August 11, 2025 • 18 mins
Welcome back to the studio. This is My Day of Play, where you’re taken into the real events and actions of how it happens long before the process of editing or cleaning up. The original purpose of these episodes was to give my broadcasting students something to edit, to practice with and to call their own. Then I realized that you are just as important. Share the reality of how it really went. We begin things with music historian Rob Sheffield the author of the book Heartbreak Is The National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music. Then we’ll wrap things up with Danica McKellar from The Wonder Years and West Wing. In November of 2024 she starred in the holiday drama A Cinderella Christmas Ball This is My Day of Play. Completely unedited in the way of meeting the wizard behind the curtain.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome back to the studio. This is my day
of play, where you're taking into the really events and
actions of how it really went down before the process
of editing and or cleaning up. The original purpose of
these episodes was to give my broadcasting students something to edit,
to practice with, and to call their own. Then I realized,
wait a second, you're just as important as they are
share the reality of how it really goes down. We
(00:20):
begin things with music historian Rob Sheffield, the author of
the book Heartbreak Is a National Anthem, How Taylor Swift
reinvented pop music. Then we'll wrap things up with Danica
mckeller from The Wonder Years and West Wing. In November
of twenty twenty four, she also starred in the holiday
drama at Cinderella Christmas Pall. This is My day of play,
(00:40):
completely unedited in the way of meeting the wizard behind
the curtains, recording and progress. Hello and good morning everybody.
Hey rrow you got ten with Rob hey erro Hey,
how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I'm so good, Thank you so much, it's so great
to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Well, I'm grateful and I feel less that you have
written this book because I mean, you really are giving
us a side of music that you know we assume,
but you're giving us that path to follow to where
we can be educated on newer things to look for.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Thank you, that's a wow. That's super kind of you,
because that's my hope that you know that it's not
just people who are already fans, but like people who
I just love music.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, the thing is is that we live in this
streaming generation and the songs will pop in and we
hear who it is or we ask Alexa, who is this,
but we don't hear the story of who these artists are.
And that's why we need things like this.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, totally, I agree, and that for I mean, with streaming,
you're sort of it encourages you to just listen to
what you're already listening to, what you already like, and
it just makes it harder to hear stuff that you
might like that you haven't heard yet. So that's my goal. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
What is it about heartbreak that we've made it into
a national anthem? Is it because we're relating with it?
Like those magazines at a grocery store?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I think that she writes these heartbroken songs and it's
a line from a song. It's a line from one
of my favorites, New Romantics, which is one of her
best and one of her weirdest songs. And heart break
is the national anthem. That chorus just speaks to me
because she writes these lonely songs, right, These songs put
these very isolating, agonizing emotions. But you know, you stand
(02:23):
up there in a stadium and sing them with sixty
thousand people and suddenly you're a community. This heartbreak sort
of brings you together. And she does that with her
music the way the greats do. And for me, that's
the essence of her songwriting is that she creates that
community around heartbreak, and so heartbreak really is the national anthem.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I've always believed that she's a silent wolf, meaning that
she is she observes everything, and from those observations she's
able to write.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
That seems absolutely true. She, as we know, she will
tell any kind of story. She started out as a
teenage girl writing songs about high school romances, and people thought, oh,
isn't that cute. They just missed her as just bubblegum pop,
her age and what she did, and they didn't really
get like how important. It was that this was this
(03:12):
girl with an acoustic guitar writing her own songs at
a time, and that just wasn't done, and she was
showing them how it was done. And like you said,
silent Wolf is absolutely the way to do it. She
was observing all different types of music, all different types
of lives and telling those stories.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Because you've always been so associated with music, when Taylor
Swift started growing inside your heart, how did it change
you when it came to listening to music.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
It really changed a lot of how I listened to
music that I've been listening to all my life. It
sounded different because of how I was hearing Taylor Swift. So,
for instance, I'd known Joni Mitchell's music all my life.
I grew up in a world where Jonni Mitchell was
always famous, and yet it wasn't until after I heard
Taylor Swift that I really appreciated Joni Mitchell. Because Taylor
(03:58):
really taught me to hear that kind of storytelling where
maybe me anders off topic and maybe goes around circles,
connects a few different stories in the same song. I
feel like Taylor really taught me to hear Joni Mitchell
that way. And yeah, I think there's a lot of
old music that just sounds new after you hear a
songwriter with the new take on it.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That is so funny. You say that because you know what,
because I'm in radio. Of course, I've had Taylor Swift
a part of my life for many, many years. But
I did go back to Carol King, and I went
back to all of these other female performers to listen
to their music differently because Taylor has taught me that.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yes, I feel like there's a lot of that going around.
You'll get how huge Kate Bush is now. I remember
like when Kate Bush was a pretty obscure thing to
be into, and now she's mega famous with young people
with gen Z, and a large part of that is
Taylor has taught the young artist, has taught the young
audience how to hear these artists like Kate Bush or
(04:53):
Stevie Nix, who's also more popular now than she's ever been,
and that Taylor has really changed the way people listen
to old me us as well as new music.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I'm that guy that wants Taylor Swift to find that man,
and of course I think that she has found that
man right now, and I want to rush into it.
But of course, you know, I'm so glad that she
is not rushing into it. But it's going to have
to come out in a song somewhere. I think that's
how she's going to announce it is through music.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I love that. I love them. I honestly I love him.
I don't know much about him as a football player,
so I'm coming into it. Called I just love how
he loves being Taylor Swift's boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I love how he really hams it up in that role.
I love how he really pursued her in public and
was really ardent about it, because usually her boyfriends have
been a lot of them seem to have attitudes about
her being more famous, more rich. They've got kind of
a hang dog sort of air when they're around her
in public. And I love how he really embraces the
(05:50):
love aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Do you think that Taylor Swift fans real hardcore Swifties,
We don't see the fame. We just see a person
and she's just one of us.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Absolutely, And that's part of why I wanted to write
this book. It's not about her being a celebrity. There's
so much written about her fame, and so much written
about her image or her fashion, or her business sense
or whatever. I wanted to write about the songwriting and
the heart that creates those songs, because it's something that's
(06:21):
just very unique. She's got a very specific and individual
type of heart, and these really individual, specific kind of
songs come out of it.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Did you want to write some music while putting this together?
Because if you're going to get into a subject like this,
you can't just say no, no. I'm an author, I'm
a historian. I don't write music. But you had to
have wanted to write music or at least attempt it.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Boy, if I could sing, I would. I would love
to play guitar. I still have that as one of
my goals in life, you know, like a goal from
my fifties or sixties. I'm going to learn to play guitar.
I still have my guitar. I haven't been able to
play it very well. I would love the idea of
learning to write songs. Like a lot of writers, I
come up with a bunch of lyrics that I think
would be good lyrics, and I give them to my
(07:04):
musician friends. But Taylor's she's inspiring that way she made
my niece's write Songs's a lot of people here's they
could write songs.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
You've written about the Beatles, you right now about Taylor Swift.
Come on, you're that close to it. What do you
feeling that there's a comparison or because I mean, we're
living in a moment that one hundred years from now
we're still gonna be listening to both of them.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Absolutely absolutely. And my book before there was about David Bowie,
and it's the same time today. It's the musician might
pass away and the career might come to an end,
but the story is just beginning. Like the afterlife that
David Bowie has had, people are more in love with
him now than they were while he was alive, just
because young artist just keep young fans just keep discovering them.
(07:47):
And Prince it's the same way and Wretha Franklin. It's
the same way Led Zeppelin broke up, you know, over
forty years ago, and there's new band sounding that just
want to sound like them with Jimmy and it's the
same thing I think for Taylor and the Beatles. It's
that level where a century from now, young people are
still going to be hearing it and getting their minds
blown and falling in love the way that we do.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Wow, where can people go to find out more about you, Rob,
because I want them to dive into your research and
what you do to help bring us the information.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, this book, I guess like all my books. I'm
on Instagram, I'm I'm on social media, I'm on Facebook,
And there's always a lot to write about because I'm
always writing about music for Rolling Stones, so I'm ready
about old stuff, new stuff to the whole great story
of pop music. It goes on. It's messy, there's always
elements of the old and new mixed up, and I
(08:39):
love that.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Man.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Please come back to the show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Thank you so much. Er Oh my gosh, such a
treat to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Okay, you too, sir, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Please do not move. Coming up next, Danica mckeller, Hey,
thanks for coming back to my day of play. Let's
get into that conversation with actress Danica mckeller. Good morning,
how are you doing.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
I'm so glad I'm talking with you. Because you believe
in story sharing, not telling, but sharing, because you believe
in reaching out and creating things that bring people together,
not just today but forever.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
I think that's a lovely way of putting it. Thank
you to.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Get into that mindset and mode. What was the open
door for you? Who did you see in your life
or on your path that said, you know, you've got it,
let's let's bring it together.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
What are you refering too specifically?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
In other words, you know, for me to be in radio,
it took Casey case and it took Wolfman Jack and
so so in other words, for you to be who
you are with your music and with your with your
you know, your acting. I mean, who was that person
that really opened that door for you?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I've had so many. I mean I've been in the
business for over thirty years. So the very beginning was
of course landing the Wonder Years, and that would have
been Carol Black and Neil Marlins who saw something in
a twelve year old. And then after that I took
a break from acting to get a degree in mathematics
at UCLA, and I had a couple of professors there
(10:14):
who saw I had one tell me you have a
gift in mathematics, do you need to pursue this? And
that was really the genesis of why I now have
you know, I have a degree in math and eleven
in math books. I've been writing books for fifteen years
to inspire girls and kids to be comfortable and have
fun with math. Then after that, when I returned to acting,
Aaron Sorkin, I auditioned for the West Wing for like
(10:36):
a one scene part, which is kind of getting back
into acting, and he decided Aaron Sorkin said, Hey, I
think you're awesome, and I'm going to give you a
bigger part of the show.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
That was amazing.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
I mean there's and then Bill Adott, who was at
Hallmark Channel at the time. This was in twenty fifteen,
said I want you to do Christmas movies for us,
and that revived my career in a whole different way.
Now I do these all these romantic comedies and that,
and he I really credit him for helping me to
become a real part of this whole genre. And so
(11:08):
when a couple of years ago, when he left Hallmark
and started a great American family channel and asked me
to go over with him, I said, yes, of course,
so yeah, that's kind of that's a summary of the
people who said I see something in you and to
whom I'm eternally grateful.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You know so many people.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I'm sure that's a partial list.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I'm sure there's others that I've left out, But I
never thought quite about that question before.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
It's a really cool question to.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Ask, Well, you've been a part of our lives for
so long and so and all we've ever had was well,
she says this. I read this on the web. I
did da da da da da. But to hear you
share it, and to hear your passion to me, that's
what helps me embrace it even more. Your journey.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
When they've created the Great American Family Channel, I mean,
I mean this right here. What I love about this
is that everybody's going, oh gaf gaf, and I'm going,
how do you guys know this? But that's what you
guys are doing with it, is that you're creating that
next place where people are it's an automatic to go
to it.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
That's I mean, we've been showing Christmas movies twenty four
seven since October eleventh, and its people love the channel.
It's too, really sweet, wholesome, good natured, family friendly channel,
and I was one of the fun things for me
is that at this channel now.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I have a lot more involvement in the movies.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So in fact, my new movie called a Cinderella Christmas
Ball is the first one that I had a chance
to help write from the beginning, Like I had the
idea for it and worked with a writer and I
wrote all the dance sequence scenes and a bunch of
other parts of it. This movie, so I play a
dance teacher from Chicago who never I never knew my
(12:46):
birth father.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
My birth mother died when I was young.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
At the beginning of the movie, I find a box
of things where there's a picture of my birth mother
wearing a wedding dress holding a hand of a man
that we can't see in the picture, and on the
back it says haven Shy and the date is about
nine months before I was born. Like, oh my gosh,
maybe this is my birth father. My mother and never
even put his name on my birth certificate. So I'm like,
this is my first clue. So I go to Heavenshire,
(13:10):
this little country in Europe, the fictional country where everyone
speaks English with British accents and in search of my
birth family.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
And when I'm there, I end up getting.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
A job teaching the prince a waltz for the upcoming
Christmas event called a Cinderella Christmas Ball. The reason it
was called that is because he is to dance with
royal ladies and then choose a bride, just like in
the movie Cinderellas.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
So he's reluctant to do so.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
He's not ready, he doesn't know who he would want
to marry, and his mother, the Queen, is putting pressure
on him.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
So the movie he's he is helping me.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
With my emotional journey to find my birth father, and
I'm helping him warn this waltz as this ball is
getting closer and closer, and you can probably imagine what
might happen.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
But it's such a magical, fun, beautiful.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Romantic movie and a premiere is November twenty ninth, the
day after Thanksgiving, which for some people is the first
acceptable day to start celebrating Christmas.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
So we are we're great American family.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I believe in continuations. In other words, everything that you
did on Dancing with the Stars and now you're teaching
a prince how to dance. How much of what you
went through on Dancing with the Stars did all of
a sudden you become the teacher?
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Yes, right and right. So in some of these movies,
you see the.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Lead is like learning to dance for the first time.
But there's a lot more pressure when I'm playing the
dance teacher because some of the one who is supposed
to know what I'm doing. But yeah, so I trained
quite a bit for this movie. And was it reminiscent
of my training on Dancing with the Stars. Not really,
because I'm Dancing with the Stars. That was six hours
a day, every single day with zero days off for
three months. So that was a very intense experience. It
(14:43):
was ten years ago, but I mean, yes, the training
for sure has stayed with me and I've been I
take dance lessons here and there, and I have ever
since that show because I really love it so much.
But it was it was a fun challenge to play
the one, to.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Play the person who's supposed to know what I'm doing and.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Not play like be the celebrity who's stumbling through dances
with a bro.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Being part of that writing team, I'm blessed with the
opportunity to talk to a lot of authors, and I
do bring up I said, are you going to turn
this into a movie?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
From you from your mouth to God's Ears? But I
mean for you to now experience it. It's funny, it's romantic,
it's it's so and it's got that mystery to it.
I mean that's a lot of emotion that you're putting into.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
This for sure well as a writer and that as
an actress. Yeah, we love it.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
And that's the whole thing is bringing.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
That emotion, you know, helping people to have an experience
when they watch the movie, to really get them excited.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
And it's cathartic and they for romantic.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And they'll they'll feel like they'll feel the romance and
they it's just going to be It's I love that
we get to premiere this movie also in the day
after Thanksgiving because it really ushers in the Christmas.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Uson for people.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And you're gonna feel amazing after you watch this movie.
That is a promise that I can make.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
I want to know what people are going to be
eating while they're watching this movie. Is they're going to
be popcorn? Will they have hot cocoa? What are they
going to be doing because a movie like this really does.
It's one of those where you know you've got to
be doing something.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Right exactly. Maybe you've just been decorated at Christmas Tree.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I think Hotmoke. I think Hot Coco is appropriate. By
the way, I want to mention something. So, the Great
American Family is having this big event in New York,
which isn't too far for your listeners. I think I
think New York is a great place to go in
around the Christmas season. There's something called the Great American
Family Christmas Festival on Long Island from November twenty second
(16:33):
through December twenty ninth. This it's a nightly thing and
during the days well I'm not sure what the hours are,
but it's only fifteen dollars a person, and kids under
two get in free. It's a fully immersive Christmas experience
with ice, skating, Santa gourmant, food and beverage. There's like
karaoke there, there's crafting and and I'll be there the
(16:57):
first weekend. We're going to be doing a screening of
this like Christmas Bowl on Sunday the twenty fourth, so
even before it comes out on TV, and there'll be
a Q and A with me afterwards on stage with
me and my co star, Canada's Cammbray will also be
there the first weekend and a few others. So it's
really it's a fun, fun experience and it's about making
memories with your family. I mean having some of the
(17:18):
movie screenings and stars come out. Sure, that's fun, but
it's really about like making memories of your family having
a big Christmas y and magical with all the Christmas lights.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
So the tickets are like fifteen.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Bucks and they're all at Great American Family Christmas Festival
dot com. If you go to my Instagram, I'm just
at Danik and mckeller. I've got that link in my
bio right now.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Speaking of the Internet, you're also going to be posting
on x.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yes, I'll be posting.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
I'll be live posting during the premiere of the Cinderellic
Christmas Bowl on the twenty ninth, starting at eight pm Eastern. Yeah,
I'll be posting, and you know what, watch the movie.
But then on commercial grace I'm checking. You know, go
to your socials and you can see behind the scenes.
Stop or ask me question, I'll answer and you can
check the next time a commercials on Wow.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
You got to come back to this show anytime in
the future, Donicaut because the door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Well, you'd be brilliant today. And congratulations on your writing,
your acting and your music as well. And you're dancing.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Okay, have a great day.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
EJ.
Hey, welcome back to the studio. This is my day
of play, where you're taking into the really events and
actions of how it really went down before the process
of editing and or cleaning up. The original purpose of
these episodes was to give my broadcasting students something to edit,
to practice with, and to call their own. Then I realized,
wait a second, you're just as important as they are
share the reality of how it really goes down. We
(00:20):
begin things with music historian Rob Sheffield, the author of
the book Heartbreak Is a National Anthem, How Taylor Swift
reinvented pop music. Then we'll wrap things up with Danica
mckeller from The Wonder Years and West Wing. In November
of twenty twenty four, she also starred in the holiday
drama at Cinderella Christmas Pall. This is My day of play,
(00:40):
completely unedited in the way of meeting the wizard behind
the curtains, recording and progress. Hello and good morning everybody.
Hey rrow you got ten with Rob hey erro Hey,
how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I'm so good, Thank you so much, it's so great
to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Well, I'm grateful and I feel less that you have
written this book because I mean, you really are giving
us a side of music that you know we assume,
but you're giving us that path to follow to where
we can be educated on newer things to look for.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Thank you, that's a wow. That's super kind of you,
because that's my hope that you know that it's not
just people who are already fans, but like people who
I just love music.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, the thing is is that we live in this
streaming generation and the songs will pop in and we
hear who it is or we ask Alexa, who is this,
but we don't hear the story of who these artists are.
And that's why we need things like this.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, totally, I agree, and that for I mean, with streaming,
you're sort of it encourages you to just listen to
what you're already listening to, what you already like, and
it just makes it harder to hear stuff that you
might like that you haven't heard yet. So that's my goal. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
What is it about heartbreak that we've made it into
a national anthem? Is it because we're relating with it?
Like those magazines at a grocery store?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I think that she writes these heartbroken songs and it's
a line from a song. It's a line from one
of my favorites, New Romantics, which is one of her
best and one of her weirdest songs. And heart break
is the national anthem. That chorus just speaks to me
because she writes these lonely songs, right, These songs put
these very isolating, agonizing emotions. But you know, you stand
(02:23):
up there in a stadium and sing them with sixty
thousand people and suddenly you're a community. This heartbreak sort
of brings you together. And she does that with her
music the way the greats do. And for me, that's
the essence of her songwriting is that she creates that
community around heartbreak, and so heartbreak really is the national anthem.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I've always believed that she's a silent wolf, meaning that
she is she observes everything, and from those observations she's
able to write.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
That seems absolutely true. She, as we know, she will
tell any kind of story. She started out as a
teenage girl writing songs about high school romances, and people thought, oh,
isn't that cute. They just missed her as just bubblegum pop,
her age and what she did, and they didn't really
get like how important. It was that this was this
(03:12):
girl with an acoustic guitar writing her own songs at
a time, and that just wasn't done, and she was
showing them how it was done. And like you said,
silent Wolf is absolutely the way to do it. She
was observing all different types of music, all different types
of lives and telling those stories.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Because you've always been so associated with music, when Taylor
Swift started growing inside your heart, how did it change
you when it came to listening to music.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
It really changed a lot of how I listened to
music that I've been listening to all my life. It
sounded different because of how I was hearing Taylor Swift. So,
for instance, I'd known Joni Mitchell's music all my life.
I grew up in a world where Jonni Mitchell was
always famous, and yet it wasn't until after I heard
Taylor Swift that I really appreciated Joni Mitchell. Because Taylor
(03:58):
really taught me to hear that kind of storytelling where
maybe me anders off topic and maybe goes around circles,
connects a few different stories in the same song. I
feel like Taylor really taught me to hear Joni Mitchell
that way. And yeah, I think there's a lot of
old music that just sounds new after you hear a
songwriter with the new take on it.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That is so funny. You say that because you know what,
because I'm in radio. Of course, I've had Taylor Swift
a part of my life for many, many years. But
I did go back to Carol King, and I went
back to all of these other female performers to listen
to their music differently because Taylor has taught me that.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yes, I feel like there's a lot of that going around.
You'll get how huge Kate Bush is now. I remember
like when Kate Bush was a pretty obscure thing to
be into, and now she's mega famous with young people
with gen Z, and a large part of that is
Taylor has taught the young artist, has taught the young
audience how to hear these artists like Kate Bush or
(04:53):
Stevie Nix, who's also more popular now than she's ever been,
and that Taylor has really changed the way people listen
to old me us as well as new music.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I'm that guy that wants Taylor Swift to find that man,
and of course I think that she has found that
man right now, and I want to rush into it.
But of course, you know, I'm so glad that she
is not rushing into it. But it's going to have
to come out in a song somewhere. I think that's
how she's going to announce it is through music.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I love that. I love them. I honestly I love him.
I don't know much about him as a football player,
so I'm coming into it. Called I just love how
he loves being Taylor Swift's boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I love how he really hams it up in that role.
I love how he really pursued her in public and
was really ardent about it, because usually her boyfriends have
been a lot of them seem to have attitudes about
her being more famous, more rich. They've got kind of
a hang dog sort of air when they're around her
in public. And I love how he really embraces the
(05:50):
love aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Do you think that Taylor Swift fans real hardcore Swifties,
We don't see the fame. We just see a person
and she's just one of us.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Absolutely, And that's part of why I wanted to write
this book. It's not about her being a celebrity. There's
so much written about her fame, and so much written
about her image or her fashion, or her business sense
or whatever. I wanted to write about the songwriting and
the heart that creates those songs, because it's something that's
(06:21):
just very unique. She's got a very specific and individual
type of heart, and these really individual, specific kind of
songs come out of it.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Did you want to write some music while putting this together?
Because if you're going to get into a subject like this,
you can't just say no, no. I'm an author, I'm
a historian. I don't write music. But you had to
have wanted to write music or at least attempt it.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Boy, if I could sing, I would. I would love
to play guitar. I still have that as one of
my goals in life, you know, like a goal from
my fifties or sixties. I'm going to learn to play guitar.
I still have my guitar. I haven't been able to
play it very well. I would love the idea of
learning to write songs. Like a lot of writers, I
come up with a bunch of lyrics that I think
would be good lyrics, and I give them to my
(07:04):
musician friends. But Taylor's she's inspiring that way she made
my niece's write Songs's a lot of people here's they
could write songs.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
You've written about the Beatles, you right now about Taylor Swift.
Come on, you're that close to it. What do you
feeling that there's a comparison or because I mean, we're
living in a moment that one hundred years from now
we're still gonna be listening to both of them.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Absolutely absolutely. And my book before there was about David Bowie,
and it's the same time today. It's the musician might
pass away and the career might come to an end,
but the story is just beginning. Like the afterlife that
David Bowie has had, people are more in love with
him now than they were while he was alive, just
because young artist just keep young fans just keep discovering them.
(07:47):
And Prince it's the same way and Wretha Franklin. It's
the same way Led Zeppelin broke up, you know, over
forty years ago, and there's new band sounding that just
want to sound like them with Jimmy and it's the
same thing I think for Taylor and the Beatles. It's
that level where a century from now, young people are
still going to be hearing it and getting their minds
blown and falling in love the way that we do.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Wow, where can people go to find out more about you, Rob,
because I want them to dive into your research and
what you do to help bring us the information.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, this book, I guess like all my books. I'm
on Instagram, I'm I'm on social media, I'm on Facebook,
And there's always a lot to write about because I'm
always writing about music for Rolling Stones, so I'm ready
about old stuff, new stuff to the whole great story
of pop music. It goes on. It's messy, there's always
elements of the old and new mixed up, and I
(08:39):
love that.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Man.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Please come back to the show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Thank you so much. Er Oh my gosh, such a
treat to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Okay, you too, sir, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Please do not move. Coming up next, Danica mckeller, Hey,
thanks for coming back to my day of play. Let's
get into that conversation with actress Danica mckeller. Good morning,
how are you doing.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
I'm so glad I'm talking with you. Because you believe
in story sharing, not telling, but sharing, because you believe
in reaching out and creating things that bring people together,
not just today but forever.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
I think that's a lovely way of putting it. Thank
you to.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Get into that mindset and mode. What was the open
door for you? Who did you see in your life
or on your path that said, you know, you've got it,
let's let's bring it together.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
What are you refering too specifically?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
In other words, you know, for me to be in radio,
it took Casey case and it took Wolfman Jack and
so so in other words, for you to be who
you are with your music and with your with your
you know, your acting. I mean, who was that person
that really opened that door for you?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I've had so many. I mean I've been in the
business for over thirty years. So the very beginning was
of course landing the Wonder Years, and that would have
been Carol Black and Neil Marlins who saw something in
a twelve year old. And then after that I took
a break from acting to get a degree in mathematics
at UCLA, and I had a couple of professors there
(10:14):
who saw I had one tell me you have a
gift in mathematics, do you need to pursue this? And
that was really the genesis of why I now have
you know, I have a degree in math and eleven
in math books. I've been writing books for fifteen years
to inspire girls and kids to be comfortable and have
fun with math. Then after that, when I returned to acting,
Aaron Sorkin, I auditioned for the West Wing for like
(10:36):
a one scene part, which is kind of getting back
into acting, and he decided Aaron Sorkin said, Hey, I
think you're awesome, and I'm going to give you a
bigger part of the show.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
That was amazing.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
I mean there's and then Bill Adott, who was at
Hallmark Channel at the time. This was in twenty fifteen,
said I want you to do Christmas movies for us,
and that revived my career in a whole different way.
Now I do these all these romantic comedies and that,
and he I really credit him for helping me to
become a real part of this whole genre. And so
(11:08):
when a couple of years ago, when he left Hallmark
and started a great American family channel and asked me
to go over with him, I said, yes, of course,
so yeah, that's kind of that's a summary of the
people who said I see something in you and to
whom I'm eternally grateful.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You know so many people.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I'm sure that's a partial list.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I'm sure there's others that I've left out, But I
never thought quite about that question before.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
It's a really cool question to.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Ask, Well, you've been a part of our lives for
so long and so and all we've ever had was well,
she says this. I read this on the web. I
did da da da da da. But to hear you
share it, and to hear your passion to me, that's
what helps me embrace it even more. Your journey.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
When they've created the Great American Family Channel, I mean,
I mean this right here. What I love about this
is that everybody's going, oh gaf gaf, and I'm going,
how do you guys know this? But that's what you
guys are doing with it, is that you're creating that
next place where people are it's an automatic to go
to it.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
That's I mean, we've been showing Christmas movies twenty four
seven since October eleventh, and its people love the channel.
It's too, really sweet, wholesome, good natured, family friendly channel,
and I was one of the fun things for me
is that at this channel now.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I have a lot more involvement in the movies.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So in fact, my new movie called a Cinderella Christmas
Ball is the first one that I had a chance
to help write from the beginning, Like I had the
idea for it and worked with a writer and I
wrote all the dance sequence scenes and a bunch of
other parts of it. This movie, so I play a
dance teacher from Chicago who never I never knew my
(12:46):
birth father.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
My birth mother died when I was young.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
At the beginning of the movie, I find a box
of things where there's a picture of my birth mother
wearing a wedding dress holding a hand of a man
that we can't see in the picture, and on the
back it says haven Shy and the date is about
nine months before I was born. Like, oh my gosh,
maybe this is my birth father. My mother and never
even put his name on my birth certificate. So I'm like,
this is my first clue. So I go to Heavenshire,
(13:10):
this little country in Europe, the fictional country where everyone
speaks English with British accents and in search of my
birth family.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
And when I'm there, I end up getting.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
A job teaching the prince a waltz for the upcoming
Christmas event called a Cinderella Christmas Ball. The reason it
was called that is because he is to dance with
royal ladies and then choose a bride, just like in
the movie Cinderellas.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
So he's reluctant to do so.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
He's not ready, he doesn't know who he would want
to marry, and his mother, the Queen, is putting pressure
on him.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
So the movie he's he is helping me.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
With my emotional journey to find my birth father, and
I'm helping him warn this waltz as this ball is
getting closer and closer, and you can probably imagine what
might happen.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
But it's such a magical, fun, beautiful.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Romantic movie and a premiere is November twenty ninth, the
day after Thanksgiving, which for some people is the first
acceptable day to start celebrating Christmas.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
So we are we're great American family.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I believe in continuations. In other words, everything that you
did on Dancing with the Stars and now you're teaching
a prince how to dance. How much of what you
went through on Dancing with the Stars did all of
a sudden you become the teacher?
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Yes, right and right. So in some of these movies,
you see the.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Lead is like learning to dance for the first time.
But there's a lot more pressure when I'm playing the
dance teacher because some of the one who is supposed
to know what I'm doing. But yeah, so I trained
quite a bit for this movie. And was it reminiscent
of my training on Dancing with the Stars. Not really,
because I'm Dancing with the Stars. That was six hours
a day, every single day with zero days off for
three months. So that was a very intense experience. It
(14:43):
was ten years ago, but I mean, yes, the training
for sure has stayed with me and I've been I
take dance lessons here and there, and I have ever
since that show because I really love it so much.
But it was it was a fun challenge to play
the one, to.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Play the person who's supposed to know what I'm doing and.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Not play like be the celebrity who's stumbling through dances
with a bro.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Being part of that writing team, I'm blessed with the
opportunity to talk to a lot of authors, and I
do bring up I said, are you going to turn
this into a movie?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
From you from your mouth to God's Ears? But I
mean for you to now experience it. It's funny, it's romantic,
it's it's so and it's got that mystery to it.
I mean that's a lot of emotion that you're putting into.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
This for sure well as a writer and that as
an actress. Yeah, we love it.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
And that's the whole thing is bringing.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
That emotion, you know, helping people to have an experience
when they watch the movie, to really get them excited.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
And it's cathartic and they for romantic.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And they'll they'll feel like they'll feel the romance and
they it's just going to be It's I love that
we get to premiere this movie also in the day
after Thanksgiving because it really ushers in the Christmas.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Uson for people.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And you're gonna feel amazing after you watch this movie.
That is a promise that I can make.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
I want to know what people are going to be
eating while they're watching this movie. Is they're going to
be popcorn? Will they have hot cocoa? What are they
going to be doing because a movie like this really does.
It's one of those where you know you've got to
be doing something.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Right exactly. Maybe you've just been decorated at Christmas Tree.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I think Hotmoke. I think Hot Coco is appropriate. By
the way, I want to mention something. So, the Great
American Family is having this big event in New York,
which isn't too far for your listeners. I think I
think New York is a great place to go in
around the Christmas season. There's something called the Great American
Family Christmas Festival on Long Island from November twenty second
(16:33):
through December twenty ninth. This it's a nightly thing and
during the days well I'm not sure what the hours are,
but it's only fifteen dollars a person, and kids under
two get in free. It's a fully immersive Christmas experience
with ice, skating, Santa gourmant, food and beverage. There's like
karaoke there, there's crafting and and I'll be there the
(16:57):
first weekend. We're going to be doing a screening of
this like Christmas Bowl on Sunday the twenty fourth, so
even before it comes out on TV, and there'll be
a Q and A with me afterwards on stage with
me and my co star, Canada's Cammbray will also be
there the first weekend and a few others. So it's
really it's a fun, fun experience and it's about making
memories with your family. I mean having some of the
(17:18):
movie screenings and stars come out. Sure, that's fun, but
it's really about like making memories of your family having
a big Christmas y and magical with all the Christmas lights.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
So the tickets are like fifteen.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Bucks and they're all at Great American Family Christmas Festival
dot com. If you go to my Instagram, I'm just
at Danik and mckeller. I've got that link in my
bio right now.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Speaking of the Internet, you're also going to be posting
on x.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yes, I'll be posting.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
I'll be live posting during the premiere of the Cinderellic
Christmas Bowl on the twenty ninth, starting at eight pm Eastern. Yeah,
I'll be posting, and you know what, watch the movie.
But then on commercial grace I'm checking. You know, go
to your socials and you can see behind the scenes.
Stop or ask me question, I'll answer and you can
check the next time a commercials on Wow.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
You got to come back to this show anytime in
the future, Donicaut because the door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Well, you'd be brilliant today. And congratulations on your writing,
your acting and your music as well. And you're dancing.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Okay, have a great day.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
EJ.
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