yeah.
And then my mom made us audition for the Wizard
of Oz when we were right about eight or nine.
Just like children's theater local Spot cast as a munchkin
(03:58):
and a Flying Monkey, and the rest is kind of history.
Like the second I got on that stage, I just
knew that's what I was going to do for the
rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Wow. Yeah, So how did that then shape the rest
of your childhood and your hockey career and all of it.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, Well, in Chicago, I had like interesting access to
the stage, you know, and I got tapped into the
scene there pretty quickly, and I got an agent and
started auditioning a bunch for different productions, and I got
casts in a show called Over the Tavern, which kind
of hopped around a different a few different theaters in
(04:37):
the Chicagoland area for years, and I wound up being
in that show for almost four years. I played all
three brothers throughout the years. I like started playing the
youngest brother, and just as I got older, I kept
playing the older brother. And yeah, I mean I was
missing school every Wednesday for Matine's and h shows a week,
and you know, you know, being on stage that's a
(04:59):
whole other right, especially that young And I mean I
quickly quit playing sports after I fell on the stage.
Like I was playing soccer, I was playing hockey. And
I made it very clear to all of my coaches
that I was done, and yeah, that one way or
another got me to LA and that's how it all
(05:21):
worked out.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Wow. And so then was younger the first on camera
like big job or were? There were there things in between.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
There were a few other things. I got to LA
when I was nineteen. I went to business school at
Loyal in Marymount for a hot second, which was not
the right place for me, and I dropped out after
like six weeks. Honestly, I was running a raw food
restaurant in Santa Monica and I started modeling. I my
(05:53):
agent in Chicago hooked me up with a sister agency
in La CSD, and I started auditioning pretty quick and
I booked. I was testing for a bit for that
Nickelodeon boy band Big Time Rush. That was kind of
like the first big audition experience that I had in LA.
And then I got Making or Break It, which was
(06:16):
an ABC Family show about gymnastics. Cass is a recurring
on that show, and after we shot the pilot, I
got my first series regular on a CW show called
The Beautiful Life, which shot in New York City. So
I moved to New York when I was twenty. This
all happened very quickly when I started auditioning and we
(06:37):
shot a total of seven episodes. We got canceled after seven,
only three I think aired, and moved back to LA
And like within the year I was casting Scream four
and Younger kind of came a little bit later. It
was like two years after that. Yeah, I was twenty
six or twenty seven when I got Younger. It was
almost like a decade before that.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Isn't it funny they always say it takes a decade
of a coming overnight success.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It's still taking time two decades later, because you know.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
It's so wild. It's one of really the only careers
where like every time you finish a job, you start over.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah. It's uh, you have to just get used to. Yeah,
those those in between phases, the highs and lows. The
highs are like so good when they're there, and you know,
but the most exciting part of it is like you're
always one phone call away from an entirely different life, Yeah,
which like keeps me going, yeah, eail about a breakdown
(07:37):
or something like I can immediately imagine what my next
two years looks.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Like, Right, Yeah, isn't that interesting? And then but to
your point. You know, it's it's so amazing, but it
is also really tricky. I think people kind of forget
that to do this, it's not dissimilar to being an athlete,
like you're expected to pick up and go. You get traded,
you're moving in three days, you book a job, you're
moving to Canada, you're moving to Albuquerque, you're moving to Wilmington.
(08:06):
And I think it can be really hard to like
pick up, leave your whole family, you know, and just
you kind of get plucked and you're gone. And I
know you've you've been really open and vulnerable about like
some of that hardship. You know, you've talked about how
during the first season of Younger you were really struggling
with alcoholism and to be so young and to be
(08:30):
on that real sort of yo yo string of this career.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Do you.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Feel like part of how hard this can be, the
up and downs increased your propensity to struggle there or
do you think that was something you'd maybe been dealing
with for longer and the work schedule and the intensity
of the job helped you come to terms with the
fact that you probably needed to get so at that time.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, I think it was both. I mean I grew
up in a bar in Chicago, surrounded by alcohol and
in my blood for sure. And you know that when
you experienced that level of success at eighteen nineteen years
old in Los Angeles, that lifestyle is just thrown at you,
like you don't even have to think about it. Right,
(09:21):
You're at every event with an open bar, and there's
older folk that are feeding you all sorts of things, right, Like,
it's very easy to get wrapped up in that. The
breaks right ask for high levels of excitement. You just
like you're working all the time or you're not working
(09:42):
at all, and part of staying in in the scene
is going out. Especially at that I think it's different.
It seems to be different now just because of social media.
I look back at that decade of my life and
I'm so grateful that there were not camera phones and
(10:02):
social leads, because it was it was a whole other world.
But yeah, around twenty six twenty seven, I younger was
a very easy job for me, honestly, Like I you know,
it was number seven on the call. She worked like
a day or two a week. I was making good money.
I was living in New York City at that age,
(10:26):
that it like it was still socially acceptable to be
out all the time, right, And I once I started
drinking alone at home, I was like, well this, this
isn't going to end well. And there we're like a
couple instances. Thank god, it never really got in the
way of work. There were like a couple close calls,
but for the most part, like I kept things very separate.
(10:50):
But yeah, I just kind of woke up one morning
I was like that if I don't change this now, like,
I'm not going to survive, both like physically and emotionally.
I want way too much in my life to surrender
to this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, And is it scary to be publicly open about
that or do you feel like, because so many people
now are having more conversations about mental health and identity
and all of the sort of aspects of who we
are as people like you're more safe to do so.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's scary to be publicly
open about anything, really, you know. I mean I was
having a lot of these conversations ten years ago, and
I've found myself as of late, especially in fatherhood, retracting
some from just public discourse. I feel like I've said
it all at this point, like I really like just
(11:50):
caught myself wide open and shared so much of who
I am and who I love and you know how
I believe I fit into this world. And COVID hit
and we were all forced to just restructure, right, and
we were experiencing our own fertility journey and trying to
(12:14):
create life in a time when life seemed the most fragile,
and I just needed to to reclaim, you know, myself,
and I got media for a couple of years, like
I wasn't having any conversations, and yeah, I feel like
I've emerged as a completely different person in the last
(12:34):
few years, especially post daughter.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, how old is your daughter now?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Fifteen months?
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Oh my goodness, she's just like a little smush.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Is a smush, She's she's really something. We got another
one on the way. We were we're having another one
in October.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So congratulation. That's so exciting over here. Yeah, so was
your was your daughter part of the inspia for your
children's book?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, for sure. I wrote it while we were trying
to get pregnant, which is an arduous process, it can't,
you know, And I just like needed an outlet. I
needed to have this conversation with the spirit of a
child while I was attempting to channel and I came
(13:25):
up with this idea for all of that that really
like distilled this larger mantra of my life, that is,
all of it is you, which is this poetry book
that I wrote, that we are the mirror to the universe, right,
And I always knew I wanted to distill that down
to a children's version, like I saw it when I
wrote the poetry book. But it was it was a
(13:47):
way for me, like I said, to have a conversation
with her or him or whoever it was that I
was trying to talk to and like start teaching before
they were even born. You know. Yeah, children's are a
long process, why they yeah, yeah, yeah. It's way more
(14:07):
complicated than the other two books I had written because
the art is such a huge part of it too, right,
Like yeah, you know, there's less than one hundred words
in my children's book. But then you have to create
the entire universe.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Right and find an illustrator who you love, and what's
that like to meet with so many artists and try
to figure out who can draw the thing you are
imagining that doesn't yet exist.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
It's weird because you see their art before you meet
them for the most part, Like you're not having conversations
with these people. Like I was given like twenty samples
and it was like, Okay, pick five that you want
to talk to and three were only available, right, So,
like I kind of just knew when I saw the
art that that's who it was. She was also an
(14:58):
animator at Nickelodeon, and I had an idea of turning
into a cartoon at some point, so like that checked
a box immediately. And her name is Melissa, the artist
on the book, And I mean she really just like
took my ideas and ran with them and made the
book come to life in a way that like I
never even imagined.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, can you tell us the story of the book?
Let our audience know what it's about.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah. All of it is used about a kid named
Alive who is the entirety of the universe, and you
follow her in like a day of her life and
you get to experience how she relates to the world
in all aspects of herself. It's kind of this like
(15:47):
age old idea that you can be anything you want
when you grow up, lifts up on its head, that
you already are everything that exists in the universe, and
what does it mean to tap in to that level
of unfettered freedom?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
And now for our sponsors, do you think that that idea,
that spirit of unfettered freedom, that that notion that children
and really all of us should know that we are everything,
that we carry a piece of everything. It feels to
(16:26):
me like such an encouragement to include more rather than
to exclude or to you know, fall prey to these
really common ideas of binaries, whether they be about you know, love, gender,
what colors are for girls, what colors are for boys, yeah, race,
(16:47):
all of it. Do you think that that sort of
very like inclusive and spiritual awareness comes from, for you,
your own journey of continuing to expand your definition of
who you are who you love. Like to me, it
sounds so beautiful, but I would imagine that, as you said, like,
(17:09):
you've had to be so open and maybe you don't
always want to have to be like it does seem
like it's something that can be hard won sometimes.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, for sure. And I think it even started way
before me even realizing what any of this was. Really
As an actor, that's our job to tap into that
unfettered free right and to continue to be othered always, right,
(17:37):
And that's why I fell in love with it in
the beginning. I could just like, not that I needed
to escape myself at all. I had an amazing childhood,
and but I could experience more in a very short
amount of time as an actor, and so much of
my identity exploration and gender and sexual real is linked
(18:01):
to my ability to transform through art. It always has been.
It's about this limitless access, really, and I always knew that, like,
if I could experience more as a person, I could
(18:21):
deliver more as an actor. And I don't know if
that was always a conscious thought, sure it was there constantly.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Well, and that's why they say hindsight is twenty twenty, right,
because you can look back and you can see the
thread that goes through everything that maybe you didn't see
in real time, but when you look at the past
you can. And I think it's really fascinating, you know,
when we think about privilege and presentation and passing and
all of these things, Like I'm not gonna lie from
(18:53):
the vantage point I said as a woman, I think
it's very cool that a guy like you who presents
as like hyper masculine, you know, Chicago guy hockey player
is like, actually, I'm very gender fluid and I love
who I love And I'm like, wait what and not
to say, like I should like to think that I'm
(19:14):
not a person who really stereotypes, But I don't know.
If I, like bumped into you at a bar and
we didn't know each other, I'd be like that guy
is probably the most open, you know what I mean,
Like I might not have known that, And I think
I think there's something really powerful in your willingness to
be so frank about your own life, because I think
(19:37):
there's a lot more guys that look like you, that
feel like you then maybe admit that they feel like you.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a part of me that
thinks everyone has access to this sort of mentality. But
we do. We just we we all were taught to
limit ourselves.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, was it a strange thing, like thinking about just
the time line, you know, for you to start talking
publicly about that fluidity about And forgive me if I
don't know currently, but if you know you're talking about
at the time being bisexual, being you know, a person
(20:16):
who really can envision himself or feel you know, all
all sides of gender within himself, within themselves, like was
it was it a weird dynamic for you to be
having those conversations while you were playing this like hyper
masculine man or do you feel like because you were
(20:38):
playing that character, it was even more important for you
to have like frank conversations with people about like don't
judge a book by its cover.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I had this anchor that was this character Josh that
I was known around the world. It's like super straight,
say his wife dude, right that like had a shit
together and was like dating older women and was just cool. Right,
this like Brooklyn and a lot of me exploring my
(21:08):
sexuality is tied to getting sober, right, Like, I had
had experiences before I got sober, but I mean the
first like real relationship with a man happened after I
got sober. And I had a couple serious relationships at
the beginning, and I did a play where I was
(21:29):
playing this like really manic character, and I just like
I knew that I needed to start having this conversation
because people were starting to like speculate, right, and I
wanted to get ahead of it. I had to get
ahead of it.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I know that feeling half right, and I.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Had a pot I like started a podcast. My buddy
was launching a podcast network, and I was just like
fuck it, Like if I'm going to do this, I'm
going to go all the way out and just like
I'm having these conversations privately, let's just grab some microphones
and let's just start like exploring all of this in
real time with everybody else. Like I was just putting
myself with a microphone and everybody else was learning it
(22:16):
at the same time that I was. Yeah, which was
really cool, Like in hindsight, yes, very cool. Would I
do that in the same way now? Probably not right, Yeah,
but the I mean going going back to this unfettered freedom.
It was just like I was able to say and
(22:36):
do whatever I wanted and nobody could say anything otherwise.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
It's really special.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I think it's a really interesting thing though, like the
way the world will speculate, like people will really take
your self discovery from you if you're not careful, and
so I think it's really cool that, unlike what happens
to so many of us, like you were able to
get ahead of it. I totally get that. Now you're
(23:07):
like maybe I wouldn't have had all sixteen of those
conversations in public, Like maybe I would have just had
eleven of them. But like it really is brave. It's
really really brave, and like I guess it's part of
the reason that, you know, I of course I want
to ask, like I think it's beautiful and I'm curious,
and I also don't want to. I don't want to
(23:27):
force you to like go back and talk about things
you don't want to talk about anymore.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Well, no, it's all good. I mean, I'm not trying
to like avoid these conversations at all. You know. I
enjoy talking about how I got here for sure. Yeah,
especially with someone that has experienced similar things, you know.
I mean I was I was reading your Glamour piece
before we started, and how long in between, like from
(23:55):
things starting to leak out to you deciding you were
going to write this piece, how long was that and
what made you make that decision?
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Ultimately, I mean what made me make the decision was
knowing that we'd gotten into like a post fact vacuum.
So I was like, what I'm going to do is
sit and just sit and wait. But eventually, what I'm
going to do is clarify very firmly, bit gently what's
(24:29):
real because it matters to me. I didn't appreciate it personally,
but what really frightened me in terms of the public
nature of it was this is so vitriolic and so
violent and so ugly, Like, what's this going to do
to it? Like a young queer girl in Ohio or
(24:50):
Alabama who sees what the internet is doing to people
who she perceives to have a lot more power than her, like,
you can always take your power back, and that was
part of what felt really important to me, was like
I'm going to take my power back, and I'm actually
going to stand up and say the purest and most
special thing that's ever happened to me in my life
(25:11):
has happened to me, and you've treated it like the
ugliest because you're looking at optics and not reality. You're
looking at a narrative you bought into based on the
Internet and not the.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Facts, and like from a place of love, Yeah, really
hard for anybody else to experience the love that exists
between right, Yeah, especially behind closed doors.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
That's the thing to finally be, to finally be so
loved and not to be like trying so hard, like
because when it works, you don't have to try. And
I know that sounds really basic, but like I just
didn't know that I had always had to try so hard,
and I'd always heard that phrase like marriage is hard,
(26:01):
relationships are hard. You have to do the work, and
like the work is supposed to feel constructive, not torturous.
And that's a big life lesson. And I want other
people like, look, if I didn't do this job, would
I talk about any of this publicly? No, also because
nobody would give as But it's like, what I'm not
going to let them do is take it from me,
(26:24):
make make money off of it with like clickbait and grossness,
and then turn around and be like, well you didn't
do it and you didn't say it. And it's like, okay, well,
I'm just gonna I'm going to continue to come back
to like love and power. I'm going to root in
truth and you can come or not. But the reason
it feels important for me to do that with whatever
(26:45):
relative platform I have is because there's kids out there
who don't have platforms at all, who are so scared
to be who they are, and I just want them
to know I don't care if you're fourteen or forty one,
Like you can choose yourself and that feels important, and
like that's why I feel like it's such a cool
thing that you, particularly as a man, we're willing to
(27:10):
subvert like stereotype and narrative and all of it. You know,
I think that that's very brave, and I really like,
I really commend you for that.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Well, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I mean when I started the podcast, I would say
all the time, like, this is for the kids, this
isn't for me. You totally understand that sentiment from an
outside perspective. Yet it does seem very selfish to be
having these conversations yeah, publicly, but like in the truest
form it felt so selfless. Yeah, like it wasn't about me.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Well, and that's the thing. I think what people who
don't do this job don't understand is that we don't
actually have a choice in the public discourse, right, And
like I've noticed that all the bots on Instagram, on
every pride, they're like, ugh, what narcissists, No one cares
who you. This is so narcissistic. Why do you have
(28:06):
to make And I'm like, oh wow, so the bots
are being activated to call queer people narcissists during Pride, okay,
but it's like nobody's out here trying to make announcements.
People are just navigating public life. And if it's public,
you can either be you can either be dragged by
it or you can drive it. And I think we'd
(28:27):
all rather drive than be dragged. And now a word
from our sponsors that I really enjoy and I think
you will too.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Can I ask you another question? Sure, in this new
version of yourself and post you know, post glamor, has
the desire for art or the characters that you play
has that shifted at all? Do you want to be
telling different stories? Well?
Speaker 1 (28:57):
It's so interesting, Like I've always played queer women on
tea yeah yeah, yeah, like for twenty years. Anytime I
get the chance, I do it. And I've always been
really vocal about like I would never play a character
I couldn't represent interesting. But what was really interesting for
me in my twenties was being told by like elder
queers that I respect so much, like well, you're not
(29:18):
gay enough to say you're bye right, And I was
kind of like, oh, well, like what I don't want
to do is hurt the community.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Ever, which is the hardest thing to navigate.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
It's really hard if the seesaw is really hard.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
The gay keeping in this community is so real. It's
ultimately why I retract it, because like I just felt like,
it doesn't matter what I do or what I say,
I will never make all of these people happy.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, well you know what I will say to that,
my darling, is like, welcome to being a woman, because
it's the same you're two thing. You're too fat, you're
too rich, you're too poor, you're too ambitious, you're fucking lazy,
like you run a company. How dare you you're a
trad wife? How dare you you're a mother? Lazy, you
don't have children, frigid bitch Like it's always something, And
(30:03):
so it's really easy to it's really interesting, not easy,
interesting to see the way that magnifies itself and like
shape shifts in queerness because what it really like rings
the bell for me on is any group of people
who has been othered will very often have a subconscious
desire to other another group to save themselves. And I
(30:26):
think that's tribalistic. I think that's human nature. But I
think it's also twenty twenty four, and we're supposed to
be more evolved than like falling prey to our own
lizard brains. But it's like when you see homophobia in
communities of color, or you see really intense sexism in
certain geographical cultures, or you know, you see lesbians eating
(30:50):
their own because you know, they don't really know what's
going on in people's lives. Like there is so much
pain and trauma in communities that have been marginalized that
sometimes I don't think they see when they are projecting
that pain onto other marginalized people. So you see stay
at home moms judging career moms and vice versa. You
(31:12):
see the elder gays judging the bisexual kids. You see
whatever it is. And I think what it really is
is like I have this pain that's built up and
I don't know where to put it, and suddenly like
there's a bottleneck and it's all going to shoot through there.
And you know, maybe that's because we don't have enough
mental health support in our country, or maybe that's because
(31:34):
we're not really willing to like take enough accountability and
do enough self inventory to say like, ooh, that instinct
I have like, actually, is my that I need to
deal with myself? Like I need to not make this
someone else's problem.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, have you had the people language folk who are
very specific about bisexual verse pain sexual verse question? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Oh yeah. Somebody like send me a tweet that was like,
I am so disappointed in you. You're calling yourself queer
just say you're bisexual. And I was like, well it
live what I like? Sorry, what the.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Language winds up hurting?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
The language policing is so weird.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
I'm in this interesting place now because like I.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Was going to ask you this because you married a woman,
So like, are are there all these people that are like, see,
it was a phase totally totally, Oh, it's so annoying unless.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
You they are seeing me publicly in a relationship with yeah,
a man or a gender variant person, Like I am
not a legitimate queer person anymore.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
But by the way, I get it because again, like
I'm I'm sharing things with you about like things I've
known about my identity for over twenty years, and even
like when I finally asked my partner out, which like
to be clear, our friends were like trying to set
her up with someone and I was like if she's
ready to date, she's going on a date with me,
like sorry, like no way, and people were like wait
(33:02):
what And she even said to me, she was like
hold the phone, like I always thought you were straight,
and I was like, I always thought you were happy,
but like we're both in single what are we doing?
And you know it's we were in cackling because I
was like, yeah, dude, I never looked at you as
an option and she was like I never looked at
you as an option. And it's like, well, because we
(33:23):
weren't options, and like, I don't know. I just most
at least most women I know, like are not out
trying to finaggle around their relationships, or I guess I
should say like most monogamous women I know people who
are Poulie obviously are like doing what they're doing because
they're communicating about that. But like, it is a very
(33:43):
interesting thing because even a lot of the queer women
in my life were like, oh, we just like we
knew you were like an ally and like we maybe wondered,
like you know, when we saw like this TV show
or this movie you've done or like whatever, we were like, hmmm,
he doesn't really look like acting, but like we didn't
really know. And I was like, wow, we all we
(34:03):
all do it, like even in our friend groups. We
make assumptions. So I can't imagine for you, as someone
who's spoken so openly about fluidity and identity as the
man you physically present as, to be married to a woman, Like,
I can't imagine the weird blowback you get.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It's a weird thing, you know. I mean also, just
like looking at Pride and the amount of money that
I was making from campaigns for X amount of years
and like now I'm married a woman, all that just
completely goes away. Not to say that that's like what
Pride is, but like it it's been a very strange transition. Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Sure, And how long have you and Bethany been married?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Six years? We're going our seventh. We've known each other
at nineteen yeah, I mean we started dating in college.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Stop it, you've been on and off for nineteen years? Okay,
And then how did you guys decide like, oh, no,
we're really going to do this. We're going to be together,
be together and start a family. And like, what tips
that when you've sort of been in and out of
a relationship with someone for so long.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, and we grew up queer side by side, like
we both started started dating the same sex pretty much
like within a year. And wow, yeah, I mean she's
my best friend and has been forever, you know. Yeah,
and uh, we always got I mean, obviously we always
(35:35):
got in the way of our other relationships that we
had because nobody really knew like what we were to
each other. Right at the end of the day. We
were always each other's emergency contact, no matter we're serious
our other relationships where I'm.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Sure that caused jealousy and other relations for.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Sure for sure, But like years we weren't sleeping together, right,
uh huh. We went to Peru and did a bunch
of yaguasca and had a pretty intense physical experience at
this place beyond the psychoactive experience, and came out of
(36:14):
the jungle and just I looked at her and I said,
we're getting married. Huh. And that was that. Wow, there's
a lot more to the story, but I vet there is.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I'm like, we need to like have a glass of
wine and talk about Well, I'll have a glass of
wine and I'll bring you a sparkling water. I'll talk
about Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's deeply cool. Does that
sort of thing then do you get that like, oh,
this was very destined to be feeling after that sort
of journey And then you're like, oh, of course we
(36:46):
were always each other's emergency contacts. Well, of course we
were maybe like not ready to see how apparent our
real connection was for so long.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
I think we both always knew. Honestly, we just gave
each other the space to explore our own individuals and
like champion each other.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
You know, Yeah, do you think that also that like
that space and that way that you've been so consistent,
do you think that helps you both like as the
humans and the artists that you are, Because I think about, like,
you know, even the movie that you just had come
out on Prime and you know how you you play
(37:29):
one half of this gay couple. Who is you know,
going through this journey about being a foster parent and
then are we going to be you know, parents post
that that foster child experience and like what are your
visions for your future? And I don't know, I feel
like you've probably had to have versions of that with
(37:51):
your partner, like what is our desire for our future?
Et cetera et cetera.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, over and over.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
The journey almost feels like a movie.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah, it should be at some point. That movie came
at a very interesting time. It was post COVID. We
were a year into our own fertility journey and nothing
was working and we couldn't figure out why, which is
almost more frustrating. And we always knew we were going
(38:21):
to have kids, and we were convinced the second we
started trying it would just happen, like this is how
it goes right, And that just was and you know,
a year into the journey, this script came across my desk,
so to speak, and it was about a gay relationship.
(38:41):
But I saw so much of my own experience on
these pages and at home, I was the stable one
in our infertility Bethany was able to experience the emotional
up people in real time and I needed to hold
down the floor, right And I got the script, and
(39:01):
I mean it was a no brainer. I knew I
needed to play this role and I got to set
and I was able to experience the heartache in a
way that I just wasn't at home. Like there was
not a whole lot of acting that went into this movie.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
That's so cathartic.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
God, you know when those jobs commented just as like
there is an absolute reason this is here right now. Yeah,
you did channel so much of myself through this character.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah, that feels like your Iah Oscar journey. You're just like,
this is very divine, what is happening?
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Totally totally and you just got to cry and cry
and like wow it it prepared me to be a
father for sure.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Oh my god, that's so beautiful. Okay, can you can
you give our listeners at home? Obviously I've I've read
all of the things in preparation for today, but will
you give our listeners at home a little overview of
what the movie is, like you like you did for
your kid's book.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, for sure. The Managing Family is by Andy Ballentine
and written by his husband Danny Valentine, and it is
a love letter to their own experience as queer parents
and bringing life into the world. And it is the
story of Thomas and Oscar, who live in Los Angeles.
Thomas is a photographer. Oscar is an actor who had
(40:21):
a troubled outing in his own career early on. I've
been trying to figure out his life after that. And
they have a foster kid early on in the film
that they've spent a couple of years with, and he
winds up going back to his birth mother, which is
an incredible thing, right, But Thomas my character is kind
(40:43):
of left with this, well what now and who am
I without child? And the film tracks really his journey
to make the decision whether or not he wants to
be a parent, and Oscar's pretty dead set on not
(41:09):
bringing another child into the mix. His acting career is
taking off, He's got all of these new opportunities, and
they have to make a decision whether they're going to
choose each other or choose themselves and their own dreams
and desires. And you know, that is something that made
a lot of sense to me and my past relationship
(41:32):
or my current relationship, all the different versions of our relationship. Yeah,
And it's just it's this beautiful. You see a lot
of different queer families in such a short amount of time,
which is not something that we've really seen in film
and television. In a way I read the script, I
was like, how has this movie not been made yet?
(41:55):
Why to go find a comp of just like two
gay dads and their child, And it just like does
it really, it just doesn't exist. I know, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
I mean when you think about the fact that Love
Simon was the first high school story or rom com
to start a gay character, and it came out in
I think twenty fifteen, Like hello, yeah, you know, it's
a really it's a really wild thing when you realize
that a lot of people just don't they don't get
(42:23):
to really see themselves.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
I mean when I look back at my own career
and the conversations that I was having, you know, fifteen
years ago about playing gay roles, like it wasn't an
option on my team. It was like we have to
stay adamantly away from anything queer because it will ruin
your career. When you just like, look at how Hollywood
has changed in our careers, like it's a completely different industry. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Well, and to be clear, like it's not just changing
because look, yes, the cultural conversation is changing, thank god,
but it isn't just changing for like moral reasons or
because representation is important. It's changing because our stories are valuable,
because they do well, because they make money, because the
(43:09):
comedians tours are selling out, like it you know, when
you think about what Hannah Gadsby, did you know on Netflix?
It's like it's, yes, it matters morally for us and
for kids like us to see themselves, but also it's
smart business. So it's like the the evolving I think
(43:29):
is long overdue.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
And we still have a ways, ways, ways to go.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Oh yeah, I mean it's like a drop in the
bucket at the moment, but at least we're beginning to
get somewhere.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
One hundred years from now when they look back at
how the industry and society has changed. You know, your story,
my story is it's part of all of this, and
it really is just at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, it's important, Yeah, sure, hope. So yeah, and now
a word from our wonderful sponsors, how do you in
beth Ay navigate these things? Because I hear what you're
saying about how this felt so cathartic and obviously there
(44:19):
was a happy ending to that fertility journey and you
had your daughter, But because you have been so open
about your sexual fluidity, and I know she's talked about
how you know, prior to you, she probably would have
identified as a gay woman, So like, how how does
(44:42):
that what does that look like? In your conversations about
like intimacy and your future and the sort of parameters
of your relationship as it's clearly like fueling you know,
not just your life and your family, but your art.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Yeah, we're different people post child priorities, dreams, desires, like everything,
the language that we use at home. Yeah, we are
building a family a home, you know. And just when
(45:20):
you have two people directing all of their energy towards
one specific thing and goal, it just magnifies And who
we are and who we sleep with is just or
who we have slept with in the past. It's just
not important to us. Yes, Like we go through periods
(45:41):
of time where we like joke and talk about it, right,
but for the most part, like we're not even thinking
about it.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
No, I totally get that. Yeah, I think about that
a lot with work. For me, Like I love my work.
I have always I derive so much pleasure and passion
from storytelling and creativity and energy on set and like
being in the circus and I love it. And I
have always been willing to travel anywhere, anytime, get on
(46:07):
any plane, whatever it takes, right, And now I'm like,
I don't want to do that. I'm not going to
go there. You want me to go to what absolute Alberta? No,
I'm not going for how long? Absolutely not? And I'm like, oh, oh,
this is interesting that I don't think the answer was
ever no before.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, Like what.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
A beautiful thing. As you evolve and grow to continue
to know yourself more and more.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
There's a lot more nos in this house.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, but you, but that's because your house, your home,
your family is such a yes. Yeah, and like what
a gift to find that in your life.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, no questions. Yeah, you've moved down to Florida, you know,
it's yeah, well world over here.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
And I think that there's something so cool even that
your family, you know, the experience of waiting for your
daughter is what inspired your music. Like again, all this
yes in your house is like bubbling out of you,
movies and books and an album, Like how cool? How
would you describe like beginning to answer the sort of
(47:16):
internal call to make music? And how would you describe
what kind of music you make to our friends at all?
Speaker 2 (47:23):
You're real good at bringing these back into the story.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
So I just really like it. I see it, like,
I see I see how this like like the image
I get is like that the balloon keeps getting filled
with more air for you, and I think that's really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
The art has always been the answer for me. It's
just like where I go. It's where I feel the
most comfortable. I just like making things, you know, It's
like it just makes sense. And music has always been
(48:00):
something that I've wanted to dive towards. But for the reason,
it just like it felt like an arms distance away.
And I was working on an Apple TV show called
City on Fire, and I was playing a rock star
and we recorded an album for the show. And it
was my first time really like in a studio full time.
(48:21):
And you know, on TV, you don't really have time
to like develop a character, especially on set, right you're
just chasing the clock. You're chasing the budget. Things are
moving fast, strong decisions and you have to go quick. Yeah,
to like find this character in the studio, I had
endless amount by myself in the studio finding his voice. Literally,
(48:41):
I just fell in love with the process, Like I did, they.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Get you, like a like a vocal coach or anything though,
like someone to help you like be there.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
That's what That's what I thought was what was going
to happen. But I showed up to a studio in
Brooklyn with a producer who, like I thought for sure,
like we were going to do some vocal exercises a star,
but it was like, record, here's the song, let's.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Go shut up. Oh my god, that's so much.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Pressure, but it was so much fun, like they got
It happened that way because there were not a lot
of cooks in the kitchen. It was just me and
this producer for months on end in the studio finding
these songs, and we would get all these songs said
to us, and we would get to like make our
own version of it. There was little direction at the top,
(49:27):
and he my studio in Brooklyn was hired by the
music supervisor, so we had somebody else to answer to.
But like we were pretty much running our own show, right,
and we just like formed this chemistry together, me and
this producer and half jokingly, at the end of the season,
I knew I was leaving the studio and I was heartbroken.
(49:48):
I was like, I just I don't want to leave
the studio. I was like, can we just start making music?
And he said absolutely, like I would love nothing more
than diff Wow, And we It was right around that
time we found out we were pregnant for the second time.
We were pregnant in January. That same year, we had
(50:09):
a miscarriage, and we found out that we were pregnant
around the fourth of July, and I just started writing
music about becoming a parent, and in the similar ways
that I was writing the children's book about becoming a parent,
I just found a new outlet that is almost more digestible.
(50:31):
I think for so long, I've been really searching for
a medium that I can like distill a message and
that can be consumed regularly, and that doesn't necessarily need
to be explained, you know, similar to poetry, right, you
can kind of dance around the language and with lyric
(50:54):
and with melody and frequency like it, just it hits
different and I experienced for them, I experienced music for
the first time all over again. In writing like it
just I unlocked up portal and I just started having
conversations with my daughter in these songs. And it got
(51:14):
to the point where I was I would I would
go to bed and I would dream and she would
come and we would write songs together. I would hear
all songs in my dreams, melodies and lyrics, and I
would wake up in the morning and I would write
them down, and that's how a lot of his album
was written. Wow. And originally I didn't know that I
was making it for the world. I thought I was
(51:35):
just making it for me and Bethany. We were planning
a home birth. We had a tent built in our
living room that we were going to birth in, and
we would spend a lot of our time in there
just listening to this music together and just having conversations
with the spirit of this child and our daughter. Kilber
Dove was born to the ninth song on the album
(51:58):
called Santa Madre, which is a song in Spanish about
the Holy Mother. Shortly after that, I realized that, like,
I needed to put this music out in the world.
It was it was bigger than myself. It was it
needed to be shared. Just like looking for music that
(52:21):
people can birth to. It doesn't really exist. It's strange
because I think there should be more.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
One of the most common things that happens in the world.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
But it doesn't exist really for me. Yeah, and you know,
it's something that she can always go back to and
re experience the art that helped make her, you know,
and is because of her, and you know, we're pregnant again,
and I am back in a studio here in Florida,
(52:50):
and I'm trying to make new music and I'm planning
the live show for the album that came out in April,
and and you know it's a it's a whole new
thing already. Yeah, performing live is the one thing that
I don't want to say I'm afraid of but makes
me nervous for some reason.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Well, then you have to do it.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
I have to do it.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Yes, when it feels scary, you have to do it.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
I have to do it. I think I'm planning my
first show in La and July right now.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Okay, great, you have to let me know what it
is for sure. It's so fun. I'm so excited for you.
And I mean, I love this, you know when when
our friends at home are like, well where do we
find him? Like, guys, you can go online and listen
to Bourne. You can order all of It is you
and read it to the kids in your family. You
can go on Prime Video and watch the movie. Like,
(53:45):
there's so much that it's not lost on me that
there's so much great art that's come out of you,
like saying yes to your life. I think that's really beautiful.
I just went and made a movie and you know,
post illness recovery and then like post strike, it was
like the first thing, you know, of all the things
(54:07):
I've signed on to do, it is the first thing
that like went after things started wrapping up with the strike,
and it was the most fun I've ever had on
a project. And like, I was the least stressed I've
ever been. And I was like, Wow, this this place
that I me, myself am in right now. This is
a nice place to make art from.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
And this is the longest I haven't been on set
since I started. Yeah, I miss it so intensely right now.
I feel like my entire sense of community is based
off of what we do. Yeah, the Carnie lifestyle and
these relationships with the crew guys, and just like you know,
(54:48):
we show up through pitch a tent, fallen and out
of love and kind of all disperse. And I haven't
had it in so long, and I'm done back to work.
Short answer here.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
Yeah, I get it. By the way, I'm laughing because
my like do not disturb turned off on my phone
and my director from the movie I just did just
texted me. I was like that's not an accident like that,
Like energetically, I'm talking about how nice it was to
go make this piece of art. And now Jeff's like, hey,
because I do want to be mindful of your time,
I'm gonna I'm going to ask you my last and
(55:23):
favorite question. And this could be the live show, it
could be the you know, impending birth of your second baby,
it could be something else completely. I don't know. But
when you sort of look at your life right now
and how good it feels, what feels like you're work
in progress.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
It really is just the family building. We want a
whole pack of cads, you know. Yeah, Like we feel
like we're just getting started, and we know the second
one is on the way, and we want three and
four god willing. And it's just about being the best,
most inspiring dad as I can be, and like doing
(56:05):
the work to show them it's possible that there are
no limits in this life.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
Yeah, they don't have to fit into a box.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Oh not at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Yeah, best dad, I could be beautiful. Thank you, thank you,
This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
This is such a nice chat. I'm so glad we
got to hang today.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Yeah, totally
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