August 29, 2023 • 55 mins
Brian gains a new friend in Sarah Wayne Callies, who speaks about her homeland of Hawaii, the beauty of live theater, and opening new frontiers in the podcast world.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
When I came to the Mainland for college. I went
to school in New Hampshire, which is about as different
as you can get.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
No, I actually didn't have any idea what I was
in for. I brought like a pair of sneakers and
a cotton hoodie and I was like ready for winter,
Like two comes up. I talked to this day. I
don't know why my parents didn't like buy me wool
or boots. I think they just I'm sure that I
was just sort of an arrogant little shit of a
kid who was like, I kN know what I'm doing,
and they were like, all right, you can learn the
hard way. Hi. My name is Sarah Wayne Kelly's. And
(00:34):
in the following podcast, I almost make Brian spittake, which
I am very proud of.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Hey, everybody, we're back. It's another episode of Off the
Beat here and I am your host, Brian Baumgartner. What
I want you all to do for a second is
think about things that give you nightmares. Maybe tornadoes, zombies
for sure, zombies give people nightmares, maybe aliens, I don't know.
(01:08):
Think about the things that give you nightmares, and then
whatever you're thinking about. My guest today has probably been
in a movie or a show about it. However, she
herself is a dream my guest today, as you just
heard Sarah Wayne Calli's You may know her from her
(01:29):
death Row drama prison Break, maybe the zombie thriller The
Walking Dead, the dystopian sci fi Colony, or from films
like Into the Storm, Black November, and Pay the Ghost.
She's also a writer, director, producer, former historian, and hula dancer,
(01:49):
as you will soon hear about. I did not know
Sarah before today, but let me just say this now
that I do. She's awesome. Yeah, and you're gonna think
so too. She's also just recently written, produced, directed, and
voice starred in a fantastic post apocalyptic episodic story a
(02:10):
podcast called after Shock, which she just premiered its second season.
It's kind of an adventure thriller about the world after
a big earthquake levels Los Angeles, which I don't like
to think about. Whoever, the story is fascinating. It's such
a cool project. You gotta check it out. But don't
(02:32):
take my word for it. Take her. She's better at
words anyway. The multi talented and very funny Sarah Wayne
Kelly's Bubble and squeak, I love it, bubble and squeakna
(02:53):
bubble and squeak.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I cook it every mo.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Lift over from the ninety before. Thanks Hi, Sarah, uh hi,
how are you. I'm so good. How are you doing.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I'm good. It's nice to see you.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
It's very nice to see you. Thank you so much
for joining me today.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Oh my god, it's absolutely my pleasure. You gave me
all the cool points with the kids. They're enormous office fans,
and I think of everything I've done in the last
maybe like eighteen months, this is the.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
One that like, this is this is the cool one.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Actually matters to them. So thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
How old are they?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Sixteen and ten?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, that's about right.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Well, and they just finished okay, it was on Netflix
here in Canada, and so like they just finished two
back to back binges of the whole thing for the
first time. It was very sweet. They came up to
me and they were like, have you ever seen the office?
It's great? And I was like, really, that's amazing. I'll
tell everyone I know. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yah.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
They got to the party late, but they're here.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You've never heard of it? Where are you in Canada?
I'm on my way you are.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Where are you coming to.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I'm coming to Toronto.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Oh, I'm on the other side. I'm in BC.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I'm on the warm side. How long are you going
to be there?
Speaker 2 (04:24):
The war? Not that long. I think it's still I
think it's still I think it's still hot there. But
I've never been. I'm very excited. I've only been to
the the your side before. I've never I've never been
to Toronto. I'm excited. I'm excited to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Great city.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I'm going to see Niagara Falls for the first time.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
That is wonderful. I have good I've got good kind
of memories of that area. My husband's from quite near Rochester,
so you know, the falls were nearby. And when we
we just became dual citizens with the US and Canada
last year. Okay, I first landed. You have to land
as an immigrant, and we were staying with my husband's parents,
(05:07):
and so we just went up to Saint Catherine's, which
is really close. It's this teeny little town on the
border and you just cross the border and they stamped
the thing and you have to spend a night there.
But it's like it has a nice, warm, fuzzy oh
spot in my house. And I gotta tell you, Toronto
has some of my favorite food in the country. There's
just wonderful restaurants.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Okay, I'm very excited. Now.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, I was just there for a conference.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I'll send you a list, Okay, yeah, send me a list.
All right, Well you're in Canada. Now, you started out
you were born in Illinois, but you went to Hawaii
like immediately. So first off, how are you feeling about
what's going on in Hawaii right now? It's I mean,
it's it's devastating. What's what's happening over there in Hawaii?
(05:54):
You were on in a Wahu? Is that right?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I grew up on o Wahoo. Yeah, so you know,
I was born in Illinois. My parents both applied for
jobs as professors at universities all around the country. And
the only university that took them both. I don't know
why university was so hard to say just then, the
only place of higher education that took them both was
the University of Hawaii. So just a huge shout out
(06:19):
of gratitude to the board of regents there for bringing
me to Oahu where I grew up. As for what's
happening on Maui. I don't honestly know that I have
words yet. It's you know, Lahina was the capital of
the Kingdom of Hawaii before it was illegally overthrown as
(06:41):
a sovereign monarchy. It's such a deeply important place to
Hawaii's history before you even scratch the surface of just
the scale of the human loss. Yeah, you know, I
was just reading something today that of the plus bodies
(07:01):
that they have discovered, they can only identify five because
there's only enough left. And you just a friend of
mine has a brother who's this wonderful T shirt designer,
So you know, he's designed a T shirt and I'm
going to put a bunch of stuff out about like
all profits to whatever. But I don't think there's a way.
I don't know what you do. You can't rebuild. You
(07:23):
have to kind of re envision and recreate, and whatever
you build will still hold the kind of ghost of
what you've lost. But I will say that, like I
wonder if people in Hawaii don't have an extra set
of tools in their toolbox. It is a place where
(07:46):
I think most of us just were kind of raised
with a connection to community, a connection to the land,
itself to the stories about the land that will, I think,
create a kind of resilience and a kind of spirit
of I don't even know what like resurrection of whatever
(08:09):
comes next.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Right now, I get it. I mean, clearly it's a
very important place for you. I will say sadly, I've
never been to MAUI obviously heard so much about it.
What was it like for you growing up there with
that kind of a community. You feel like it's a
specifically different place that breeds a different kind of community
(08:35):
than anywhere else.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Super I mean when I came to the Mainland for college,
I went to school in New Hampshire, which is about
as different as you can get. Yeah, I know, I
actually didn't have any idea what I was in for.
I brought like a pair of sneakers and a cotton
hoodie and I was like ready for winter, like two
comes up. I don'd to this day. I don't know
why my parents didn't like buy me wool or boots.
(08:58):
I think they just I'm sure sure that I was
just sort of an arrogant little shit of a kid
who was like I knew what I'm doing, and they
were like, all right, you can learn the hard way.
I mean I felt culture shock. Okay, Like, first of all,
the native Hawaiian presence in Hawaii is vast and permeates everything, right,
Like I had Hawaiian friends, teachers, governors, legislators, police officers,
(09:23):
like there were just there were Hawaiian people everywhere, and
there was language everywhere, right like half the street signs.
There's a Hawaiian music radio station, a couple of them
that play like both modern and contemporary and traditional Hawaiian music,
most of it in Hawaiian. I took Hawaiian language in
high school. Like that just felt very normal and pretty
(09:45):
fair because I was like their land, you know, like
feels like we should be learning about the people and
how to say right, please and thank you, and you know,
what are the stories of the land. And then I
got to the mainland and I was like, oh, no,
nobody knows who's land there on. No, there's like there
(10:06):
was this deafening silence around those kinds of things, you know.
And I mean I'd asked all these people and I
was like, whose land are we on? They're like Darmouth College.
I was like, sure, but go back a little bit.
And partly you have to go back, so much farther
on the East coast than you do in Hawaii. But
(10:26):
it was really interesting. A part of the podcast actually,
and like writing some of these Native Hawaiian characters in
was just visibility.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
It's like before you can even get to the place
of equal rights and remedying certain things and you know,
issues of land and water, just like visibility, like, hey,
there are people here, maybe we should give a listen
to what's going on, right because you know, and like
not to get too nuts about this stuff, but you know,
(10:56):
I've been reading a lot of stuff lately about Maui
and it's tricky, right because the whole state relies on tourism.
We've vectored our economy exclusively towards tourism, and yet part
of why Maui was so dry was because all the
water was going to the hotels and golf courses and
not to like the rest of the island, which is
(11:20):
you know, they're like there have been a bunch of
native communities for a while being like, hey, this is
not going to work long term.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Has been discussion, that's been a discussion.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, yeah, there, I mean, you know, and it's not
getting a whole lot of coverage. But you know, for
those of us who like are kind of you know,
like there's a bunch of like protect Mono Kaa and Aamamana,
and like there's a bunch of different folks on social
media that you know, have been speaking from the Native
Hawaiian communities. Yeah, there are folks who are, like we've
been saying for a really long time that this this
(11:53):
sort of tourism first approach to land and water and
resources it is creating not only is it like vastly
unfair to the people whose land it is and all
of that, but right also creates this massive imbalance in
the land's resilience to things like fire.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's that's it's a very I mean,
I don't even know how you go back and begin
to un tangle and unwind those things. I mean, I
guess to your point, it's going to have to be
re envisioned. It's going to have to be rebuilt in
a new way. But that that catch twenty two that
(12:37):
you mentioned of we rely on the tourism yet we're
neglecting our ancestors, our history, our native peoples. It's very complicated.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
It requires a lot of revisioning and I think I
have no answers, and so I take what I am
going to call a politically responsible cop out just to
say it's not for me to come up with answers.
I just want to listen, you know what I mean,
like sort of turn the mic over to like some
of the some of the organizers and the leaders and
(13:10):
the elders in those communities and be like, Okay, if
hypothetically I had no ideas, what are your ideas? What
do you need for me?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Right? I mean there's so much, as you said, music
and culture and performance. Were you did you begin performing
in like Native Hawaiian spectacle or no?
Speaker 1 (13:32):
I mean, you know, I took the sort of you
know how like little girls on the mainland take ballet.
You turn four and they put you in a tutu
Like it's just it's like a thing that happens.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
It's required.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yes, yeah, and if you're like super alternative, it might
be like gymnastics and baseball, but like that's about as
far outside about as we get. So I actually did
take it year of ballet, and I think I think
the ballet teacher took my parents aside and was like,
I'm sure she's good at something it's not this. So
(14:04):
I ended up in you know, hula lessons, which is
what I think a lot of the like four or
five six year olds, you know, and I never got
any good but enjoyed it. I think what what I
really kind of came away with is a sense of
storytelling as really important.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Okay, you know, because you.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Grow up with like the stories in Hawaii, right, the
stories of Pelle of the volcano goddess and of where
the name for your valley comes from, or you know,
Cohala Opuna and the owls, and like those stories were everywhere,
and I was fascinated by them, and you know, everything
from picture books to like you know, certain teachers or
(14:48):
your Hawaiian studies teachers sharing things. And I think at
a certain point I started to realize how different those
stories were from the stories that I was like hearing
in church, right, especially when it came to women, you
know what I mean, Like lots of very powerful female
figures in Hawaiian storytelling. The Bible seems to be all
about like please don't have sex, but then do have
(15:12):
a baby. But that you know what I mean, Like
it's super complicated, very complicated, like Sarah in the Bible
is ninety nine and God tells her she's going to
have a kid, And in my imagination, her first response
was just like, you really don't know how this works.
I don't think you've thought this all the way through. Also,
who wants kids at ninety nine? I'm in my forties
(15:32):
and I don't want to stay awake that late. Yeah, no,
So so anyway, the point is that the storytelling, I think,
is what kind of hooked me into what we do.
What about you? I know that I'm supposed to be
interviewing me, but like, where did you know?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
It's it's interesting. So I grew up in the South,
and I think similarly that tradition of storytelling, of history
of who owns the land, which again that becomes a
very complicated issue at its depth, but I think there
(16:09):
that was more important than I think it is say
in New Hampshire or Iowa or whatever like. There is
that sort of identity. Again, not all of it positive,
but the history in the South is is a part
of it. And my grandfather, I mean we two three
(16:30):
four years old, I mean me and my sister at night,
he would just tell stories. So yeah, I mean there
is I'm not equating it at all to be exactly
the same, but I think that there is some sort
of similarity there. You.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, that never.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Really even quite occurred to me in that same way
in terms of my personal history until hearing you talk,
because that really, that really was, that storytelling really was
a part of my early childhood.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Well and even the in the South. Yeah, I mean
I was what was I'm never going to remember this
exactly right, And I apologize to all the Kenny fans
out there, but there's that Kenny Rogers song the Coward
of Something County. Yes, I was listening to it came
on the other day, and I thought, this is this
is a movie in three minutes, do you know what
I mean about? Like a man whose dad tells him
(17:21):
don't get into fights and don't do what I did,
and then he falls in love with this woman and
then she's ps gang raped like literally that's in the song,
which is nice, and then he turns around and like
it's it's a story, and it's it's a like Steven
Spielberg worthy giant story. And if I think about a
lot of country music, that's you know, even bluegrass, right,
(17:44):
Like I don't know what part of the South you're from.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
But no, Georgia. I mean as as deep as it goes.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, wait where in Georgia? I lived there for five
years Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Okay, yeah, so I think you're exactly right. It's why
I you know, people say what's what's your favorite kind
of music, and I'll say old country, like like Willie
Nelson and yeah, Nylon Jennings and they're telling stories. My
least favorite is new country because I feel like it's
(18:15):
just bebop but he beep beepop I was drinking. Yeah, exactly,
and it's not as complex as story. Actually, his stories
are way simpler.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
No, although I will say there are some do you
know what I mean? Like blown Away, there's there's definitely
some people still like Brad Paisley can still write some lyrics.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Man, that's but that's old country. So if it's if
it's in the old style that.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Counts, then that then that that counts.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
So when you started becoming really involved in performing, I
understand you started acting in school plays and stuff. Was
this like a passion of yours? Was this an activity
like ballet when you were four or did you feel
like this was something that that that really moved you
(19:22):
that you wanted to do later on, and if not,
when did that moment occur?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Good question. I mean plays. Acting was the first thing
that I put myself in, you know, like your parents
put you into dancing whatever, blah blah blah. I joined
the track and field team because I thought that would
be useful. Blew my knee out in the very first practice.
There's I like anything that involves physical coordination. Basically, the
people in charge are like, again, I'm sure you're good
at something, go find it.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Wait a second track though, I mean running.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I know, I know that's not.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
A ton of physical coordination this.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Is, but it's more than I have, and I have.
I will say I will now at this point in
my life, only run if someone's behind me with a firearm,
which weirdly describes like half of my career on camera.
So I do a bit of running, but only if
there's like the Apocalypse is behind me. I basically flogged
(20:20):
out a track, which was amazing, And there were auditions
for the play the next day. So and it was
as you like it, and it was Shakespeare, and I
loved that and the chewiness of the words and the
language and the challenge of the language. It felt like
a puzzle. But I never thought I would do it professionally,
(20:40):
you know, because I mean I didn't come from a
family that like could support me, you know, so it
was like, you get your degree and you are on
your own right, which also, by the way, seemed completely fair.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Sure, no, they put up with you for long enough,
exactly an uncoordinated daughter. I mean, you can't expect get
into things came going. But now you went when you
left to go to New Hampshire, which is, by the way,
it's just hilarious, but you go to New Hampshire. You
(21:13):
but you went to study drama.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Right like I know, I went to study history.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
You went to study I went to study history with.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
An eye toward being a diplomat, which is hilarious because
people who know me, I mean you've known me now
for what eight minutes, You're like, this is the least
diplomatic person in the face of the earth. I can't
not say something that floats through my head. You know,
it's funny. This is this is becoming the podcast about
Sarah's failures, which I'm totally fine with. After my first
semester in the.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
History that was not the attention, but go ahead, no.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
But it's truly like the head of the teacher that
I had that taught me my first history seminar, she
said to me, and I quote, you are too creative
to be a historian. The drama department is that way.
And I was like, all right, really yeah, which, by
the way, might be part of the problem of the
way history was taught at the time, But at any
point I was out. I still never thought. I took
(22:05):
a bunch of drama classes, I did a bunch of plays.
I still never thought like, you can't make a living.
And so you know, I was going to get a
degree in something else and get a PhD and be
a professor like my parents. And right before I graduated
from university, I realized that I would have to fail
at acting before I could settle for anything else. I
(22:26):
had to try. I just had to give it a shot.
And you know, the thing is about it to me
and growing up actually in such a big family. I
wonder if this kind of lands with you too. I
love how collaborative it is. I love that, like whether
you're in a green room with a bunch of actors
or you're you know, chatting with the crew at lunch whatever,
(22:49):
like we are surrounded. We're in a big network of
people all trying to do good stories, trying to make
something out of whole cloth that will be meaningful and
beautiful and funny and human. And that is like just
(23:11):
the greatest thing to me to be with those people
all the time.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
That is the greatest thing, you know, Jenna Elfman, she
said to me almost exactly the same thing that you
just said, and I love it, so I'm going to
share it with you. She talked about that in life
there are people who have agendas and you're looking out
for yourself, you're looking out for your family, or you know,
(23:36):
you're trying to accomplish different things. But the moment that
someone says action, every single person on screen off screen
is working toward one thing. In that moment, It's like
a time in life where everyone is just trying to
(23:57):
get this one thing right. Be it prop and yeah,
the look and the camera and the action the actors
are doing. It's exactly what you just said. But I
love that that.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Idea, particularly in theater. Actually, from the moment the curtain
goes up to the moment it comes back down, at
the end. It's extraordinary how everybody on stage, backstage, in
the audience, there's a single mindedness that we very rarely
get right. Like I my mind is never quieter than
(24:28):
it is when I'm acting because I'm thinking about this
one thing and we can't do it alone. That's I
think there's something so beautiful about this. You know, we
have this silly Marlborough man image of American achievement. That's
like I pulled myself up by my bootstraps.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Bullshit.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You took a staircase that somebody else built for you,
You took the hand that somebody else put down for you.
You walked shoulder to shoulder with people who were there
for you. Like, we don't do anything alone, not anything meaningful.
And I love how deeply interdependent we are on each
(25:09):
other making stories, and particularly with people who are not
like us, you know, like we've all got there's always
people on a set that you're like, we would never
I our paths would never cross, you know, with like
me and this guy who's working craft service, you know,
or like this driver. I mean, we've all had Like
drivers are amazing, man, and some of them are the
(25:29):
greatest ever and some of them, You're like, Wow, this
is not a conversation I ever thought in a million
years I would have, right, right, But we're driving from
Atlanta to Savannah, so we're gonna have it for three
and a half hours, and you end up like, I mean,
you know, walking down was really interesting because you know,
we shot in Sonoya the I mean after season one.
(25:52):
Season one was in Atlanta. There were a lot of
drivers down there that like, man, they don't have people
like me in their life.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
You know, some like pink Ocamie tree hugging, rainbow flag flying,
but and like I don't have a lot of people
who pray and vote and think the way they do.
But we humanized each other, yes, And so I'm not
going to use unkind language to describe them because while
(26:22):
I may not agree with a lot, they are also
my brothers and sisters because we survived.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
They survived the Georgia Woods together. Yes, And the Georgia
was the snakes.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Slash the Apocalypse. Did you see snakes?
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Oh dude. We had a guy named Patrick whose job
it was to flush the snakes out of the set
before we got there, and he was always like think
I got him? And I was like you are the
bravest man I know. Also, what do you mean think?
Oh my gosh, oh dude, it was It was nuts.
We had a tick check every day after work. You'd
go to your trailer, you'd strip down, and you check
(26:59):
your body for ticks. You guys didn't do that with
the office.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
No, Oh my god. That really made me. No, we
did not. We did not have tick checks. So I
have an issue right now. I don't know if anybody
wants to message me, message me about this. So I
have ticks I where I live now, and I have
a dog and the dog gets tick medication. Here is
(27:29):
a current problem. The medication is working, and the ticks
don't want to be on the dog. But now findings
everywhere dog goes outside tickets are right inside. Is like,
I don't want the dog and then I'm like seeing
them walk around on the ground.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
But there's this Brian dude, that's the ticks freaked me out.
The whole line is these thing like it's worse than
a zombie apocalypse as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Well, that's true. I so, yeah, you shot obviously the
walking Dead in Georgia. Yeah, I mean you're doing so
many nights too, right nights and hot days and snakes.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
And the one Actually we didn't have many nights. It's interesting,
like if you watch the first even the first two seasons,
we didn't do many nights. I don't really know why.
Season one was odd because in order to permit downtown Atlanta,
we could only shoot there Saturday Sunday, so our days
off for Monday Tuesday, which is just a little odd
(28:33):
because it means right that you're like extra freaky as
a circus freak actor anyway, do you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
It's like you try and make new friends and you're like,
you want to come over for dinner Monday night.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And you're like, what, No, not at all? Right, Okay,
that's fine.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I have to ask you. You said you you were
not going to be able to move on to something
else until that didn't work out. You end up going
to the National Theater Conservative in Denver for your MFA,
which is a very big deal at the time. You
get your equity card, which I didn't know that when
you graduate from there, for you theater or film, film, slice.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Television, there's such different muscles and such different media. I
did a play right after I left Walking Dead at
the Kennedy Center, Okay, And I was so scared to
do it. And it was actually Jeff Demon who kind
(29:34):
of talked me into it. He's like, you need to
sharpen that muscle because there is nothing like the sustained
attention of a two and a half hour play. It'll
make you a better actor.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
The economics of it I struggle with. I struggle with
the fact that the tickets were too expensive for most
people to see. It was the whitest audience I have
ever performed for. And I made no money and lost
my health insurance and had to go on Cobra and
so wow, Like that's not romantic, man, it's really not,
(30:11):
you know. And like the Kennedy saide it's a good
it's a good theater, Like they pay you, but I'm
the sole breadwinner for a family of foreman, Like, it's
not it did not it did not do it I,
you know. And so it's usually the writing's better in
theater and there's a devotion, there's rehearsal, which is such
(30:32):
a gift. But to the extent that I believe that
stories are powerful when they are shared. More people saw
the first episode of The Walking Dead, than would see
every show I would ever do if I spent my
entire career on Broadway correct and they saw it for
(30:55):
so much less money, And so that's a that's a
tough one. I would love to go back and do
another play, but I can't afford to make that my career.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
See, I started in theater too.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, so what do you think would you go back?
Would you if somebody said, here you go, We'll give you,
you know, forty eight weeks a year for Oh no, no, babe?
Would you By the way, are you a musical theater person?
Do you sing? No?
Speaker 2 (31:27):
I talk sing. I talked sing really really well, which
you know for comedic musical theater roles is good. But yeah, no,
it's I mean it's I mean, you talk about the
circus Freaks with you know, you, during a short period
of time on The Walking Dead had Monday and Tuesday off,
like for your life, having Mondays off. I mean, it's
(31:50):
like so difficult. I mean, it's I mean, the short
answer is I want to go back and do something.
You know, that's all I did essentially prior to the Office.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
That's right. The Office was the like big TV break.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
That's right, what a trip? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Did that just do your headed?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Did I say it again?
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Well, to go from like, you know, on a good week,
a couple thousand people a week, see what I'm doing
to like giant massive, Yeah, you know it.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
We started so not strong that it didn't feel like
that early on, but it you know, I mean it
quickly became what it was so so it like ramped up.
But yeah, so that was different. But yeah, no, I
mean it's obviously a huge change. And yeah, I mean
(32:41):
to your point, Yeah, yeah, I could do that forty
eight you know, weeks a year at eight shows a week,
and yeah, no one's going to see the exposure is impossible.
But there's a live theater experience. There's something that happens
in a room every single day that's different. And you know,
that's the part for me that I miss is that
(33:03):
experience live in the room.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
You want to hear a fun theater story real quick. Yes,
So speaking of live in the room. When I was
in grad school, we did a production of Doubt. Okay
I know it, which is yeah for people who don't.
The short version is it's a story about a woman
in the hospital dying of cancer and she's a she's
a scholar of the poet John Dunn. And we did
(33:26):
it in the round, which was kind of insane hospital
Journey's everywhere, and I had like that four lines in
the whole thing. Dude, I mean, we're grad students. We're
just there to little tiny parts. I think it's almost
a one woman show. There's like two roles when they
did it on Broadway, but they added a bunch of
other students and things like that. And I'm in one
(33:46):
of the three scenes I think I'm in in the
entire thing. We're playing the leading woman is a flashback
of her teaching, and I'm playing one of the students.
And I opened my mouth to say one of the
two or three lines I have, and Annette Held, who
is the role, points at me and then points past
me and goes, Sarah, I'm sorry. Is she okay? And
for somebody who notices, who knows theater, for an actor
(34:08):
to go off script and break the wall like that
was like for probably three heartbeats, nobody moved, nobody breathed,
and then she looked up into the booth and she goes,
I'm sorry, we need the lights on, and the lights
come on and there's this elderly woman slumped over, not
moving in her seat. Again, we're in the round, so
the audience is looking at us and we're looking at them.
(34:29):
And the brilliant, quick thinking stage manager comes on and
goes the gentleman, they'll be an unscheduled fifteen minute or mission,
please buy them the lobby. They kick us backstage. Backstage
is full of hospital to trytus right, the hospital beds
and gurneys and people dressed in scrubs. And in record time,
the doors to the backstage bang open and incomes the
(34:52):
ambulance crew and they freeze and they're like, what the fuck?
This is a hospital, what's going on? And we're like,
we're actors, we can't help you.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Go bag.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
And they go and they pull this woman out and
I look over at a net and she has wrapped
her arms around herself and she is physically holding her
performance in because it's a beast of a role and
she was brilliant at it. And they take the woman
out to the ambulance and the stage manager says, what
do you want to do? She says, is the woman alive?
And stage manager said yeah. She goes all right, well,
(35:21):
let's get back out there. And we got back out there,
and at the very end of the play spoiler alert,
but the play is like thirty years old. The lead
dies and she drops her clothes and she looks up
and this bright white light shines on her. And usually
that's where the audience starts applotting. But the lights came
up and it was dead silent, and the audience was
(35:41):
on their feet, and we'd just been in a play
of death, and like death was in the audience that night,
and we just stood there, the cast and the actors
and the audience, looking at each other for like again
a few heartbeats, and then they started applauding and we left.
It was one of the most profound things I've ever
been a part of. And that only happens in a
(36:04):
live show.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
That's beautiful. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, you're right, You're right.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
You just gotta do seven thousand, one hundred and forty
two performances before it happens again. Your career is amazing.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
You know, your career is amazing.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I have I have a quote from you. I'm not
a badass. I just play one on TV. This by
the way, based on this conversation is clearly is clearly
not true. But you can't run, and you're an actor,
you're a director, you're a producer, writer, voice, actor, podcast
(37:09):
or mom, you work with the International Rescue Committee, you tango,
you trapeez, I mean, clearly hula at least as a
four year old mite for the list goes on, how
much because you were an uncoordinated person? How much extra
(37:29):
work did you have to do? Was it difficult for you?
And I'm talking prison break obviously the Walking Dad. Did
you do a lot outside to be ready when it
was like physically yeah, when your number was called?
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean after season one of Walking Dead,
first of all, I think we all lost about ten pounds,
like ten to fifteen, me and John, the entire crew. Yeah,
sweat and just like because we're outdoors all day. Yeah,
and it's too hot to eat. We had like forty
days over ninety degrees. You know. It was just like
(38:05):
the and we realized coming back for season two, like
you have to be in the best shape of your life.
There's just no right getting around it. By the way, later,
many years later, I did a show called Letter Kenny,
which is a Canadian comedy and I'll.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Say, oh, you guys really have it figured out. Finally,
these comedians like if only I were funny. You guys
have the right idea. You shoot inside, you make each
other laugh. You're not screaming and crying. There's no firearms.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Nobody's talking to you about dead babies like I congratulations
on landing in the right part of our industry, or
long term mental.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Health, and that's so funny.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Quality of life. I salute you, sir.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
You know it was an accident for me. I wasn't well. Yeah,
I mean people, I mean I told you I came
from theater, like you know. I mean people assume that
I was at Improva, Olympic or Second City or the
Groundlings or Stand Up or one of those. I mean,
I did just as much drama as I mean, I
(39:08):
probably did more drama than comedy.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Favorite theater role. Don't think about it to go.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
I don't know, I know, I'm thinking. I mean, I
mean the standard answer, which it just happens too much.
And for an American male now regardless of race. Willie
Lowman and death of a Salesman's greatest.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Roll of fall Time, Oh yeah, sure, I mean yeah, sure,
although legendarily like Rex actors. Yes, the play I did
at the Kennedy Center was opposite Finn Whitrock, who had
just done Phil Hoffman's Death of the Salesman, and he
was like, it broke him. I mean it just like Phil. Yeah,
I just I can't imagine what it takes to go
(39:56):
through that. It's like Lear, right, Yeah, it's big. Yeah,
it's awful. Stacy Keach actually said to me once he
did Lear right after the first season of Prison Break,
and I was supposed to do it with him. He
asked me to play one of his daughters, but then
they moved the show from Chicago to Dallas. He was
doing it at the Goodman but I called him like
right before first preview, I was like, how's it going?
(40:17):
He said, you know, Sarah, the tragedy of Lear is
that by the time you're old enough to understand the role,
you're too old to keep up with it physically. And
you know, He's like, I'm losing my voice. I'm exhausted
all the time. And I think there's something to it
that some of those roles, and I think they wrote
more of them for men than women back then, But
(40:37):
like some of those roles. Just I mean, it's just
got to feel like a marathon every night.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Have you ever seen the movie? Now we're going to
really keep here. Have you ever seen the movie The
Dresser Albert Finney? Oh, Tom Courtney? Long time Ago, A
long time ago. By the way, if you're listening and
you want an old classic drama, I'm not even going
(41:04):
to get the decade right. I would say it was
probably in the eighties. But it is about an old
Shakespearean company that takes place during World War Two, I believe,
and they could be one I don't know. Albert Finney
is playing Lear and Tom Courtney is his dresser, and
it is essentially about him descending into madness on the
(41:29):
trajectory that Lear is and that for me is theater.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well there is. I mean, like you have to be
able to lose your mind.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I have done. I've had the good fortune and I
say good fortune seriously of playing a role over an
extended period of time, like over a year, of playing
the same role which was heavy makeup and sitting there
before the show putting on the makeup's going Can I
(42:03):
do this one?
Speaker 1 (42:03):
I don't know if I can do this again?
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Can I do this one more time, and it was great.
It was called The Green Bird with a fantastic theater
company called Theater de la June Loan. That was French
slash Minneapolis, and I played the evil old woman in
full kabuki makeup.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
WHOA, yeah, that's so into. First of all, I really
would love to see that. I'm curious about everything at
every level. But I think, you know, in some ways,
I think there's something very cool in what we do.
In you do touch a little bit of madness, you know.
I mean, even just on an eight show week. I
(42:47):
remember being in a Sunday matinee performance when you've done
Friday Night, Saturday matinee, Saturday night, and now it's Sunday
going I don't know if I just said this line
or if I'm remembering saying it yesterday, but I know
I'm gonna have to say it again tonight. And just
like a little part of your brain just goes wh
and it.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Like totally totally, and you's.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
A little crazy. You go a little crazy. I've lost
myself a couple of times, But then I think you
find yourself too, and you learn a little bit about
who you are and what you're capable of, and you are,
in theory in a safe enough environment that there are
people there to pull you back. And actually, I think
that's what makes for great storytelling, and I imagine it's
(43:32):
got to be the same thing in comedy. But like
the directors, that producers, the writers and the other actors,
creating an environment where you can do super dangerous work
knowing the people around me are gonna they're not going
to make fun of me, They're not gonna let me fail.
You know, they're gonna there. There's again that community that
we're kind of enmeshed in.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah. By the way, I feel like I have to
give us credit here. I feel like we've done a
fantastic job of talking about our careers and our work
during of this writer strike. So I'm just gonna give
us both just an amazing tip of the cat to
that tip of the cat. Cap I cat, I'm gonna
(44:17):
I'm gonna tip. I'm gonna tip the cat. We do
have something very important that we need to talk about,
which is Aftershock, which is your podcast. You're basically lord, dictator, king, queen, writer, creator, producer, actor, beverlord, technician,
(44:41):
microphone operator. You kind of mentioned it before I want
you to tell me a little bit about where the
idea came for after Shock. By the way, for those
of you who don't know, it's a scripted podcast, uh
that Sarah is doing to great a. I'm so in
(45:02):
love and excited by it. Did this come at all
from your childhood in Hawaii? I mean it takes place
on an island.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, a lot of it, I will say. You know,
the original idea was brought to me by a writer,
a Ya writer novelist named Patrick Carmon, and he and
my producing partner Ben Haber cooked up this thought about
what would happen if a new island rose up out
of the sea. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting,
and we talked about a lot of it. It felt
(45:32):
to me from the beginning like a little bit of
a re exploration of like westward expansion, right, like new Land.
We tell that story a lot in westerns, you know
what I mean, And it's cowboys and Indians and women
in whorehouses, and it's like, well, what if we examined
some of those Like what if we took some different
people and tried to tell the story in a new way,
(45:54):
and what would it look like now. But yeah, immediately
the new Pacific Island thing came up, and I started
thinking about what were the female relationships that I most
wanted to see that we're maybe more complicated than some
of the ones I've had a chance to portray, which
is where a lot of the stuff between Cassie and
Mikayla came up with, you know, like, what does it
(46:14):
mean when the person that you need for your own
survival Cassie and Mikayla's case, is the person that you
hate most in the world. And how do you atone
in Cassie's case, for the things you've done that hurt
of the people. And actually the second season. First season
ends well, most people have a lot of blood on
their hands at the end of the first season, and
the second season is really about atonement and forgiveness and
(46:38):
how do you ask for it and how do you
grant it? And what does that look like? Yeah, and
then I realized, it's interesting. There's a woman that I've
been following for a long time and I really loved
her work, and I've gotten to know her a little bit.
She's deeply involved in the Hawaiian land activism, and I
asked her to go over a couple of scripts with
me for season two, so I wanted to make sure
(46:59):
that there weren't like blind spots and some of the
more cultural things I was doing. And she pointed out
a fundamental flaw in season one and I was like, oh, okay,
and she goes, it's no problem. You know, you can
rewrite it, and I was like, no, season one is out.
And I asked the bed on this and she's like, okay,
So from a cultural perspective, I would say this instead
(47:21):
of what you did. And I went great. So my
stomach turned to water and I went, oh god, I
blew it. And then I thought, okay, so this can
become the character's journey then, and this will come up
more in kind of the back half of the season.
Episodes like six, seven or eight, Lay goes on a
(47:42):
very kind of emotional journey of trying to figure out,
with all the best intentions, I took this action and
I'm now being told by the people who know more
than me that it was the wrong action. So how
do I make that right? And this? So there was
a lot of humility involved in writing this season, because
of course, you know, I'm a writer's room one, and
(48:04):
you need other people to bounce things off of. Tatti
Gabrielle was kind enough to help me break this season.
She did such a brilliant job playing Mikayla. I was like,
I'd love to hear what you feel, what you hear,
what you think. She's at a different generation than I am,
she's a different race than I am. And I was like,
you know, your perspective will only broaden this thing. And
so we got to do a bunch of that together.
But still, you know, the wearing of many hats is
(48:26):
a necessity. If we had the budget, I would very
happily start delegating thing. I needed a lot of help
from outside. And yeah, eight some humble pie.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
As I was writing, well, you have a great cast.
You mentioned Tati Gabrielle, David Harber, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. How
did you cast it? Are these people you knew out.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
On my phone? Yeah, David, I went to college together
along with Mindy Kaling, who you know was on your show.
Like there was a sort of small I've heard of her,
but yeah, ye, she's coming up.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
You know.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
I think we'll see great things from her in the future,
that Kaling. But there was a sort of small knot
of us that we're fortunate enough to have careers. And
Dave was one of them. So yeah, I mean they
were all just people that I knew and I called
them and you know, I have nothing to offer, right,
Like there's no money, there's no you know, like this
isn't going to be the role that like wins you
(49:19):
the Oscar. You know, it's just, hey, there's this thing
that I really want to do. I want to tell
this story because I don't see it being told anywhere else.
And I think you probably know that feeling of you
get that call from your friend and you know, well,
the only way this gets done is if we sign
on to do it, even though it is the wrong
(49:39):
professional decision, It is the wrong but you know, like
there's no benefit to Dave for being in this. It's
not going to like change Jeffrey's life. And yeah, you know,
look I told them. I was like, hey, if this
goes somewhere, if this becomes a film or a television series,
like the role is yours. But you know, I mean
one of the odds, like first of all, you know,
Dave's gonna be like thanks, but I'll be running Sony
(50:00):
by then like I will, I will own a studio
with my rack of Emmys. So it's just the goodness
of their hearts. In that same sense of collaboration, What.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Do you feel like you can do in terms of
the type of storytelling you can do through this medium
that you can't do other places.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Well, look, I mean I think I've talked about this
a lot, but I still think it's the best example
that I know of. You know, you remember all those
stories from when Orson Wells's were the World's this broadcast
on the radio and people tuned in and they thought
that the aliens had landed. There is a power in
audio storytelling, I think, because it engages the imagination of
(50:44):
the listener. So whatever three hundred million dollars of you know,
pyrotechnics a VFX department might be able to put together
is still not going to be as tailored to you
as what your own brain serves up. You know. So
if you've got a fear, if you've got a joy,
the door creaks open, your brain's going to put on
(51:06):
the other side of it the thing that scares you
the most. Yeah, and I think that makes it a
really potent medium.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Yeah, I agree, and freeing in a way. And I
think for actors also an ability to create a character
without so many of the obstacles that we regularly are
put in front of us. That for me, you know,
for me it's mostly been animation stuff, but still in
(51:35):
the same way, you know, I'll let somebody else worry
about exactly what it looks like or exactly what you know,
how pressed the suit is, or how fuzzy the bear's
hair is, or whatever it is, you know, but just
being able to create a character with voice, I find it.
I find it very freeing in a way and really
(51:55):
really enjoy it. So congratulations to you on that.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Thanks you want to be in season three?
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Yeah, give me a call. Figure out. Can I play
a bear?
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Not that I can totally write a bear? Okay, we'll
write exit pursued by a bear bear played by Brian Bumkin.
We're tying it back. This is by the way, you
guys can't see this, but we're on squadcast, so I
know we're on the riverside, so I can actually see Brian.
And I almost got a spit take out of you.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
You did, you almost got a spit take. And by
the way, you made me laugh harder than anyone has
made me laugh in a long, long time earlier. So
we're going to write that down for the record book.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
Uh all I needed today.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
We're on strike, but we're not on strike here in
the iHeart Podcasting world. Congratulations on everything and on after Shock.
And when the strike is done, we're going to come
and we're gonna we're going to reconvene. We're going to
talk about We're going to talk about all the other
a magent, amazing acting projects that you have with the
(53:01):
Ewel Studios going right now, we'll pretend to like them.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
By the way, small asterisk. We did call SAG about
Aftershock and I was like, how do you feel about
us promoting it? And they're like, we don't care at all. Right,
So this promotion has been brought to you with the
permission of the Great Actors Guild because we do not
cross picket lines.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
We don't. No, we don't. Sarah. Thank you so much.
It's very nice to meet you. I feel like I've
got a new friend.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Likewise, yeah, I hope we get to meet a person
a person at some point. Until then, Thanks for having
me be well.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Thanks so much. Thanks Sarah. Or should I say mahalo
for coming in today. I loved hearing your thoughtful perspective
(53:58):
on the disaster in Hawaii that is happening right now.
And you're very funny comments. Yeah, nearly made me do
a spittake. You are truly you're a badass folks. As
you know what's been happening on Maui, it's absolutely devastating.
I mean, it can't be overstated. So after hearing Sarah
(54:20):
talk about this today, and if you're looking for a
way to help, check out an organization she likes Maui
Rapid Response. That's Maui Rapid Response dot org. They're on
the ground there in Maui. They're providing some food, shelter supplies,
and other resources to those impacted by the fire. And look,
(54:41):
if you're on Maui right now, know that me and
I know so many of my listeners are thinking about you.
Our heart is going out to you, and know that
you can go to Maui Rapid Response to connect to
resources across the island. Thanks for listening, everybody. That was
a fun one. Have a a very very happy and
(55:02):
safe week. Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced
by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Lang Lee.
Our senior producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes,
Hannah Harris and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan
(55:26):
Papa Zachary, and our intern is Thomas Olsen. Our theme
song Bubble and Squeak, performed by the one and only
Creed Bratton,
When I came to the Mainland for college. I went
to school in New Hampshire, which is about as different
as you can get.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
No, I actually didn't have any idea what I was
in for. I brought like a pair of sneakers and
a cotton hoodie and I was like ready for winter,
Like two comes up. I talked to this day. I
don't know why my parents didn't like buy me wool
or boots. I think they just I'm sure that I
was just sort of an arrogant little shit of a
kid who was like, I kN know what I'm doing,
and they were like, all right, you can learn the
hard way. Hi. My name is Sarah Wayne Kelly's. And
(00:34):
in the following podcast, I almost make Brian spittake, which
I am very proud of.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Hey, everybody, we're back. It's another episode of Off the
Beat here and I am your host, Brian Baumgartner. What
I want you all to do for a second is
think about things that give you nightmares. Maybe tornadoes, zombies
for sure, zombies give people nightmares, maybe aliens, I don't know.
(01:08):
Think about the things that give you nightmares, and then
whatever you're thinking about. My guest today has probably been
in a movie or a show about it. However, she
herself is a dream my guest today, as you just
heard Sarah Wayne Calli's You may know her from her
(01:29):
death Row drama prison Break, maybe the zombie thriller The
Walking Dead, the dystopian sci fi Colony, or from films
like Into the Storm, Black November, and Pay the Ghost.
She's also a writer, director, producer, former historian, and hula dancer,
(01:49):
as you will soon hear about. I did not know
Sarah before today, but let me just say this now
that I do. She's awesome. Yeah, and you're gonna think
so too. She's also just recently written, produced, directed, and
voice starred in a fantastic post apocalyptic episodic story a
(02:10):
podcast called after Shock, which she just premiered its second season.
It's kind of an adventure thriller about the world after
a big earthquake levels Los Angeles, which I don't like
to think about. Whoever, the story is fascinating. It's such
a cool project. You gotta check it out. But don't
(02:32):
take my word for it. Take her. She's better at
words anyway. The multi talented and very funny Sarah Wayne
Kelly's Bubble and squeak, I love it, bubble and squeakna
(02:53):
bubble and squeak.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I cook it every mo.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Lift over from the ninety before. Thanks Hi, Sarah, uh hi,
how are you. I'm so good. How are you doing.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I'm good. It's nice to see you.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
It's very nice to see you. Thank you so much
for joining me today.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Oh my god, it's absolutely my pleasure. You gave me
all the cool points with the kids. They're enormous office fans,
and I think of everything I've done in the last
maybe like eighteen months, this is the.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
One that like, this is this is the cool one.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Actually matters to them. So thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
How old are they?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Sixteen and ten?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, that's about right.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Well, and they just finished okay, it was on Netflix
here in Canada, and so like they just finished two
back to back binges of the whole thing for the
first time. It was very sweet. They came up to
me and they were like, have you ever seen the office?
It's great? And I was like, really, that's amazing. I'll
tell everyone I know. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yah.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
They got to the party late, but they're here.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You've never heard of it? Where are you in Canada?
I'm on my way you are.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Where are you coming to.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I'm coming to Toronto.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Oh, I'm on the other side. I'm in BC.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I'm on the warm side. How long are you going
to be there?
Speaker 2 (04:24):
The war? Not that long. I think it's still I
think it's still I think it's still hot there. But
I've never been. I'm very excited. I've only been to
the the your side before. I've never I've never been
to Toronto. I'm excited. I'm excited to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Great city.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I'm going to see Niagara Falls for the first time.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
That is wonderful. I have good I've got good kind
of memories of that area. My husband's from quite near Rochester,
so you know, the falls were nearby. And when we
we just became dual citizens with the US and Canada
last year. Okay, I first landed. You have to land
as an immigrant, and we were staying with my husband's parents,
(05:07):
and so we just went up to Saint Catherine's, which
is really close. It's this teeny little town on the
border and you just cross the border and they stamped
the thing and you have to spend a night there.
But it's like it has a nice, warm, fuzzy oh
spot in my house. And I gotta tell you, Toronto
has some of my favorite food in the country. There's
just wonderful restaurants.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Okay, I'm very excited. Now.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, I was just there for a conference.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I'll send you a list, Okay, yeah, send me a list.
All right, Well you're in Canada. Now, you started out
you were born in Illinois, but you went to Hawaii
like immediately. So first off, how are you feeling about
what's going on in Hawaii right now? It's I mean,
it's it's devastating. What's what's happening over there in Hawaii?
(05:54):
You were on in a Wahu? Is that right?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I grew up on o Wahoo. Yeah, so you know,
I was born in Illinois. My parents both applied for
jobs as professors at universities all around the country. And
the only university that took them both. I don't know
why university was so hard to say just then, the
only place of higher education that took them both was
the University of Hawaii. So just a huge shout out
(06:19):
of gratitude to the board of regents there for bringing
me to Oahu where I grew up. As for what's
happening on Maui. I don't honestly know that I have
words yet. It's you know, Lahina was the capital of
the Kingdom of Hawaii before it was illegally overthrown as
(06:41):
a sovereign monarchy. It's such a deeply important place to
Hawaii's history before you even scratch the surface of just
the scale of the human loss. Yeah, you know, I
was just reading something today that of the plus bodies
(07:01):
that they have discovered, they can only identify five because
there's only enough left. And you just a friend of
mine has a brother who's this wonderful T shirt designer,
So you know, he's designed a T shirt and I'm
going to put a bunch of stuff out about like
all profits to whatever. But I don't think there's a way.
I don't know what you do. You can't rebuild. You
(07:23):
have to kind of re envision and recreate, and whatever
you build will still hold the kind of ghost of
what you've lost. But I will say that, like I
wonder if people in Hawaii don't have an extra set
of tools in their toolbox. It is a place where
(07:46):
I think most of us just were kind of raised
with a connection to community, a connection to the land,
itself to the stories about the land that will, I think,
create a kind of resilience and a kind of spirit
of I don't even know what like resurrection of whatever
(08:09):
comes next.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Right now, I get it. I mean, clearly it's a
very important place for you. I will say sadly, I've
never been to MAUI obviously heard so much about it.
What was it like for you growing up there with
that kind of a community. You feel like it's a
specifically different place that breeds a different kind of community
(08:35):
than anywhere else.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Super I mean when I came to the Mainland for college,
I went to school in New Hampshire, which is about
as different as you can get. Yeah, I know, I
actually didn't have any idea what I was in for.
I brought like a pair of sneakers and a cotton
hoodie and I was like ready for winter, like two
comes up. I don'd to this day. I don't know
why my parents didn't like buy me wool or boots.
(08:58):
I think they just I'm sure sure that I was
just sort of an arrogant little shit of a kid
who was like I knew what I'm doing, and they
were like, all right, you can learn the hard way.
I mean I felt culture shock. Okay, Like, first of all,
the native Hawaiian presence in Hawaii is vast and permeates everything, right,
Like I had Hawaiian friends, teachers, governors, legislators, police officers,
(09:23):
like there were just there were Hawaiian people everywhere, and
there was language everywhere, right like half the street signs.
There's a Hawaiian music radio station, a couple of them
that play like both modern and contemporary and traditional Hawaiian music,
most of it in Hawaiian. I took Hawaiian language in
high school. Like that just felt very normal and pretty
(09:45):
fair because I was like their land, you know, like
feels like we should be learning about the people and
how to say right, please and thank you, and you know,
what are the stories of the land. And then I
got to the mainland and I was like, oh, no,
nobody knows who's land there on. No, there's like there
(10:06):
was this deafening silence around those kinds of things, you know.
And I mean I'd asked all these people and I
was like, whose land are we on? They're like Darmouth College.
I was like, sure, but go back a little bit.
And partly you have to go back, so much farther
on the East coast than you do in Hawaii. But
(10:26):
it was really interesting. A part of the podcast actually,
and like writing some of these Native Hawaiian characters in
was just visibility.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
It's like before you can even get to the place
of equal rights and remedying certain things and you know,
issues of land and water, just like visibility, like, hey,
there are people here, maybe we should give a listen
to what's going on, right because you know, and like
not to get too nuts about this stuff, but you know,
(10:56):
I've been reading a lot of stuff lately about Maui
and it's tricky, right because the whole state relies on tourism.
We've vectored our economy exclusively towards tourism, and yet part
of why Maui was so dry was because all the
water was going to the hotels and golf courses and
not to like the rest of the island, which is
(11:20):
you know, they're like there have been a bunch of
native communities for a while being like, hey, this is
not going to work long term.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Has been discussion, that's been a discussion.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, yeah, there, I mean, you know, and it's not
getting a whole lot of coverage. But you know, for
those of us who like are kind of you know,
like there's a bunch of like protect Mono Kaa and Aamamana,
and like there's a bunch of different folks on social
media that you know, have been speaking from the Native
Hawaiian communities. Yeah, there are folks who are, like we've
been saying for a really long time that this this
(11:53):
sort of tourism first approach to land and water and
resources it is creating not only is it like vastly
unfair to the people whose land it is and all
of that, but right also creates this massive imbalance in
the land's resilience to things like fire.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's that's it's a very I mean,
I don't even know how you go back and begin
to un tangle and unwind those things. I mean, I
guess to your point, it's going to have to be
re envisioned. It's going to have to be rebuilt in
a new way. But that that catch twenty two that
(12:37):
you mentioned of we rely on the tourism yet we're
neglecting our ancestors, our history, our native peoples. It's very complicated.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
It requires a lot of revisioning and I think I
have no answers, and so I take what I am
going to call a politically responsible cop out just to
say it's not for me to come up with answers.
I just want to listen, you know what I mean,
like sort of turn the mic over to like some
of the some of the organizers and the leaders and
(13:10):
the elders in those communities and be like, Okay, if
hypothetically I had no ideas, what are your ideas? What
do you need for me?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Right? I mean there's so much, as you said, music
and culture and performance. Were you did you begin performing
in like Native Hawaiian spectacle or no?
Speaker 1 (13:32):
I mean, you know, I took the sort of you
know how like little girls on the mainland take ballet.
You turn four and they put you in a tutu
Like it's just it's like a thing that happens.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
It's required.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yes, yeah, and if you're like super alternative, it might
be like gymnastics and baseball, but like that's about as
far outside about as we get. So I actually did
take it year of ballet, and I think I think
the ballet teacher took my parents aside and was like,
I'm sure she's good at something it's not this. So
(14:04):
I ended up in you know, hula lessons, which is
what I think a lot of the like four or
five six year olds, you know, and I never got
any good but enjoyed it. I think what what I
really kind of came away with is a sense of
storytelling as really important.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Okay, you know, because you.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Grow up with like the stories in Hawaii, right, the
stories of Pelle of the volcano goddess and of where
the name for your valley comes from, or you know,
Cohala Opuna and the owls, and like those stories were everywhere,
and I was fascinated by them, and you know, everything
from picture books to like you know, certain teachers or
(14:48):
your Hawaiian studies teachers sharing things. And I think at
a certain point I started to realize how different those
stories were from the stories that I was like hearing
in church, right, especially when it came to women, you
know what I mean, Like lots of very powerful female
figures in Hawaiian storytelling. The Bible seems to be all
about like please don't have sex, but then do have
(15:12):
a baby. But that you know what I mean, Like
it's super complicated, very complicated, like Sarah in the Bible
is ninety nine and God tells her she's going to
have a kid, And in my imagination, her first response
was just like, you really don't know how this works.
I don't think you've thought this all the way through. Also,
who wants kids at ninety nine? I'm in my forties
(15:32):
and I don't want to stay awake that late. Yeah, no,
So so anyway, the point is that the storytelling, I think,
is what kind of hooked me into what we do.
What about you? I know that I'm supposed to be
interviewing me, but like, where did you know?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
It's it's interesting. So I grew up in the South,
and I think similarly that tradition of storytelling, of history
of who owns the land, which again that becomes a
very complicated issue at its depth, but I think there
(16:09):
that was more important than I think it is say
in New Hampshire or Iowa or whatever like. There is
that sort of identity. Again, not all of it positive,
but the history in the South is is a part
of it. And my grandfather, I mean we two three
(16:30):
four years old, I mean me and my sister at night,
he would just tell stories. So yeah, I mean there
is I'm not equating it at all to be exactly
the same, but I think that there is some sort
of similarity there. You.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, that never.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Really even quite occurred to me in that same way
in terms of my personal history until hearing you talk,
because that really, that really was, that storytelling really was
a part of my early childhood.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Well and even the in the South. Yeah, I mean
I was what was I'm never going to remember this
exactly right, And I apologize to all the Kenny fans
out there, but there's that Kenny Rogers song the Coward
of Something County. Yes, I was listening to it came
on the other day, and I thought, this is this
is a movie in three minutes, do you know what
I mean about? Like a man whose dad tells him
(17:21):
don't get into fights and don't do what I did,
and then he falls in love with this woman and
then she's ps gang raped like literally that's in the song,
which is nice, and then he turns around and like
it's it's a story, and it's it's a like Steven
Spielberg worthy giant story. And if I think about a
lot of country music, that's you know, even bluegrass, right,
(17:44):
Like I don't know what part of the South you're from.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
But no, Georgia. I mean as as deep as it goes.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, wait where in Georgia? I lived there for five
years Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Okay, yeah, so I think you're exactly right. It's why
I you know, people say what's what's your favorite kind
of music, and I'll say old country, like like Willie
Nelson and yeah, Nylon Jennings and they're telling stories. My
least favorite is new country because I feel like it's
(18:15):
just bebop but he beep beepop I was drinking. Yeah, exactly,
and it's not as complex as story. Actually, his stories
are way simpler.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
No, although I will say there are some do you
know what I mean? Like blown Away, there's there's definitely
some people still like Brad Paisley can still write some lyrics.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Man, that's but that's old country. So if it's if
it's in the old style that.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Counts, then that then that that counts.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
So when you started becoming really involved in performing, I
understand you started acting in school plays and stuff. Was
this like a passion of yours? Was this an activity
like ballet when you were four or did you feel
like this was something that that that really moved you
(19:22):
that you wanted to do later on, and if not,
when did that moment occur?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Good question. I mean plays. Acting was the first thing
that I put myself in, you know, like your parents
put you into dancing whatever, blah blah blah. I joined
the track and field team because I thought that would
be useful. Blew my knee out in the very first practice.
There's I like anything that involves physical coordination. Basically, the
people in charge are like, again, I'm sure you're good
at something, go find it.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Wait a second track though, I mean running.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I know, I know that's not.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
A ton of physical coordination this.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Is, but it's more than I have, and I have.
I will say I will now at this point in
my life, only run if someone's behind me with a firearm,
which weirdly describes like half of my career on camera.
So I do a bit of running, but only if
there's like the Apocalypse is behind me. I basically flogged
(20:20):
out a track, which was amazing, And there were auditions
for the play the next day. So and it was
as you like it, and it was Shakespeare, and I
loved that and the chewiness of the words and the
language and the challenge of the language. It felt like
a puzzle. But I never thought I would do it professionally,
(20:40):
you know, because I mean I didn't come from a
family that like could support me, you know, so it
was like, you get your degree and you are on
your own right, which also, by the way, seemed completely fair.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Sure, no, they put up with you for long enough,
exactly an uncoordinated daughter. I mean, you can't expect get
into things came going. But now you went when you
left to go to New Hampshire, which is, by the way,
it's just hilarious, but you go to New Hampshire. You
(21:13):
but you went to study drama.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Right like I know, I went to study history.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
You went to study I went to study history with.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
An eye toward being a diplomat, which is hilarious because
people who know me, I mean you've known me now
for what eight minutes, You're like, this is the least
diplomatic person in the face of the earth. I can't
not say something that floats through my head. You know,
it's funny. This is this is becoming the podcast about
Sarah's failures, which I'm totally fine with. After my first
semester in the.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
History that was not the attention, but go ahead, no.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
But it's truly like the head of the teacher that
I had that taught me my first history seminar, she
said to me, and I quote, you are too creative
to be a historian. The drama department is that way.
And I was like, all right, really yeah, which, by
the way, might be part of the problem of the
way history was taught at the time, But at any
point I was out. I still never thought. I took
(22:05):
a bunch of drama classes, I did a bunch of plays.
I still never thought like, you can't make a living.
And so you know, I was going to get a
degree in something else and get a PhD and be
a professor like my parents. And right before I graduated
from university, I realized that I would have to fail
at acting before I could settle for anything else. I
(22:26):
had to try. I just had to give it a shot.
And you know, the thing is about it to me
and growing up actually in such a big family. I
wonder if this kind of lands with you too. I
love how collaborative it is. I love that, like whether
you're in a green room with a bunch of actors
or you're you know, chatting with the crew at lunch whatever,
(22:49):
like we are surrounded. We're in a big network of
people all trying to do good stories, trying to make
something out of whole cloth that will be meaningful and
beautiful and funny and human. And that is like just
(23:11):
the greatest thing to me to be with those people
all the time.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
That is the greatest thing, you know, Jenna Elfman, she
said to me almost exactly the same thing that you
just said, and I love it, so I'm going to
share it with you. She talked about that in life
there are people who have agendas and you're looking out
for yourself, you're looking out for your family, or you know,
(23:36):
you're trying to accomplish different things. But the moment that
someone says action, every single person on screen off screen
is working toward one thing. In that moment, It's like
a time in life where everyone is just trying to
(23:57):
get this one thing right. Be it prop and yeah,
the look and the camera and the action the actors
are doing. It's exactly what you just said. But I
love that that.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Idea, particularly in theater. Actually, from the moment the curtain
goes up to the moment it comes back down, at
the end. It's extraordinary how everybody on stage, backstage, in
the audience, there's a single mindedness that we very rarely
get right. Like I my mind is never quieter than
(24:28):
it is when I'm acting because I'm thinking about this
one thing and we can't do it alone. That's I
think there's something so beautiful about this. You know, we
have this silly Marlborough man image of American achievement. That's
like I pulled myself up by my bootstraps.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Bullshit.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You took a staircase that somebody else built for you,
You took the hand that somebody else put down for you.
You walked shoulder to shoulder with people who were there
for you. Like, we don't do anything alone, not anything meaningful.
And I love how deeply interdependent we are on each
(25:09):
other making stories, and particularly with people who are not
like us, you know, like we've all got there's always
people on a set that you're like, we would never
I our paths would never cross, you know, with like
me and this guy who's working craft service, you know,
or like this driver. I mean, we've all had Like
drivers are amazing, man, and some of them are the
(25:29):
greatest ever and some of them, You're like, Wow, this
is not a conversation I ever thought in a million
years I would have, right, right, But we're driving from
Atlanta to Savannah, so we're gonna have it for three
and a half hours, and you end up like, I mean,
you know, walking down was really interesting because you know,
we shot in Sonoya the I mean after season one.
(25:52):
Season one was in Atlanta. There were a lot of
drivers down there that like, man, they don't have people
like me in their life.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
You know, some like pink Ocamie tree hugging, rainbow flag flying,
but and like I don't have a lot of people
who pray and vote and think the way they do.
But we humanized each other, yes, And so I'm not
going to use unkind language to describe them because while
(26:22):
I may not agree with a lot, they are also
my brothers and sisters because we survived.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
They survived the Georgia Woods together. Yes, And the Georgia
was the snakes.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Slash the Apocalypse. Did you see snakes?
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Oh dude. We had a guy named Patrick whose job
it was to flush the snakes out of the set
before we got there, and he was always like think
I got him? And I was like you are the
bravest man I know. Also, what do you mean think?
Oh my gosh, oh dude, it was It was nuts.
We had a tick check every day after work. You'd
go to your trailer, you'd strip down, and you check
(26:59):
your body for ticks. You guys didn't do that with
the office.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
No, Oh my god. That really made me. No, we
did not. We did not have tick checks. So I
have an issue right now. I don't know if anybody
wants to message me, message me about this. So I
have ticks I where I live now, and I have
a dog and the dog gets tick medication. Here is
(27:29):
a current problem. The medication is working, and the ticks
don't want to be on the dog. But now findings
everywhere dog goes outside tickets are right inside. Is like,
I don't want the dog and then I'm like seeing
them walk around on the ground.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
But there's this Brian dude, that's the ticks freaked me out.
The whole line is these thing like it's worse than
a zombie apocalypse as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Well, that's true. I so, yeah, you shot obviously the
walking Dead in Georgia. Yeah, I mean you're doing so
many nights too, right nights and hot days and snakes.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
And the one Actually we didn't have many nights. It's interesting,
like if you watch the first even the first two seasons,
we didn't do many nights. I don't really know why.
Season one was odd because in order to permit downtown Atlanta,
we could only shoot there Saturday Sunday, so our days
off for Monday Tuesday, which is just a little odd
(28:33):
because it means right that you're like extra freaky as
a circus freak actor anyway, do you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
It's like you try and make new friends and you're like,
you want to come over for dinner Monday night.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And you're like, what, No, not at all? Right, Okay,
that's fine.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I have to ask you. You said you you were
not going to be able to move on to something
else until that didn't work out. You end up going
to the National Theater Conservative in Denver for your MFA,
which is a very big deal at the time. You
get your equity card, which I didn't know that when
you graduate from there, for you theater or film, film, slice.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Television, there's such different muscles and such different media. I
did a play right after I left Walking Dead at
the Kennedy Center, Okay, And I was so scared to
do it. And it was actually Jeff Demon who kind
(29:34):
of talked me into it. He's like, you need to
sharpen that muscle because there is nothing like the sustained
attention of a two and a half hour play. It'll
make you a better actor.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
The economics of it I struggle with. I struggle with
the fact that the tickets were too expensive for most
people to see. It was the whitest audience I have
ever performed for. And I made no money and lost
my health insurance and had to go on Cobra and
so wow, Like that's not romantic, man, it's really not,
(30:11):
you know. And like the Kennedy saide it's a good
it's a good theater, Like they pay you, but I'm
the sole breadwinner for a family of foreman, Like, it's
not it did not it did not do it I,
you know. And so it's usually the writing's better in
theater and there's a devotion, there's rehearsal, which is such
(30:32):
a gift. But to the extent that I believe that
stories are powerful when they are shared. More people saw
the first episode of The Walking Dead, than would see
every show I would ever do if I spent my
entire career on Broadway correct and they saw it for
(30:55):
so much less money, And so that's a that's a
tough one. I would love to go back and do
another play, but I can't afford to make that my career.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
See, I started in theater too.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, so what do you think would you go back?
Would you if somebody said, here you go, We'll give you,
you know, forty eight weeks a year for Oh no, no, babe?
Would you By the way, are you a musical theater person?
Do you sing? No?
Speaker 2 (31:27):
I talk sing. I talked sing really really well, which
you know for comedic musical theater roles is good. But yeah, no,
it's I mean it's I mean, you talk about the
circus Freaks with you know, you, during a short period
of time on The Walking Dead had Monday and Tuesday off,
like for your life, having Mondays off. I mean, it's
(31:50):
like so difficult. I mean, it's I mean, the short
answer is I want to go back and do something.
You know, that's all I did essentially prior to the Office.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
That's right. The Office was the like big TV break.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
That's right, what a trip? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Did that just do your headed?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Did I say it again?
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Well, to go from like, you know, on a good week,
a couple thousand people a week, see what I'm doing
to like giant massive, Yeah, you know it.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
We started so not strong that it didn't feel like
that early on, but it you know, I mean it
quickly became what it was so so it like ramped up.
But yeah, so that was different. But yeah, no, I
mean it's obviously a huge change. And yeah, I mean
(32:41):
to your point, Yeah, yeah, I could do that forty
eight you know, weeks a year at eight shows a week,
and yeah, no one's going to see the exposure is impossible.
But there's a live theater experience. There's something that happens
in a room every single day that's different. And you know,
that's the part for me that I miss is that
(33:03):
experience live in the room.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
You want to hear a fun theater story real quick. Yes,
So speaking of live in the room. When I was
in grad school, we did a production of Doubt. Okay
I know it, which is yeah for people who don't.
The short version is it's a story about a woman
in the hospital dying of cancer and she's a she's
a scholar of the poet John Dunn. And we did
(33:26):
it in the round, which was kind of insane hospital
Journey's everywhere, and I had like that four lines in
the whole thing. Dude, I mean, we're grad students. We're
just there to little tiny parts. I think it's almost
a one woman show. There's like two roles when they
did it on Broadway, but they added a bunch of
other students and things like that. And I'm in one
(33:46):
of the three scenes I think I'm in in the
entire thing. We're playing the leading woman is a flashback
of her teaching, and I'm playing one of the students.
And I opened my mouth to say one of the
two or three lines I have, and Annette Held, who
is the role, points at me and then points past
me and goes, Sarah, I'm sorry. Is she okay? And
for somebody who notices, who knows theater, for an actor
(34:08):
to go off script and break the wall like that
was like for probably three heartbeats, nobody moved, nobody breathed,
and then she looked up into the booth and she goes,
I'm sorry, we need the lights on, and the lights
come on and there's this elderly woman slumped over, not
moving in her seat. Again, we're in the round, so
the audience is looking at us and we're looking at them.
(34:29):
And the brilliant, quick thinking stage manager comes on and
goes the gentleman, they'll be an unscheduled fifteen minute or mission,
please buy them the lobby. They kick us backstage. Backstage
is full of hospital to trytus right, the hospital beds
and gurneys and people dressed in scrubs. And in record time,
the doors to the backstage bang open and incomes the
(34:52):
ambulance crew and they freeze and they're like, what the fuck?
This is a hospital, what's going on? And we're like,
we're actors, we can't help you.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Go bag.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
And they go and they pull this woman out and
I look over at a net and she has wrapped
her arms around herself and she is physically holding her
performance in because it's a beast of a role and
she was brilliant at it. And they take the woman
out to the ambulance and the stage manager says, what
do you want to do? She says, is the woman alive?
And stage manager said yeah. She goes all right, well,
(35:21):
let's get back out there. And we got back out there,
and at the very end of the play spoiler alert,
but the play is like thirty years old. The lead
dies and she drops her clothes and she looks up
and this bright white light shines on her. And usually
that's where the audience starts applotting. But the lights came
up and it was dead silent, and the audience was
(35:41):
on their feet, and we'd just been in a play
of death, and like death was in the audience that night,
and we just stood there, the cast and the actors
and the audience, looking at each other for like again
a few heartbeats, and then they started applauding and we left.
It was one of the most profound things I've ever
been a part of. And that only happens in a
(36:04):
live show.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
That's beautiful. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, you're right, You're right.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
You just gotta do seven thousand, one hundred and forty
two performances before it happens again. Your career is amazing.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
You know, your career is amazing.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I have I have a quote from you. I'm not
a badass. I just play one on TV. This by
the way, based on this conversation is clearly is clearly
not true. But you can't run, and you're an actor,
you're a director, you're a producer, writer, voice, actor, podcast
(37:09):
or mom, you work with the International Rescue Committee, you tango,
you trapeez, I mean, clearly hula at least as a
four year old mite for the list goes on, how
much because you were an uncoordinated person? How much extra
(37:29):
work did you have to do? Was it difficult for you?
And I'm talking prison break obviously the Walking Dad. Did
you do a lot outside to be ready when it
was like physically yeah, when your number was called?
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean after season one of Walking Dead,
first of all, I think we all lost about ten pounds,
like ten to fifteen, me and John, the entire crew. Yeah,
sweat and just like because we're outdoors all day. Yeah,
and it's too hot to eat. We had like forty
days over ninety degrees. You know. It was just like
(38:05):
the and we realized coming back for season two, like
you have to be in the best shape of your life.
There's just no right getting around it. By the way, later,
many years later, I did a show called Letter Kenny,
which is a Canadian comedy and I'll.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Say, oh, you guys really have it figured out. Finally,
these comedians like if only I were funny. You guys
have the right idea. You shoot inside, you make each
other laugh. You're not screaming and crying. There's no firearms.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Nobody's talking to you about dead babies like I congratulations
on landing in the right part of our industry, or
long term mental.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Health, and that's so funny.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Quality of life. I salute you, sir.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
You know it was an accident for me. I wasn't well. Yeah,
I mean people, I mean I told you I came
from theater, like you know. I mean people assume that
I was at Improva, Olympic or Second City or the
Groundlings or Stand Up or one of those. I mean,
I did just as much drama as I mean, I
(39:08):
probably did more drama than comedy.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Favorite theater role. Don't think about it to go.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
I don't know, I know, I'm thinking. I mean, I
mean the standard answer, which it just happens too much.
And for an American male now regardless of race. Willie
Lowman and death of a Salesman's greatest.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Roll of fall Time, Oh yeah, sure, I mean yeah, sure,
although legendarily like Rex actors. Yes, the play I did
at the Kennedy Center was opposite Finn Whitrock, who had
just done Phil Hoffman's Death of the Salesman, and he
was like, it broke him. I mean it just like Phil. Yeah,
I just I can't imagine what it takes to go
(39:56):
through that. It's like Lear, right, Yeah, it's big. Yeah,
it's awful. Stacy Keach actually said to me once he
did Lear right after the first season of Prison Break,
and I was supposed to do it with him. He
asked me to play one of his daughters, but then
they moved the show from Chicago to Dallas. He was
doing it at the Goodman but I called him like
right before first preview, I was like, how's it going?
(40:17):
He said, you know, Sarah, the tragedy of Lear is
that by the time you're old enough to understand the role,
you're too old to keep up with it physically. And
you know, He's like, I'm losing my voice. I'm exhausted
all the time. And I think there's something to it
that some of those roles, and I think they wrote
more of them for men than women back then, But
(40:37):
like some of those roles. Just I mean, it's just
got to feel like a marathon every night.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Have you ever seen the movie? Now we're going to
really keep here. Have you ever seen the movie The
Dresser Albert Finney? Oh, Tom Courtney? Long time Ago, A
long time ago. By the way, if you're listening and
you want an old classic drama, I'm not even going
(41:04):
to get the decade right. I would say it was
probably in the eighties. But it is about an old
Shakespearean company that takes place during World War Two, I believe,
and they could be one I don't know. Albert Finney
is playing Lear and Tom Courtney is his dresser, and
it is essentially about him descending into madness on the
(41:29):
trajectory that Lear is and that for me is theater.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well there is. I mean, like you have to be
able to lose your mind.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I have done. I've had the good fortune and I
say good fortune seriously of playing a role over an
extended period of time, like over a year, of playing
the same role which was heavy makeup and sitting there
before the show putting on the makeup's going Can I
(42:03):
do this one?
Speaker 1 (42:03):
I don't know if I can do this again?
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Can I do this one more time, and it was great.
It was called The Green Bird with a fantastic theater
company called Theater de la June Loan. That was French
slash Minneapolis, and I played the evil old woman in
full kabuki makeup.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
WHOA, yeah, that's so into. First of all, I really
would love to see that. I'm curious about everything at
every level. But I think, you know, in some ways,
I think there's something very cool in what we do.
In you do touch a little bit of madness, you know.
I mean, even just on an eight show week. I
(42:47):
remember being in a Sunday matinee performance when you've done
Friday Night, Saturday matinee, Saturday night, and now it's Sunday
going I don't know if I just said this line
or if I'm remembering saying it yesterday, but I know
I'm gonna have to say it again tonight. And just
like a little part of your brain just goes wh
and it.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Like totally totally, and you's.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
A little crazy. You go a little crazy. I've lost
myself a couple of times, But then I think you
find yourself too, and you learn a little bit about
who you are and what you're capable of, and you are,
in theory in a safe enough environment that there are
people there to pull you back. And actually, I think
that's what makes for great storytelling, and I imagine it's
(43:32):
got to be the same thing in comedy. But like
the directors, that producers, the writers and the other actors,
creating an environment where you can do super dangerous work
knowing the people around me are gonna they're not going
to make fun of me, They're not gonna let me fail.
You know, they're gonna there. There's again that community that
we're kind of enmeshed in.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah. By the way, I feel like I have to
give us credit here. I feel like we've done a
fantastic job of talking about our careers and our work
during of this writer strike. So I'm just gonna give
us both just an amazing tip of the cat to
that tip of the cat. Cap I cat, I'm gonna
(44:17):
I'm gonna tip. I'm gonna tip the cat. We do
have something very important that we need to talk about,
which is Aftershock, which is your podcast. You're basically lord, dictator, king, queen, writer, creator, producer, actor, beverlord, technician,
(44:41):
microphone operator. You kind of mentioned it before I want
you to tell me a little bit about where the
idea came for after Shock. By the way, for those
of you who don't know, it's a scripted podcast, uh
that Sarah is doing to great a. I'm so in
(45:02):
love and excited by it. Did this come at all
from your childhood in Hawaii? I mean it takes place
on an island.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, a lot of it, I will say. You know,
the original idea was brought to me by a writer,
a Ya writer novelist named Patrick Carmon, and he and
my producing partner Ben Haber cooked up this thought about
what would happen if a new island rose up out
of the sea. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting,
and we talked about a lot of it. It felt
(45:32):
to me from the beginning like a little bit of
a re exploration of like westward expansion, right, like new Land.
We tell that story a lot in westerns, you know
what I mean, And it's cowboys and Indians and women
in whorehouses, and it's like, well, what if we examined
some of those Like what if we took some different
people and tried to tell the story in a new way,
(45:54):
and what would it look like now. But yeah, immediately
the new Pacific Island thing came up, and I started
thinking about what were the female relationships that I most
wanted to see that we're maybe more complicated than some
of the ones I've had a chance to portray, which
is where a lot of the stuff between Cassie and
Mikayla came up with, you know, like, what does it
(46:14):
mean when the person that you need for your own
survival Cassie and Mikayla's case, is the person that you
hate most in the world. And how do you atone
in Cassie's case, for the things you've done that hurt
of the people. And actually the second season. First season
ends well, most people have a lot of blood on
their hands at the end of the first season, and
the second season is really about atonement and forgiveness and
(46:38):
how do you ask for it and how do you
grant it? And what does that look like? Yeah, and
then I realized, it's interesting. There's a woman that I've
been following for a long time and I really loved
her work, and I've gotten to know her a little bit.
She's deeply involved in the Hawaiian land activism, and I
asked her to go over a couple of scripts with
me for season two, so I wanted to make sure
(46:59):
that there weren't like blind spots and some of the
more cultural things I was doing. And she pointed out
a fundamental flaw in season one and I was like, oh, okay,
and she goes, it's no problem. You know, you can
rewrite it, and I was like, no, season one is out.
And I asked the bed on this and she's like, okay,
So from a cultural perspective, I would say this instead
(47:21):
of what you did. And I went great. So my
stomach turned to water and I went, oh god, I
blew it. And then I thought, okay, so this can
become the character's journey then, and this will come up
more in kind of the back half of the season.
Episodes like six, seven or eight, Lay goes on a
(47:42):
very kind of emotional journey of trying to figure out,
with all the best intentions, I took this action and
I'm now being told by the people who know more
than me that it was the wrong action. So how
do I make that right? And this? So there was
a lot of humility involved in writing this season, because
of course, you know, I'm a writer's room one, and
(48:04):
you need other people to bounce things off of. Tatti
Gabrielle was kind enough to help me break this season.
She did such a brilliant job playing Mikayla. I was like,
I'd love to hear what you feel, what you hear,
what you think. She's at a different generation than I am,
she's a different race than I am. And I was like,
you know, your perspective will only broaden this thing. And
so we got to do a bunch of that together.
But still, you know, the wearing of many hats is
(48:26):
a necessity. If we had the budget, I would very
happily start delegating thing. I needed a lot of help
from outside. And yeah, eight some humble pie.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
As I was writing, well, you have a great cast.
You mentioned Tati Gabrielle, David Harber, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. How
did you cast it? Are these people you knew out.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
On my phone? Yeah, David, I went to college together
along with Mindy Kaling, who you know was on your show.
Like there was a sort of small I've heard of her,
but yeah, ye, she's coming up.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
You know.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
I think we'll see great things from her in the future,
that Kaling. But there was a sort of small knot
of us that we're fortunate enough to have careers. And
Dave was one of them. So yeah, I mean they
were all just people that I knew and I called
them and you know, I have nothing to offer, right,
Like there's no money, there's no you know, like this
isn't going to be the role that like wins you
(49:19):
the Oscar. You know, it's just, hey, there's this thing
that I really want to do. I want to tell
this story because I don't see it being told anywhere else.
And I think you probably know that feeling of you
get that call from your friend and you know, well,
the only way this gets done is if we sign
on to do it, even though it is the wrong
(49:39):
professional decision, It is the wrong but you know, like
there's no benefit to Dave for being in this. It's
not going to like change Jeffrey's life. And yeah, you know,
look I told them. I was like, hey, if this
goes somewhere, if this becomes a film or a television series,
like the role is yours. But you know, I mean
one of the odds, like first of all, you know,
Dave's gonna be like thanks, but I'll be running Sony
(50:00):
by then like I will, I will own a studio
with my rack of Emmys. So it's just the goodness
of their hearts. In that same sense of collaboration, What.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Do you feel like you can do in terms of
the type of storytelling you can do through this medium
that you can't do other places.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Well, look, I mean I think I've talked about this
a lot, but I still think it's the best example
that I know of. You know, you remember all those
stories from when Orson Wells's were the World's this broadcast
on the radio and people tuned in and they thought
that the aliens had landed. There is a power in
audio storytelling, I think, because it engages the imagination of
(50:44):
the listener. So whatever three hundred million dollars of you know,
pyrotechnics a VFX department might be able to put together
is still not going to be as tailored to you
as what your own brain serves up. You know. So
if you've got a fear, if you've got a joy,
the door creaks open, your brain's going to put on
(51:06):
the other side of it the thing that scares you
the most. Yeah, and I think that makes it a
really potent medium.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Yeah, I agree, and freeing in a way. And I
think for actors also an ability to create a character
without so many of the obstacles that we regularly are
put in front of us. That for me, you know,
for me it's mostly been animation stuff, but still in
(51:35):
the same way, you know, I'll let somebody else worry
about exactly what it looks like or exactly what you know,
how pressed the suit is, or how fuzzy the bear's
hair is, or whatever it is, you know, but just
being able to create a character with voice, I find it.
I find it very freeing in a way and really
(51:55):
really enjoy it. So congratulations to you on that.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Thanks you want to be in season three?
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Yeah, give me a call. Figure out. Can I play
a bear?
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Not that I can totally write a bear? Okay, we'll
write exit pursued by a bear bear played by Brian Bumkin.
We're tying it back. This is by the way, you
guys can't see this, but we're on squadcast, so I
know we're on the riverside, so I can actually see Brian.
And I almost got a spit take out of you.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
You did, you almost got a spit take. And by
the way, you made me laugh harder than anyone has
made me laugh in a long, long time earlier. So
we're going to write that down for the record book.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
Uh all I needed today.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
We're on strike, but we're not on strike here in
the iHeart Podcasting world. Congratulations on everything and on after Shock.
And when the strike is done, we're going to come
and we're gonna we're going to reconvene. We're going to
talk about We're going to talk about all the other
a magent, amazing acting projects that you have with the
(53:01):
Ewel Studios going right now, we'll pretend to like them.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
By the way, small asterisk. We did call SAG about
Aftershock and I was like, how do you feel about
us promoting it? And they're like, we don't care at all. Right,
So this promotion has been brought to you with the
permission of the Great Actors Guild because we do not
cross picket lines.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
We don't. No, we don't. Sarah. Thank you so much.
It's very nice to meet you. I feel like I've
got a new friend.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Likewise, yeah, I hope we get to meet a person
a person at some point. Until then, Thanks for having
me be well.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Thanks so much. Thanks Sarah. Or should I say mahalo
for coming in today. I loved hearing your thoughtful perspective
(53:58):
on the disaster in Hawaii that is happening right now.
And you're very funny comments. Yeah, nearly made me do
a spittake. You are truly you're a badass folks. As
you know what's been happening on Maui, it's absolutely devastating.
I mean, it can't be overstated. So after hearing Sarah
(54:20):
talk about this today, and if you're looking for a
way to help, check out an organization she likes Maui
Rapid Response. That's Maui Rapid Response dot org. They're on
the ground there in Maui. They're providing some food, shelter supplies,
and other resources to those impacted by the fire. And look,
(54:41):
if you're on Maui right now, know that me and
I know so many of my listeners are thinking about you.
Our heart is going out to you, and know that
you can go to Maui Rapid Response to connect to
resources across the island. Thanks for listening, everybody. That was
a fun one. Have a a very very happy and
(55:02):
safe week. Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced
by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Lang Lee.
Our senior producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes,
Hannah Harris and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan
(55:26):
Papa Zachary, and our intern is Thomas Olsen. Our theme
song Bubble and Squeak, performed by the one and only
Creed Bratton,
Host
Brian Baumgartner
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