December 12, 2022 • 26 mins
Grab a bottle of Fruitopia and your Sony Walkman, because Christine and David are taking us deep into the behind the scenes depths of the dude ranch.
Being on Nickelodeon before it was cool, playing second fiddle to the ‘Network kids,’ and…oh, did we mention…having your first love be your co-star! You read that right, Christine and David had an on set romance! But they haven’t spoken about the break-up…until now. AWKWARD!
We won’t spoil any more except to say that hearts were broken and the only thing worse than a first love break-up is watching your Tamagotchi Die.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey Dude the Nineties Called with Christine Taylor and David Lasher?
Is this on? I can you hear you? Okay, let's
just welcome all the listeners to the very first episode
of the Hey Dude the Nineties Called podcast. I'm David
Lasher and I'm here with my co hosts. I am
(00:21):
Christine Taylor, who's one of my dearest friends, who, uh,
we go way way back, and we want to take
you through the whole experience of Hey Dude, and then
use it as uh sort of a springboard to jump
back and look back at the decade of the nineties,
which were really fun for both of us. A lot
(00:44):
went on for us in the nineties, yeah, and for
many people, So it would be great to connect those dots. Yeah.
I feel like, you know, people like our age are
nostalgic for it, and you know, young adults are kind
of fascinated with it. And we will have an incredible
lineup of guests and from musicians, actors, athletes. I mean,
(01:09):
my gosh, we get some of the Chicago Bulls on there.
We're gonna go real nineties all nineties all um. Anyway,
I just uh, you know, Christine and I hadn't seen
each other since the Haydud reunion that Nickelodeon did in
(01:30):
Austin for their festival, and that was years ago. Well
that I mean, we were kind of laughing then because
that was a twenty five year reunion and we were
all like, how are we still here talking about this
twenty five years later, this little show that we shot
into sun Arizona Um. And so it was a great
(01:51):
time for us all to reconnect because as we've talked
about ore at the time when the show ended, as
we talked about the nineties a little bit, it was
before cell phones. If we all just had our home numbers,
thought there were no emails. You were calling my mom
sale New York and we're like, let's meet, let's get
(02:12):
let's and we both moved to l A. But so
we had home phone numbers for everybody, but we didn't
have There was no social media, there were no cell phones.
So we it was a way for us all to reconnect.
And that sort of you know, is when we reconnected
yea years later, it's so crazy because you know, you
have done so much great work since then, and and
(02:34):
and I've moved on and you know, done stuff but
like there's this fan base for Hey Dude that literally
on a weekly basis. There's some people that come over
to me, and they have to be in the right
age range, right, Like if you weren't, if you weren't
between six and twelve, you don't know what hey Dude is,
But if you were, it meant a lot to them.
(02:57):
And and I'll just say like Steam came over to
my house last night, hung out with my wife, Chill
and my kids, and it was like no time had
passed and and the time we spent those couple of
years in Tucson, and we'll get into it, Uh, we
were like a family. I mean we were you know,
I turned seventeen on the said you were seventeen, and
(03:20):
we were basically on our own living at that hotel.
And and like I feel like, uh, you know, like
we're family and I know you no matter how many
years have gone by, like we know each other and
it's it's a comfortability. Yeah. Like that was my first
big time trip away from home. I had never been
(03:41):
on the West Coast. I'd never been to Arizona, and
it was like it was sort of a pre college experience.
I think some of us then went on to go
to college. You and I were not those two people
that went. We did get into y U Tish. We
both were. Yes, we deferred. We deferred our college years
for our careers. Um. But we those years when we
(04:05):
look back, I think we think. I think of some
of the most I cherished those like and we didn't
know what we had either at the time. We just
didn't know what it was. Yeah, we didn't know anyone
was watching. It was like the beginning of cable. I
mean MTV was big, but like this was Nickelodeon's first
scripted show, so we were like in his bubble. Absolutely. Yeah,
(04:29):
Nickelodeon was before Nickelodeon was cool, that's for sure. Like
Nickelodeon was. They had some sketch shows and some game
shows on and um. And I remember auditioning for it.
I came in from Pennsylvania and to New York City
to audition for the show, and I remember I remember
meeting you there audition for Brad first. Really, yes, I
(04:50):
auditioned for Brad for Kelly's role first, and then they
called me back and said, let's read you for Melody.
Oh you're so melody. You could not have been Brad. Honestly,
it's it's you know, the Archie comics, Betty and Veronica,
and Betty was the sweetheart who you know, and then
Veronica was the you know, kind of bitchy rich one.
(05:15):
You could not have been Brad. All right. Well, I
I really thought I nailed it, but I loved Melody. Um.
But yeah, that was really how we that was. We
we all got sort of put together in the middle
of nowhere. Um. And there were some locals that were
hired as well that you know, I hadn't been in
(05:36):
show business before, but um, you know that was really
like the beginning for us. It was the beginning. You
had already been auditioning a little bit. I was. I
had done some commercials. Um. But yeah, we really had
quite an adventure. Yeah. It was interesting for me because,
like I was telling Jill today, my wife Jill, that um,
(05:57):
I had I had done commercials and then they they
had flown me out to l A too, too. Um
uh play a role on Who's Who's the Boss like
a series regular and and you know, I was one
of my favorite shows. I didn't know that, you know,
they would fly you to l A and then you
wouldn't get it. But Alyssa Milano happened to be dating
(06:21):
Brian Bloom who was on some soap who my roommate
ended up my roommate in l A. Martha Martha was
on that soap opera with Brian Bloom. That was her
love interest. Seriously all in the family. But the kid
testing against me was Scott Blooms and I never had
a chance. But then I did a pilot for NBC
(06:44):
which didn't go, which I also was like, what do
you mean it didn't go? Uh? And then hey, dude,
was this huge success and it was the least likely
thing that I thought would be. Yeah, I think for
us it was working on this show. Then we went
off into our lives and it was as the years
went by that you know, it was like one year
(07:05):
out of it, two years out of it. We would
be in l A at the time, and you know,
this was like well before streaming and reruns. It was
like a show that was on once a week, So
it took a while for the run of the show
to happen over the course of a few years. And
when we moved to l A, obviously separately, but are
(07:26):
there were a lot of friends that we knew who
had never heard of it, and then um that people
just would start coming out of the woodwork. Like you said,
I would start to have people coming up to me
in grocery stores and saying, I grew up watching you.
And do you remember though, they flew us to do
the Kid's Choice Awards. Yes, And I think we didn't
(07:47):
have any idea people were watching this show. Like we
were having so much fun, and we were so you know,
deep into just the filming of it and our friendships.
And and then we got to l A and we
went to Universal and we showed up stage and we
were like, wow, people are watching this. Yeah, and yet
we still I still felt like we were not fully
(08:10):
welcomed at the party yet, Like we weren't a network
TV show. We weren't on Saved by the Bell, but
we were like Saved by the Bell adjacent right right, Well,
they were a morning show, so let's not find it
was NBC, and you know, and so I felt like
we were so we were always kind of I always
felt like the network kids were so cool, like the
step Child, Yeah, like the Hogan family, the brothers. It
(08:34):
wasn't Jason, but it was like the brothers from the
Hogan family were at that awards show and we got
to meet those people and I was like, they're so cool.
They're like, if hey, dude, were done today. Though you
(08:55):
know you have these you know, Selena Gomez and I
car Elid. I don't know. I think about like, if
this had happened today, you'd have probably a record deal,
you know, And it was it's just those a Nickelodeon
or a Disney show or a cable show today means
a lot more than it did at the time. Yeah, absolutely,
(09:19):
it was. It was. Yeah, it was a different time,
and I feel like we for us, we were working
in this bubble, but we were really just like being
kids together. And you know, we talked about this last
night and Jill, your wife, was saying, you guys should
talk about this, and you should talk about the fact
that you dated on the show, which we never talked
(09:42):
about before. I can't, but you know what, I was
nervous to even ask you if you wanted to talk
about it. But we're you know, we're both happily married
and move. You know, we're adults. But yeah, there was
we we were you were my second boyfriend, like I
had my high school sweetheart, and then you were my
second boyfriend and you were my first real love. Like
(10:02):
it was full of teen angst and everything you can imagine.
We get asked this all the time, and in Austin
we were both like, no, nobody dated on. Yeah, they said,
were there any you know, relationships that went on? And
I think it was really directed towards us, but it um,
we didn't we we didn't own it at that point.
Now I think we just need to own it, right.
(10:23):
I just honestly, I remember, and I told you this
last night, like you and I bonded over like humor
and laughter. I just remember we would just make fun
of everything and everyone in like, you know, in a
lighthearted way, but just we we just laughed for two
years straight. Yeah. I think that I'm gonna take a
(10:44):
little credit here because we talked about this last night
as well. But you I didn't quite understand sarcasm when
you met me. I think and I helped shape I'm
going to take a little credity. I think I helped
shape a little bit of your sense of humor. I
was so naive and my son, Casey is the same way,
(11:07):
like smart in certain ways and completely ignorant in other ways.
You remember your mom made that joke. Well, you reminded
me of it, but now and then I remembered my
mom was talking about you know, my mom would come
and visit us, and she was talking about something, and
she just said, no, he was like a knight and
shining armor who came riding up to the house on
his white horse. And David just stopped and said, really,
(11:31):
he came to your house on a horse, Like you
didn't understand the nuance of a metaphor or I didn't
know expressions, sarcasm saying any of that stuff. Oh God,
bless you. It was so good though, we really like
we had a great time. We were very close. We were,
and I think it was it became, you know, as
(11:52):
we dated and hung out and then broke up and
still had to work together, which was not fun. And
you don't have a lot of memories of it, but
I do. I have memories of you being really angry
with me during certain episodes that we shot. Yeah, and
I take full responsibility. I was terrible. I was so
non confrontational. I probably had no idea how to talk
(12:14):
or deal with it. And so how great is it
that we can now unpack it all, Yeah, and and
laugh about it. Yeah. I had no idea that I
went off on you the way you said, but I do,
you know whatever, Everyone has that first love that crushes
them at some point, even though it wasn't intentional or
(12:37):
you didn't realize it. Like I remember a summer when
we were off, that first summer, I was in the Hamptons,
like I think, I was claim to visit you, though
I went with you for part of some of that trip,
like I don't. I visited you over certain periods of
time because we did really try to make it work.
I remember we kept trying to find our way to
(12:58):
each other. We did, and we kept we kept pulling
it back together. But then you had this high school
boyfriend that you know, kept winning national championships and I
couldn't compete with he was a basketball player. Yes, but
I didn't know that. I mean, who knows, I don't
know you. You then had found your way with the
ladies too, So it was all fine. It worked out.
(13:19):
It was and everyone goes through it, and uh, and
I think we were. You and I had a friendship
that was above and beyond anything else, you know what,
I mean, like we shared so much that that time
in Tucson. We were living at the Radison Hotel. You know,
(13:39):
we this southern family from Knoxville, Tennessee. The bag Wells
were producing and directing the whole thing. The dry everyone. Yeah,
it's you couldn't write the story of the weird stuff
that was going on there in you know, sort of
um under the umbrella of it being the sweet Innocent
(14:02):
Kids TV show. I mean there were like crew members
having affairs with like there was going on that we
were just so sort of very naive, very oblivious. We
probably heard about it, but didn't realize what was going on.
We didn't have we we both had our driver's license,
but we didn't have a rental car to take anywhere,
so we would have you know, the van driver take us. Um.
(14:28):
I give you full credit for helping my music taste
grow because all I had was like soundtracks to Lay
Miss and Phantom of the Opera until that point, I
was a Broadway musical nerd. And you on one of
our days off because we got this per diem. Remember
it felt like it was we were like we get
some cash spent on our food and ore and are
(14:51):
like we can go shopping with this and play. It
felt like monopoly money. It wasn't a ton of money,
but it did feel like that to us at seventeen
years old, and David took us to Price Club and
you you were like, you got to get a boom
box and you gotta buy C d s and I'm
going to give you a good music catalog to get started.
The per diem, whether it was like three dollars a week,
(15:15):
whatever it was, our parents didn't touch that. That was
our money and it was hash. We would get an
end and get that today. How about. Yeah, First of all,
a lot of what went on would not fly today.
We were literally kids living in a hotel with no
supervision other than you know, this production crew that you know,
(15:40):
they were doing their own thing. But I remember that
your birthstone was ruby, and I would save up my
pre I would save up my per diem to go
buy her a ruby necklace or a ruby I'm going
to cry, like literally right now. That was head over
(16:01):
heels for you. We were head over heels for each
It was total infatuation for sure. And the long distance
basketball boyfriend. It was hard because it was like there
was we weren't technically together, but he was my first
love and so but you were. I was so infatuated
with you and loved you so much. And I think
(16:22):
it was probably the fact that we were working together
and living together in this like we were with each
other twenty four hours a day, seven days a week,
and that's not how young love thrives. Like you need space,
you need space to be your own person. Yeah, we
became like like best friends. It bled over into what
(16:43):
could have been what was a romantic relationship. But you know,
I think the friendship what was more important looking back
on it, right, like we had such great times together
that whatever went on outside of that is less important
than all the fun and laughter and professionalism. I mean, gosh,
(17:06):
I remember I remember the wardrobe girl yelling at me
for not hanging up my clothes. And you know, and
by the way, let me just say that Graham yost
Our head writer, became, you know, a tremendous screenwriter. He
wrote Speed, the movie Speed right after we've we finished.
And David Brisbane, who played Mr Ernst, was like a
(17:28):
classically trained theater actor, Shakespearean actor, right, and then you
have I was a punk really like the wardrobe girl
screamed to me and goes you hang up your clothes
in your dressing room, and I remember thinking, I don't
have my clothes at home. Okay. I mean they were
(17:49):
like life lessons, Yes, yes, life lessons grow a lot
of growing pains, um and really like just I still
those memory stay forever embedded. I mean, those those moments
for us, Yeah, especially when I see you, like they
all come flooding back, you know, Annie and Ron and
(18:09):
every makeup and hair and everyone that was surrounded us,
all those people from Tennessee, Randy and Lord Lordie, Lord E.
Lane is forty. The fact that you can remember these
things that I can't remember things from like last week,
but I am. I remember those like it was yesterday.
Remember the bumps on the road in Tucson. Like we
(18:33):
had this guy Cotton who was probably eighty years old
driving us, and he would there were these big bumps
and he would fly over the bumps. Uh, you know,
driving through this beautiful desert. And Tucson at the time
was like a small town. And we would go to
Bobby McGhee and that Hamburger, that fifties Hamburger plays. We
(18:55):
just made that place our home and uh, and I
think that all came off in the show that we
were having fun. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable thirty years later
that we have a podcast together. And I honestly I
brought this to Christine and and and let's be let's
be honest that I was so grateful to be working
(19:16):
with I heart and this team here who they're the
best at what they do. And when I pitched the
podcast about a look back on the decade of the nineties, um,
they Amy Sugarman and her team said to me, you
need a female co host, and uh. I gave a
list of people that I had worked with that would
(19:39):
be relevant to this show. And Amy called me back
and she said, Christine Taylor, Uh, if you can get hurt,
we have a show. And I hadn't even mentioned it
to you, and I don't think I had talked to
you a few years and then but this, Yeah, this
(20:03):
is what really makes me laugh, is that we hadn't
talked in a few years. But we did all have
each other's numbers, so it wouldn't have been strange to
get a message here and there from somebody and you
I got I saw text coming with your name, and
I think I was like dropping a kid off at
school or and and and then I saw my phone
ring and it was David's number, and I was like,
(20:24):
what he's And then I saw an email and I
was like somebody, somebody must have died, like someone on
the show. I was blowing up your phone because like, why,
there's just something happened, Like there's something big happened, and
this is this is the big thing that happened. You
literally just were you were so excited. I'm sorry, I scared.
You know, it was a minute. It was a minute
(20:45):
because I texted you right back. But and we we
got on the phone very quickly. But and I just
love the way you presented it to because you said
you can no pressure and you can completely say no.
But how fun would it be for us to go
back and sort of look at this time together and
then look at the nineties, which is really where we
(21:07):
as young adults grew up through that decade. I mean
that is like a lot of our work, you know,
is very sort of um iconic nineties, like movies we
did and TV shows that we did. UM. And I
just thought it was a moment where I just thought,
because I'm also and you know, for the listeners out there.
I am not the biggest podcast listener, but you are.
(21:29):
And I had to say that. I was like, I
listened to a couple of podcasts and I enjoy them,
but I don't know that I'm have the skill set
for it. And You're like, you're such a great talker,
You're so funny, and and I just thought, how fun
would it be to be able to do this with
you and just sort of take a trip down memory
lane from the time we were together, from when we
(21:49):
like parted ways and where our careers went and our
lives and the intersecting friends and people we still know
to this day, who we met through each other and
separately from each other. Um, and you caught me in
one of those moments where I was like, that sounds
like so much fun. It was good. It was good timing.
(22:12):
And yes, I mean both of us are credentials for
the nineties. They were good years for us. Yes, And
we have a lot of friends from that time period
and we will um call on all of them and
really have a great look back on the show. And
I knew, listen, you're just as beautiful and funny and
(22:33):
sweet as you were when we were seventeen, and I'm
so grateful to have the opportunity to do the show
with you, and uh, I think it's gonna be a
lot of fun. We'll start, you know, we'll start with
the Hey Dude Reunion and then we'll jump off and
go deep dive into the decade of the nineties and
have some incredible guests. Yeah, what were some of the
(22:54):
things that you remember, like iconically nineties when you think, Like,
to me, the boom box was a big thing, but
that was probably also eighties, and I was just way
behind the time on getting a boom box. Honestly, when
my kids asked me what my life was like in
the nineties, I tell them to watch the movie Swingers,
and you know, Vince Vaughan playing sega hockey with the
(23:17):
pink dot guy coming to the door for delivering food
and they're going from party to party and strapping on
the club, the club on their car and there's ten
cars driving through the Hollywood Hills. They're going on auditions.
I mean, that was my life. And checking messages because
we didn't cell phones or pagers, right, people had pagers
(23:37):
if you were really hardcore in the business. No, I
didn't have, but you could check your machine, you could
check your answer issues. I would go to pay phones
during movies to see if I got a call back
for the audition. Like I would go into the pay
phone like to see because I had gone on a
big audition, and like that that was what our lives
(23:57):
were like. That is it is. That is a great
way to look at it, because we did show our
son Swingers pretty recently and he could appreciate it for
an entirely different reason, like he just enjoyed it as
a as a movie and a period of time. But
we lived it like I think we were the last
generation that didn't have the digital distraction or convenience. I mean,
(24:20):
obviously you know cell phones. I can't imagine living without it.
But there was something kind of innocent about it. And
you know, when you get into the two thousands, these
kids had a lot of screens in their faces, access
to everything. Do you remember did you have the Thomas
Guide to drive around? Because we didn't have GPS, we
(24:43):
didn't have phones that gave us the breakfass. So this
giant and this was very probably l a specific, but
it was just it was because it was just a
full fledged like a map out how do I get
to Fox? And then I have to get back to
and turn And I had my giant Thomas Guide in
(25:06):
the back of the car and now I literally can't
drive home without putting it in my ways. I literally
can't even even if I know exactly where I'm going,
I need a digital apt to tell me where to go.
I don't now, I'm kidding, I do. I'm so used
to ways. I have an issue with ways. I have
(25:27):
an issue with it. Took me to a wrong address
once and I'm off of ways. It does, it makes,
it will try and make you make a left into
a major intersection, like I scream in my ways. But
she has a very friendly voice. So let's jump off
and uh welcome all the listeners to the Hey Dude,
the nineties called podcast. And I am so happy to
(25:49):
be doing this with you, and I'm so excited for
the future episodes. This is going to be the best.
We have a lot to talk about and a lot
of fun things to explore or and like like we
set a trip down memory lane for us, but for
the listeners to hope right now, I think a lot
of interesting guests that we'll get on here that also
(26:11):
want to go back and and talk about that time.
Yeah for sure. So January nine will be the drop
of our first official episode, and uh, we are so
grateful for everyone that's listening, and we hope to take
you on this really fun journey. Yes, hey dude, let's go.
(26:32):
Let's go back scrunches and boom boxes, Blockbuster cars, Blockbuster God,
I missed Blockbuster. Oh that was fun. Alright, alright, well
see you guys, j Well you'll hear us January nine. Yes,
thanks for listening. Make sure to subscribe and give us
five stars, and please follow us on Instagram at Hey
(26:52):
dude the nineties called See you next time.
Hey Dude the Nineties Called with Christine Taylor and David Lasher?
Is this on? I can you hear you? Okay, let's
just welcome all the listeners to the very first episode
of the Hey Dude the Nineties Called podcast. I'm David
Lasher and I'm here with my co hosts. I am
(00:21):
Christine Taylor, who's one of my dearest friends, who, uh,
we go way way back, and we want to take
you through the whole experience of Hey Dude, and then
use it as uh sort of a springboard to jump
back and look back at the decade of the nineties,
which were really fun for both of us. A lot
(00:44):
went on for us in the nineties, yeah, and for
many people, So it would be great to connect those dots. Yeah.
I feel like, you know, people like our age are
nostalgic for it, and you know, young adults are kind
of fascinated with it. And we will have an incredible
lineup of guests and from musicians, actors, athletes. I mean,
(01:09):
my gosh, we get some of the Chicago Bulls on there.
We're gonna go real nineties all nineties all um. Anyway,
I just uh, you know, Christine and I hadn't seen
each other since the Haydud reunion that Nickelodeon did in
(01:30):
Austin for their festival, and that was years ago. Well
that I mean, we were kind of laughing then because
that was a twenty five year reunion and we were
all like, how are we still here talking about this
twenty five years later, this little show that we shot
into sun Arizona Um. And so it was a great
(01:51):
time for us all to reconnect because as we've talked
about ore at the time when the show ended, as
we talked about the nineties a little bit, it was
before cell phones. If we all just had our home numbers,
thought there were no emails. You were calling my mom
sale New York and we're like, let's meet, let's get
(02:12):
let's and we both moved to l A. But so
we had home phone numbers for everybody, but we didn't
have There was no social media, there were no cell phones.
So we it was a way for us all to reconnect.
And that sort of you know, is when we reconnected
yea years later, it's so crazy because you know, you
have done so much great work since then, and and
(02:34):
and I've moved on and you know, done stuff but
like there's this fan base for Hey Dude that literally
on a weekly basis. There's some people that come over
to me, and they have to be in the right
age range, right, Like if you weren't, if you weren't
between six and twelve, you don't know what hey Dude is,
But if you were, it meant a lot to them.
(02:57):
And and I'll just say like Steam came over to
my house last night, hung out with my wife, Chill
and my kids, and it was like no time had
passed and and the time we spent those couple of
years in Tucson, and we'll get into it, Uh, we
were like a family. I mean we were you know,
I turned seventeen on the said you were seventeen, and
(03:20):
we were basically on our own living at that hotel.
And and like I feel like, uh, you know, like
we're family and I know you no matter how many
years have gone by, like we know each other and
it's it's a comfortability. Yeah. Like that was my first
big time trip away from home. I had never been
(03:41):
on the West Coast. I'd never been to Arizona, and
it was like it was sort of a pre college experience.
I think some of us then went on to go
to college. You and I were not those two people
that went. We did get into y U Tish. We
both were. Yes, we deferred. We deferred our college years
for our careers. Um. But we those years when we
(04:05):
look back, I think we think. I think of some
of the most I cherished those like and we didn't
know what we had either at the time. We just
didn't know what it was. Yeah, we didn't know anyone
was watching. It was like the beginning of cable. I
mean MTV was big, but like this was Nickelodeon's first
scripted show, so we were like in his bubble. Absolutely. Yeah,
(04:29):
Nickelodeon was before Nickelodeon was cool, that's for sure. Like
Nickelodeon was. They had some sketch shows and some game
shows on and um. And I remember auditioning for it.
I came in from Pennsylvania and to New York City
to audition for the show, and I remember I remember
meeting you there audition for Brad first. Really, yes, I
(04:50):
auditioned for Brad for Kelly's role first, and then they
called me back and said, let's read you for Melody.
Oh you're so melody. You could not have been Brad. Honestly,
it's it's you know, the Archie comics, Betty and Veronica,
and Betty was the sweetheart who you know, and then
Veronica was the you know, kind of bitchy rich one.
(05:15):
You could not have been Brad. All right. Well, I
I really thought I nailed it, but I loved Melody. Um.
But yeah, that was really how we that was. We
we all got sort of put together in the middle
of nowhere. Um. And there were some locals that were
hired as well that you know, I hadn't been in
(05:36):
show business before, but um, you know that was really
like the beginning for us. It was the beginning. You
had already been auditioning a little bit. I was. I
had done some commercials. Um. But yeah, we really had
quite an adventure. Yeah. It was interesting for me because,
like I was telling Jill today, my wife Jill, that um,
(05:57):
I had I had done commercials and then they they
had flown me out to l A too, too. Um
uh play a role on Who's Who's the Boss like
a series regular and and you know, I was one
of my favorite shows. I didn't know that, you know,
they would fly you to l A and then you
wouldn't get it. But Alyssa Milano happened to be dating
(06:21):
Brian Bloom who was on some soap who my roommate
ended up my roommate in l A. Martha Martha was
on that soap opera with Brian Bloom. That was her
love interest. Seriously all in the family. But the kid
testing against me was Scott Blooms and I never had
a chance. But then I did a pilot for NBC
(06:44):
which didn't go, which I also was like, what do
you mean it didn't go? Uh? And then hey, dude,
was this huge success and it was the least likely
thing that I thought would be. Yeah, I think for
us it was working on this show. Then we went
off into our lives and it was as the years
went by that you know, it was like one year
(07:05):
out of it, two years out of it. We would
be in l A at the time, and you know,
this was like well before streaming and reruns. It was
like a show that was on once a week, So
it took a while for the run of the show
to happen over the course of a few years. And
when we moved to l A, obviously separately, but are
(07:26):
there were a lot of friends that we knew who
had never heard of it, and then um that people
just would start coming out of the woodwork. Like you said,
I would start to have people coming up to me
in grocery stores and saying, I grew up watching you.
And do you remember though, they flew us to do
the Kid's Choice Awards. Yes, And I think we didn't
(07:47):
have any idea people were watching this show. Like we
were having so much fun, and we were so you know,
deep into just the filming of it and our friendships.
And and then we got to l A and we
went to Universal and we showed up stage and we
were like, wow, people are watching this. Yeah, and yet
we still I still felt like we were not fully
(08:10):
welcomed at the party yet, Like we weren't a network
TV show. We weren't on Saved by the Bell, but
we were like Saved by the Bell adjacent right right, Well,
they were a morning show, so let's not find it
was NBC, and you know, and so I felt like
we were so we were always kind of I always
felt like the network kids were so cool, like the
step Child, Yeah, like the Hogan family, the brothers. It
(08:34):
wasn't Jason, but it was like the brothers from the
Hogan family were at that awards show and we got
to meet those people and I was like, they're so cool.
They're like, if hey, dude, were done today. Though you
(08:55):
know you have these you know, Selena Gomez and I
car Elid. I don't know. I think about like, if
this had happened today, you'd have probably a record deal,
you know, And it was it's just those a Nickelodeon
or a Disney show or a cable show today means
a lot more than it did at the time. Yeah, absolutely,
(09:19):
it was. It was. Yeah, it was a different time,
and I feel like we for us, we were working
in this bubble, but we were really just like being
kids together. And you know, we talked about this last
night and Jill, your wife, was saying, you guys should
talk about this, and you should talk about the fact
that you dated on the show, which we never talked
(09:42):
about before. I can't, but you know what, I was
nervous to even ask you if you wanted to talk
about it. But we're you know, we're both happily married
and move. You know, we're adults. But yeah, there was
we we were you were my second boyfriend, like I
had my high school sweetheart, and then you were my
second boyfriend and you were my first real love. Like
(10:02):
it was full of teen angst and everything you can imagine.
We get asked this all the time, and in Austin
we were both like, no, nobody dated on. Yeah, they said,
were there any you know, relationships that went on? And
I think it was really directed towards us, but it um,
we didn't we we didn't own it at that point.
Now I think we just need to own it, right.
(10:23):
I just honestly, I remember, and I told you this
last night, like you and I bonded over like humor
and laughter. I just remember we would just make fun
of everything and everyone in like, you know, in a
lighthearted way, but just we we just laughed for two
years straight. Yeah. I think that I'm gonna take a
(10:44):
little credit here because we talked about this last night
as well. But you I didn't quite understand sarcasm when
you met me. I think and I helped shape I'm
going to take a little credity. I think I helped
shape a little bit of your sense of humor. I
was so naive and my son, Casey is the same way,
(11:07):
like smart in certain ways and completely ignorant in other ways.
You remember your mom made that joke. Well, you reminded
me of it, but now and then I remembered my
mom was talking about you know, my mom would come
and visit us, and she was talking about something, and
she just said, no, he was like a knight and
shining armor who came riding up to the house on
his white horse. And David just stopped and said, really,
(11:31):
he came to your house on a horse, Like you
didn't understand the nuance of a metaphor or I didn't
know expressions, sarcasm saying any of that stuff. Oh God,
bless you. It was so good though, we really like
we had a great time. We were very close. We were,
and I think it was it became, you know, as
(11:52):
we dated and hung out and then broke up and
still had to work together, which was not fun. And
you don't have a lot of memories of it, but
I do. I have memories of you being really angry
with me during certain episodes that we shot. Yeah, and
I take full responsibility. I was terrible. I was so
non confrontational. I probably had no idea how to talk
(12:14):
or deal with it. And so how great is it
that we can now unpack it all, Yeah, and and
laugh about it. Yeah. I had no idea that I
went off on you the way you said, but I do,
you know whatever, Everyone has that first love that crushes
them at some point, even though it wasn't intentional or
(12:37):
you didn't realize it. Like I remember a summer when
we were off, that first summer, I was in the Hamptons,
like I think, I was claim to visit you, though
I went with you for part of some of that trip,
like I don't. I visited you over certain periods of
time because we did really try to make it work.
I remember we kept trying to find our way to
(12:58):
each other. We did, and we kept we kept pulling
it back together. But then you had this high school
boyfriend that you know, kept winning national championships and I
couldn't compete with he was a basketball player. Yes, but
I didn't know that. I mean, who knows, I don't
know you. You then had found your way with the
ladies too, So it was all fine. It worked out.
(13:19):
It was and everyone goes through it, and uh, and
I think we were. You and I had a friendship
that was above and beyond anything else, you know what,
I mean, like we shared so much that that time
in Tucson. We were living at the Radison Hotel. You know,
(13:39):
we this southern family from Knoxville, Tennessee. The bag Wells
were producing and directing the whole thing. The dry everyone. Yeah,
it's you couldn't write the story of the weird stuff
that was going on there in you know, sort of
um under the umbrella of it being the sweet Innocent
(14:02):
Kids TV show. I mean there were like crew members
having affairs with like there was going on that we
were just so sort of very naive, very oblivious. We
probably heard about it, but didn't realize what was going on.
We didn't have we we both had our driver's license,
but we didn't have a rental car to take anywhere,
so we would have you know, the van driver take us. Um.
(14:28):
I give you full credit for helping my music taste
grow because all I had was like soundtracks to Lay
Miss and Phantom of the Opera until that point, I
was a Broadway musical nerd. And you on one of
our days off because we got this per diem. Remember
it felt like it was we were like we get
some cash spent on our food and ore and are
(14:51):
like we can go shopping with this and play. It
felt like monopoly money. It wasn't a ton of money,
but it did feel like that to us at seventeen
years old, and David took us to Price Club and
you you were like, you got to get a boom
box and you gotta buy C d s and I'm
going to give you a good music catalog to get started.
The per diem, whether it was like three dollars a week,
(15:15):
whatever it was, our parents didn't touch that. That was
our money and it was hash. We would get an
end and get that today. How about. Yeah, First of all,
a lot of what went on would not fly today.
We were literally kids living in a hotel with no
supervision other than you know, this production crew that you know,
(15:40):
they were doing their own thing. But I remember that
your birthstone was ruby, and I would save up my
pre I would save up my per diem to go
buy her a ruby necklace or a ruby I'm going
to cry, like literally right now. That was head over
(16:01):
heels for you. We were head over heels for each
It was total infatuation for sure. And the long distance
basketball boyfriend. It was hard because it was like there
was we weren't technically together, but he was my first
love and so but you were. I was so infatuated
with you and loved you so much. And I think
(16:22):
it was probably the fact that we were working together
and living together in this like we were with each
other twenty four hours a day, seven days a week,
and that's not how young love thrives. Like you need space,
you need space to be your own person. Yeah, we
became like like best friends. It bled over into what
(16:43):
could have been what was a romantic relationship. But you know,
I think the friendship what was more important looking back
on it, right, like we had such great times together
that whatever went on outside of that is less important
than all the fun and laughter and professionalism. I mean, gosh,
(17:06):
I remember I remember the wardrobe girl yelling at me
for not hanging up my clothes. And you know, and
by the way, let me just say that Graham yost
Our head writer, became, you know, a tremendous screenwriter. He
wrote Speed, the movie Speed right after we've we finished.
And David Brisbane, who played Mr Ernst, was like a
(17:28):
classically trained theater actor, Shakespearean actor, right, and then you
have I was a punk really like the wardrobe girl
screamed to me and goes you hang up your clothes
in your dressing room, and I remember thinking, I don't
have my clothes at home. Okay. I mean they were
(17:49):
like life lessons, Yes, yes, life lessons grow a lot
of growing pains, um and really like just I still
those memory stay forever embedded. I mean, those those moments
for us, Yeah, especially when I see you, like they
all come flooding back, you know, Annie and Ron and
(18:09):
every makeup and hair and everyone that was surrounded us,
all those people from Tennessee, Randy and Lord Lordie, Lord E.
Lane is forty. The fact that you can remember these
things that I can't remember things from like last week,
but I am. I remember those like it was yesterday.
Remember the bumps on the road in Tucson. Like we
(18:33):
had this guy Cotton who was probably eighty years old
driving us, and he would there were these big bumps
and he would fly over the bumps. Uh, you know,
driving through this beautiful desert. And Tucson at the time
was like a small town. And we would go to
Bobby McGhee and that Hamburger, that fifties Hamburger plays. We
(18:55):
just made that place our home and uh, and I
think that all came off in the show that we
were having fun. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable thirty years later
that we have a podcast together. And I honestly I
brought this to Christine and and and let's be let's
be honest that I was so grateful to be working
(19:16):
with I heart and this team here who they're the
best at what they do. And when I pitched the
podcast about a look back on the decade of the nineties, um,
they Amy Sugarman and her team said to me, you
need a female co host, and uh. I gave a
list of people that I had worked with that would
(19:39):
be relevant to this show. And Amy called me back
and she said, Christine Taylor, Uh, if you can get hurt,
we have a show. And I hadn't even mentioned it
to you, and I don't think I had talked to
you a few years and then but this, Yeah, this
(20:03):
is what really makes me laugh, is that we hadn't
talked in a few years. But we did all have
each other's numbers, so it wouldn't have been strange to
get a message here and there from somebody and you
I got I saw text coming with your name, and
I think I was like dropping a kid off at
school or and and and then I saw my phone
ring and it was David's number, and I was like,
(20:24):
what he's And then I saw an email and I
was like somebody, somebody must have died, like someone on
the show. I was blowing up your phone because like, why,
there's just something happened, Like there's something big happened, and
this is this is the big thing that happened. You
literally just were you were so excited. I'm sorry, I scared.
You know, it was a minute. It was a minute
(20:45):
because I texted you right back. But and we we
got on the phone very quickly. But and I just
love the way you presented it to because you said
you can no pressure and you can completely say no.
But how fun would it be for us to go
back and sort of look at this time together and
then look at the nineties, which is really where we
(21:07):
as young adults grew up through that decade. I mean
that is like a lot of our work, you know,
is very sort of um iconic nineties, like movies we
did and TV shows that we did. UM. And I
just thought it was a moment where I just thought,
because I'm also and you know, for the listeners out there.
I am not the biggest podcast listener, but you are.
(21:29):
And I had to say that. I was like, I
listened to a couple of podcasts and I enjoy them,
but I don't know that I'm have the skill set
for it. And You're like, you're such a great talker,
You're so funny, and and I just thought, how fun
would it be to be able to do this with
you and just sort of take a trip down memory
lane from the time we were together, from when we
(21:49):
like parted ways and where our careers went and our
lives and the intersecting friends and people we still know
to this day, who we met through each other and
separately from each other. Um, and you caught me in
one of those moments where I was like, that sounds
like so much fun. It was good. It was good timing.
(22:12):
And yes, I mean both of us are credentials for
the nineties. They were good years for us. Yes, And
we have a lot of friends from that time period
and we will um call on all of them and
really have a great look back on the show. And
I knew, listen, you're just as beautiful and funny and
(22:33):
sweet as you were when we were seventeen, and I'm
so grateful to have the opportunity to do the show
with you, and uh, I think it's gonna be a
lot of fun. We'll start, you know, we'll start with
the Hey Dude Reunion and then we'll jump off and
go deep dive into the decade of the nineties and
have some incredible guests. Yeah, what were some of the
(22:54):
things that you remember, like iconically nineties when you think, Like,
to me, the boom box was a big thing, but
that was probably also eighties, and I was just way
behind the time on getting a boom box. Honestly, when
my kids asked me what my life was like in
the nineties, I tell them to watch the movie Swingers,
and you know, Vince Vaughan playing sega hockey with the
(23:17):
pink dot guy coming to the door for delivering food
and they're going from party to party and strapping on
the club, the club on their car and there's ten
cars driving through the Hollywood Hills. They're going on auditions.
I mean, that was my life. And checking messages because
we didn't cell phones or pagers, right, people had pagers
(23:37):
if you were really hardcore in the business. No, I
didn't have, but you could check your machine, you could
check your answer issues. I would go to pay phones
during movies to see if I got a call back
for the audition. Like I would go into the pay
phone like to see because I had gone on a
big audition, and like that that was what our lives
(23:57):
were like. That is it is. That is a great
way to look at it, because we did show our
son Swingers pretty recently and he could appreciate it for
an entirely different reason, like he just enjoyed it as
a as a movie and a period of time. But
we lived it like I think we were the last
generation that didn't have the digital distraction or convenience. I mean,
(24:20):
obviously you know cell phones. I can't imagine living without it.
But there was something kind of innocent about it. And
you know, when you get into the two thousands, these
kids had a lot of screens in their faces, access
to everything. Do you remember did you have the Thomas
Guide to drive around? Because we didn't have GPS, we
(24:43):
didn't have phones that gave us the breakfass. So this
giant and this was very probably l a specific, but
it was just it was because it was just a
full fledged like a map out how do I get
to Fox? And then I have to get back to
and turn And I had my giant Thomas Guide in
(25:06):
the back of the car and now I literally can't
drive home without putting it in my ways. I literally
can't even even if I know exactly where I'm going,
I need a digital apt to tell me where to go.
I don't now, I'm kidding, I do. I'm so used
to ways. I have an issue with ways. I have
(25:27):
an issue with it. Took me to a wrong address
once and I'm off of ways. It does, it makes,
it will try and make you make a left into
a major intersection, like I scream in my ways. But
she has a very friendly voice. So let's jump off
and uh welcome all the listeners to the Hey Dude,
the nineties called podcast. And I am so happy to
(25:49):
be doing this with you, and I'm so excited for
the future episodes. This is going to be the best.
We have a lot to talk about and a lot
of fun things to explore or and like like we
set a trip down memory lane for us, but for
the listeners to hope right now, I think a lot
of interesting guests that we'll get on here that also
(26:11):
want to go back and and talk about that time.
Yeah for sure. So January nine will be the drop
of our first official episode, and uh, we are so
grateful for everyone that's listening, and we hope to take
you on this really fun journey. Yes, hey dude, let's go.
(26:32):
Let's go back scrunches and boom boxes, Blockbuster cars, Blockbuster God,
I missed Blockbuster. Oh that was fun. Alright, alright, well
see you guys, j Well you'll hear us January nine. Yes,
thanks for listening. Make sure to subscribe and give us
five stars, and please follow us on Instagram at Hey
(26:52):
dude the nineties called See you next time.
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