Ke Huy Quan
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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi there. This is, I'm going to say it, this is the craziest life story we've heard from anyone on the show. It's...

Impossible life story. I told a lot of people afterwards, after we recorded this episode, that it was a very special one. Me too. It's the biggest delta that's ever been covered in a lifespan in two years. Our guest today is Ki Hui Kwan. And of course, you fell in love with him in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dune and the Goonies, as I did as a little boy. And then, fuck, he came back out of nowhere and everything, everywhere, all at once.

He was so incredible. Just such a beautiful performance. Yes. Oh, and when you hear his life story, you want to go back and rewatch. I feel like we were almost crying the whole time. Yep, that's fair. Also, you can see Key currently in season two of Loki on Disney+. So please enjoy Key Hui Kwan.

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He's an armchair expert. He's an armchair expert. He's an armchair expert.

You came to visit us when we were shooting everything, everywhere, all at once. A thousand percent. You did? I intend to tell that story. You still live in Woodland Hills? Yeah. How long was that drive for you? Was it easy? An hour. It was an hour. Oh, Friday's the worst. I miss the time where I used to live in Covina. I don't know if you know where that is. Yes. Well, I know West Covina. Yeah, it's the next exit down. I used to go from Covina.

To Beverly Hills. Ooh. But back in the 90s, it used to take me only 45 minutes. Now I can't even travel more than 10 miles without taking 45 minutes on a 101. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Cavenia to Beverly Hills now, that's a 90-minute drive for sure. Twice as long. Yeah.

I want to start with a very simple question, which is every time I hear someone introduce you, they go full Ki Hui Kwan. I've never heard anyone say just your first name. Everybody calls me Ki. And sometimes they'll say Ki Kwan. Sometimes they'll say Ki Hui Kwan. But as long as you say my name, I'm happy.

Okay, but I just want to make sure that I could say "Kee." Oh, everybody calls me "Kee." Okay, wonderful. In fact, my legal name is Jonathan "Kee" Hui Kwan. So I used to go by Jonathan for a long time, but everybody that knew me when I was a kid

Calls me Key. Are you happy that Key and Peele was a big show? I mean, that really popularized Key. Yeah. Kiki Palmer. Oh, yeah. I made a joke. I attended the New York Film Festival and Jordan Peele was there. Kiki Palmer was there. And when I got my award, I went up there. And this is actually Jordan Peele's joke. We were chatting. I love him so much. And I said, what does it take to work with? I have the name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're halfway there. Key and Pio, Kiki Palmer, then maybe I'll just change my name to Kiki Key, you know? Okay, so Key, of every actor and expert we've interviewed, you're going to have, I think, among the wildest story as far as the amount of

ground you've covered in your life. It's almost impossible from where your life started to where it ended up. You even said it in your Oscar speech. My life is something you'd see in a movie, but it really happened to me. It's mind blowing. But can we start in Saigon in 1971? Yes. So we're roughly the same age. I was born in 75. You have my sister's birthday, August 20th. Yeah, I'm a Leon. You're on the cusp, though, because I'm a Virgo 24th. My wife says I'm more like a Virgo than I'm a Leon. Yeah, I could see that.

By the way, your wife has the coolest name of all names, Echo. Echo, yeah. What a cool name. That is a good name. Okay, so you're born in Vietnam in 1971, but your family's Chinese. Yes. Actually, I was born in 1970. It's wrong on IMDb. Oh, wonderful. It's not easy to change your birth date on IMDb. I bet not.

Yeah, I tried. And no one's trying to go older. You'd be the first person trying to go older. I like truth. I like authenticity. So for the longest time, when I decided to get back into acting, I have IMDb Pro. So I messaged them and I go, I want to change my birth year. I sent numerous messages, emails, and it's like, you have to...

Show your passport. All these like, you know, identification. It's not easy to make that change. Polygraph test? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something like that.

But I do imagine most people would have been calling and saying, I was really born in 75. Like, they want to be younger. Of course. You're for sure the first person in history that wanted to make yourself older. It's only one year. It's not like a big difference. It is a big difference in terms of what was happening historically in Saigon. That's one more year of being born into an active war.

Yeah. But how did your family end up in Vietnam from China? It was a great place to do business. My mom was born in Hong Kong. My dad was in mainland China. And it's just for opportunities. They went to Vietnam, Saigon. In what year? I don't know. They were there when they were very young.

It was my grandma that took my mom there when my mom was just a little kid. Okay, so probably 60s she was there? Probably sooner than that, maybe in the early 50s. Okay, wow. And dad around the same time, and they met and they fell in love. They got really busy and had nine kids. Nine! Nine kids. Wow. Okay, but you hinted at it, right? Which is you already have family members that are...

Adventurers, risk-takers, entrepreneurial, they have left security at some point in their life to pursue something greater in their move to Vietnam. It's kind of interesting and telling. You know, my parents were doing really well in Vietnam. What kind of business were they in? My dad manufactures plastic bags. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. And my mom had a little clothing store. And nine kids? And nine kids. Oh.

That's not possible. I don't know if they invented condom back then. Yeah, your dad should have been making. Yeah. And so they were really happy. Monica just really giggled at the thought of a plastic bag. As a condom. Yeah. That was funny. What's the span of ages, like oldest to youngest kids? My oldest sister right now is 68. Okay. Okay. And are you.

Wait. I'm the seventh in the family. Oh, okay. She's 68, and you're 53 or 54? Yeah, I'm 53. 53, so she's 15 years older. Okay, so she was born in 55-ish? Did I do the math right? We're looking at about an 18-year range. Maybe 56? 56.

Okay, wow. So you've got a full-grown adult sister when you're born. Yes. I was an uncle when I was 10 years old. Wow. Really? Now I have over 20 nieces and nephews and more than 20 grandnieces and nephews. Oh my goodness. And I joke about this. Everything, everywhere, all at once became a box office hit. It's because my family. Hallelujah.

a lot of those tickets. - If they all just went five times, you had a runaway hit. In what order were you? What number were you? - Seven. - I'm the seven. - Oh, seven. I was doing math when he said that. - Sure. - I have a younger sister, I have a younger brother who I'm best friends with. He's so supportive. My family has been very proud and very happy for the last two years, and my brother more so than anybody.

Yeah, and he got a shout-out in your speech. Yeah. That sounds well-deserved. So, born in there in 1970, you wouldn't have memories, I can't imagine, of wartime in Saigon, do you? Because you're too young. Yeah, but a lot of people have memories when they were two or three or four years old.

But for some reason, everything that happened in Vietnam, I only have glimpses of it. Going out with my dad on his motorcycle or trying on new clothes at my mom's clothing store. Just like snapshots. Would your father have been a potential enemy once Saigon fell and he would have been a capitalist and a business owner, a manufacturer? Was he at risk?

with that? There were a large Chinese community living in Saigon. And when the fall of Saigon happened, a lot of those Chinese people were targeted. And also it was a chaotic time. Disclaimer, Vietnam today is very different. A lot of people go visit every year. But in the 1970s, it was targeted. And my parents made that difficult decision to get all of us out of there.

They did stay around for three years after the end of the war, right? Yes. So that would have been the most perilous period for them because now it's a communist country and they're entrepreneurial capitalists. I think they were constantly living in fear. I'm really grateful to them because to get all of us out of Vietnam, we didn't succeed on the first attempt. And back then, a lot of that generation, they would have their savings

Not in the Vietnamese currency, but in gold. Okay. We escaped on a boat. So to get on a boat, every person would have to pay, you know, a huge amount in gold sheets. So with the first attempt, we failed and my parents lost a lot of their savings. How come it failed? We were caught. The boat got seized or stopped? Before we made it onto the boat, we were put in jail. The whole family? Yeah, the whole family. And then it was not until the second time— It was a big jail for your family.

Yeah, exactly. And then my parents worked really hard again, try to save up enough money to try the second time. The second time, my parents decided that maybe instead of going all together at once, let's split up a little smaller group and then whoever succeed first

in getting out, then maybe they can help. Okay, this explains, yeah, because mom ends up going to Malaysia with three of your siblings, and you and dad and five others go to Hong Kong. Yes. So my mom and three of my siblings went to Malaysia, and then they stayed there for a year, and they were granted political asylum, and they immigrated to the United States. And they were there for a year when we tried to escape, and we ended up in a refugee camp

You're seven or eight. I was seven. You must have memories of that. We're getting old enough to have memories. Yeah, I was running around in my house and playing with my friends in Vietnam and Saigon. And all of a sudden, I find myself surrounded by security guards and police officers in chain-link fence. That I didn't have the maturity or the wisdom to understand why. You're living the life of a prisoner already.

Yeah, and we were just in a makeshift refugee camp with a lot of bunk beds. It was just extremely crowded. Yes, and sanitation was probably terrible. Your mom's not there. My best friend, my little brother was not there. I was just with my five other siblings and my father. And you were there for how long, a year? More than a year. Did they try to educate you? What happened all day long? How did you spend that time?

Not much. It's not like they cared about schoolwork or anything. We were just waiting. My dad, more than any of us, were trying to work on the paperwork and try to get out of there and try to get in contact with my mom. And what's really interesting is for many years, I didn't really understand what was going on behind the scene. It was not until this year that I attended an event with Cate Blanchett in Geneva for the UNHCR. And they had an archive there.

that they invited me to. And I found all the communication that UNHCR had with the Hong Kong government at the time. When we arrived on the shore of Hong Kong, we were in a boat with 3,000 other people. The Hong Kong government was so scared because they just didn't know what to do with us. And they were trying to get the captain of that ship to go to Taiwan instead of staying in Hong Kong. And thank God for the UNHCR, they were in constant

contact with the Hong Kong government and said, please let these refugees and we'll figure it out. And they were working constantly with many other countries, you know, France, the U.S., of course, Australia, U.K. Like, if you can promise us to let these refugees come on shore, we will work out on how to get them off your hands. We'll place them everywhere. Oh, my goodness. So you saw all the correspondence? And there were records everywhere.

I found my name and my family's name in that archive. You're kidding. It was so emotional. It was just incredible. You know, for the longest time, that experience existed only in my memories. And of course, you know, we talked about it with our families. But it was the first time where I have paperwork. I have proof that happened. And also the contrast between, obviously, I would imagine feeling quite forgotten for a year.

Only to find out later you're a part of this complicated and dynamic part of history that's been recorded. Probably validates the whole experience in a way. Absolutely. A year when you're seven to eight, it's a long time. It's 15% of your life. That experience...

really changed all of us. I was with five of my other siblings and I look at their lives now and they're so strong-minded, they're so determined, they work really hard. It made them a lot tougher. And I think it really stemmed from that experience going from having a home to losing our home, being locked up in a refugee camp and then coming here.

That's unimaginable. Do you think it's given you all a baseline of gratitude that's a little higher than everyone else's? Absolutely. That's why to this day, I'm very grateful, one, to the American government at that time who allowed us into this country and everything that's happened since.

How was it determined you would go to California? Because that's where my mom and three of my siblings, they were living in Chinatown, Los Angeles. Oh my God. In fact, that archive had that address where my mom was staying at because they needed to contact her and to find out where she was living so that it made sense for my dad and five of my other siblings and myself to immigrate to the U.S. Yeah, you guys would have a place to go specifically. Yeah, it reminds you

there are real people on the other side of this making those connections, right? Like reaching out, finding the people in America, then connecting them with the people in Hong Kong. People are doing this. Yeah, thank God there are. Thank God. So you land in California and I have to imagine it's gotta be a tricky time to have come from Vietnam. You're only four years out from this war that was the most divisive war we've ever had at that point.

I'm sure feelings were all over the map towards people that were coming now from Vietnam. How was the reception? How did you feel when you guys got here? As an eight-year-old, you don't really understand. And especially when you have very protective parents, they kind of shield you.

from all of that. And living in Chinatown, Los Angeles was also very beneficial because it's a whole Chinese community there, insulated from all that news that was going on around the world at that time. And we were just trying to assimilate into a new life. In fact, my mom's friends, their children never made it out. They either passed away on that journey or got killed. So we were very lucky, especially how big

my family is. All of us made it alive. That is wild. And did you fly from Hong Kong to California? Yes. No more boat rides. Yeah. So it's quite interesting how I was on a boat in the middle of the night, escaping Vietnam, arrive in Hong Kong, a year in a refugee camp. And then I got on a plane to come to Los Angeles. First plane ever? Yes. Were you excited in a way that you had never been in your life? You must have had a fantasy about America.

No. You hadn't seen like American movies? We didn't have any of that. Oh, okay. You were probably mad. You're like, why am I on a plane? I was happy because one, I was free. And second, I knew that at the end of this flight, I will be reuniting with my mom and my brother and my other sisters who I haven't seen for more than a year. Yes. You're just so excited, I imagine, for that reunion. Had dad told you anything about America, like what to expect?

No, he didn't even know. This is so fascinating. It's not like there were televisions where we can watch and see what the lives in America is like. Yeah, Baywatch wasn't out yet. Yeah, yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Because if you were born 10 years later, you would have known all about Baywatch. Do you sometimes think about that time and think, I can't believe that was my life. That story belongs to me. Like I would be so disassociated from that, I think, because it's such a huge deal. I don't think about that experience often. What I do...

do think about is how lucky I am, how lucky my family is. They're all doing really well. Even during some of my darkest days, I still feel grateful just because we get to live in this great country. Everyone made it safe. At some point, though, you move up to Sunland from Chinatown? We moved to Monterey Park in the eastern part of Los Angeles. Right by Alhambra? Yes, by Alhambra. Alhambra has a pretty large Asian population.

Yes. Because my great fear for you as a little nine-year-old boy is joining now an elementary school where you don't speak English. You're very other. You represent this war we just had. I'm so scared for any little boy in that situation. Was elementary fine? For me, it was fine because I was trying very hard to learn English to get accustomed to this new life. And you had a fair amount of classmates that were also newly. Oh, yeah. Back then, the elementary school was called Castellaw.

And it's still there. And I was in a class with 30 other students. A lot of them looked like me. And we all spoke the same language. And all of us were trying to learn English at the same time. Oh, what a relief. This sounds like the ideal. Okay. This is an impossible gap. Because really, within four years, you go from a refugee camp

to starring in the biggest movie of the year with the biggest movie star by the biggest director of all time. This is really not a possible experience. How do we get from newly into the States to getting in that movie? It's pretty insane. I was just being a kid going to school and one day this group of people came to my elementary school and they had an open call. What? This is

This is a dream. If I were you, I would actually think, this can't be reality. You're definitely in a simulation. Okay, so you didn't, were you like a class clown-y a little bit? I wasn't. In fact, I wasn't even the one that was auditioning. It was my little brother. His teacher thought he was...

Sometimes even to this day, I wonder why I was chosen and not him because I think he's so much more talented than me. And he's funny. He makes me laugh all the time. So he was more of a ham than I was. And so he was auditioning for the casting director. And I was just behind the camera coaching him what to do. I was telling him like, David, do this, do that. And telling him what kind of expression he should be doing. And I was just like shouting out directions. You're directing him. They should have hired you to direct him.

And the casting director saw me. And I was speaking to my brother in Chinese and Cantonese. He saw something in me. And many years later, I reunited with our casting director. And he told me that they had a hard time finding the perfect kid to play short round. In fact, they went to London, to Hong Kong, Singapore.

everywhere where there was a bigger Chinese community. Because back then, Chinatown, Los Angeles was really small and they didn't think they would find who they were looking for there. So they went everywhere except Chinatown, Los Angeles. Oh, wow. And they were about to give up. And they said, why don't we just give it one last try? It's obvious how desperate they were that they were going to random elementary schools. Exactly. Yeah. That's not the normal casting. Yeah, exactly. Especially for

Or a movie of the side. Oh my God, this is unreal. Okay, so you're barking orders at your brother, which is hysterical. And I can see why she or he would have seen, oh, this is what we need. This is a little guy who's running the show. Yeah, dynamic. And short round was...

A total survivor. I was precocious. Yes. You then auditioned. Then I auditioned. They gave me the sites and I could barely speak English at all. Just very little. And then my reading comprehension was even worse. Of course. So I was saying the lines and really messing it up. Saying like, in the, like trying to even understand what I was saying. I'm not even saying the lines. I'm reading the lines. You're just making a series of sounds.

Exactly. And he saw something in that and he says, Key, why don't you put that away and let's just talk. Who's he? Mike Fenton. He cast E.T., The Goonies. Oh, this guy's a genius. Yeah, so big casting director. In fact, he told me years later when we reunited again, he said that after I left that room, he called Steven Spielberg and says, we don't have to look any further. We found your kid.

And this was before I auditioned for Spielberg or Lucas. Oh my God. What are your parents thinking right now? They had no clue what was going on. And they could barely speak in English when they answered that phone. The first Indiana Jones had come out. We haven't seen it. But

You knew about it, right? No, we didn't know. I mean, don't forget, we're living in Chinatown. We're very insulated by this small Chinese community. So we've never seen Star Wars. We've never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. Jaws? No. Back then, we had a really small 13-inch black and white television. We couldn't afford to go to the movies. We didn't even have a car. That's why when they call and they say, we want you to come to Burbank. Shit.

an audition. My mom said, we don't have any means to get there. We're out. Yeah. Then we'll send you a driver. Guys, this is not, I'm trying to imagine what the fuck your parents, and they're having the same grapple with reality too. It's like, what is my life? These people are calling to bring my child with a driver. I mean, they must've just been trying to compute what the fuck was going on. Maybe even also scared. Yeah. Like, are we getting taken advantage

Yes. We didn't think much of it. They didn't think I would land the role. Of course. It was like, oh, they want to see him? Well, sure, we'll take him. We didn't know it was going to be a sequel to one of the biggest movies of all time. That

Thank God, actually. It's great you didn't know. Because you would have maybe felt a lot of pressure if you knew who Spielberg was and all that. Yeah, that's why when I walked into the room, it was just a bunch of guys with a mustache and a beard. I didn't know their names. I didn't know any of the work at that time. I didn't know that I was meeting and talking to three of the most successful people. Of all time. Of all time, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And written by Lawrence Kasdan. Oh my gosh. One of the greatest writers of all time. Okay, so you go in there and clearly you charm them in that audition. Where was it filmed? It was filmed in Sri Lanka. So after my audition for Stephen and George and Harrison, a few weeks later, I was on a flight. Again, my second time being on a flight. Shit.

To Sri Lanka. The first time I was on a flight was from Hong Kong to LA. I was in economy. And all of a sudden, I'm flying first class with my mom to Sri Lanka. And you're 12? And I was 12, yeah. They're serving you Coca-Colas and nuts and all this. Sundays. And what's mom thinking? How's mom explaining this to you? Because you're probably looking at her like, how is this happening? She doesn't know, but she's got to give you an answer. I think she was just really happy for me and proud.

My parents gave up so much. In fact, when we got to the U.S., my parents were heavily in debt because they just didn't have enough money to get all of us out. So they were borrowing money from their friends. So when we got here, they were working really hard to try to pay off that debt. And that's why they put their 12-year-old kid to work, you know? Yeah.

It must have been an insane amount of money relative to what they were making by working. Here's what's so great about Lucas and Spielberg. I was 12 years old. We didn't have an agent or a manager. We didn't have anybody to look after us. No lawyer. So whatever contract they gave us to sign at that time, we just signed it. Yeah, of course. But little did we know, not only did they give...

me a really generous salary, but they also made me a profit participant. No! They gave you a point of the movie? Yeah, I was able to share in the success of the movie. That's why when the movie came out and became one of the biggest movies in 1984, not long after that, I got a check in the mail. And that check was so...

nice that I was able to help my parents pay off the debt. We were renting a little house in Chinatown, and I was able to use that money to buy a house in Monterey Park where my parents and all my siblings can live a bit more comfortable. Again, the range of luck you have. You've got like the worst luck and the greatest luck all within a span of four years. And I think that's what makes it a great life. And not only that, when the movie came out, our world premiere...

was in London, attended by Princess Diana. Oh, my God. And Prince Charles at that time, who is King Charles now. But going from a refugee camp, and I'm standing in line with Spielberg and Lucas and shaking hands with Princess Diana. They should make a movie about your life. They really should. I want to watch this movie. I want to see a little boy experience all this. Oh, I love this. That makes me laugh.

Steven Spielberg. They were so generous. Lucas had done that too with the Star Wars cast. He gave them a percentage of their... But this is like a 12-year-old boy. I know. They could have easily been like, meh. But everyone in Star Wars was also a no-name actor and he gave them some of the toy rights. That is so rare. You have to fight

Oh my God, for anything. And be a profit participant. No, you got to say no and walk away five or six times. It was like on their own accord. It was out of their generosity. Okay, so again, you have no awareness of who Harrison Ford is either at this point. No. So you arrive in Sri Lanka and you start working with him immediately? Yes. And is he intimidating? He is a very big man with a husky voice. No, he was not. He wasn't. He was so friendly. And playful. And playful and humble and kind. I would always play with him. Wow.

And he would make me laugh. All of us were staying in a hotel in Sri Lanka. Every day after we wrapped, I would see Harrison swim in the hotel swimming pool. And I would always be on the side watching him go back and forth doing laps. And one day he asked me, he says, Key, come on in and join me. And I go, I can't. I don't know how to swim. And he says, what? What?

Come here. And he taught me. He taught me how to swim. This is bonkers. This is the best story I've ever heard. This is so special. I know you know it because you reflect on it a lot and you give a lot of gratitude vocally. But how wonderful. I guess I have such distrust of anything good that I would have had a hard time that whole experience getting.

accepting it was real. I would keep waiting to almost wake up. As a kid, you don't really know how special that is. Of course. And so to me, I thought, this is how movie making is. Yes. You know, like from now on, every movie that I make is going to be like this. The star will teach me how to swim. Yeah.

Yeah, and you would walk on these big scale, beautiful sets. You get treated really well. You'd have 200 days to shoot. Yeah, so I thought every movie was like, and then very quickly I realized, oh wow, it doesn't always work like that. It's crazy how good you are in the movie having never done it. I really think it's because of Stephen's direction.

He's so good with kids. He would tell me specifically how to say my lines and he would give me directions where if I just follow that, then I can do what he wants. He was just the kindest. There was never any screaming.

So it was fun. You liked acting.

Because of that experience, that's the reason why I fell in love with acting. I remember we were shooting in London, L Street Studios, and that's where we built all those stages. I didn't even know this because I hadn't seen Star Wars, but I knew later on one day Carrie Fisher came to visit. I remember goofing around with her on set, Mark Hamill. Oh, they must have all loved you. I think they were all there for Harrison Ford. LAUGHTER

So based on that experience, did it occur to you like, well, I want to do this more? Or were you thinking of it more like, wow, this weird magical lottery ticket fell on my lap. That was that. Or what was your thought when that movie wrapped? I wasn't thinking about whether I want to do this as a career. When Indiana Jones came out, I was immediately offered to do The Goonies. And I love making movies because it got me out of school. Yeah.

You know, I didn't have to spend eight hours in school. I get to travel to these wonderful places and treat it really well. So I was just having a lot of fun as a kid. And it was not until as I got older did I realize I love this so much. And I decided that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

What was it like when that movie came out and all of a sudden all the kids in school now know you're in the biggest movie of the summer? It felt really good. Nobody paid attention to me prior to that. I was just one of 30-something students there, and I couldn't even get my teacher's attention. And all of a sudden, I was the star in the classroom. You're a movie star.

Yeah. Were any boys jealous of your attention and cruel to you? That, I don't know. You know, as a 12-year-old, you're not going to think, are people jealous of you? Well, you went to go do more movies. You didn't have time to pay attention to the kids in school. You're the bully. Yeah. I was skinny. I was tiny. And I think it's because of that that I never got any bullying. Oh, okay. Yeah, that did happen to a quadrant of kids. They were so tiny that there was no glory in pushing them around. Yeah. Yeah.

That's so true. He's like, oh my God, he's so easy to beat up. What's the fun of that, right? Because I've always been humongous and people think like, oh, that must have been so nice. She probably never got picked on. I'm like, no, no. The opposite thing happened, which is like boys from older grades that were afraid to fight anyone in their grade. They were like, well, I'll pick a fight with this younger kid, but he's big. It won't be embarrassing. So weirdly, I think I got a lot of threats, which is counterintuitive. It is, right? You would think like, oh, I had a mate. In ways I did.

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Okay, so you immediately go into Goonies. You're now with another really spectacular director, Richard Donner.

And he took a real shine to you, right? It was a very different experience going from indie to the Goonies. Because, one, I was the only kid on set. So I got all the attention, all the love. And all of a sudden, I walk on the Goonies set, I was with six other kids. You're one of six kids. And...

They all knew what they were doing. Even though it was their first movie. Like, Sean Astin grew up in the movie family. Josh grew up in the movie family. Jeff Cohen was so awesome and cute, and he was a ham. And Corey Feldman was a pro already. And they all knew how to look the best in front of the camera, how to say the lines, how to hit the marks. This was only my second time. And we drove Dick Donner crazy. We were constantly jumping on him, screaming on set, overlapping each other all the time.

Now I have to fight for attention, which is something I was very familiar with because I grew up in a big family. Right. And how were you getting along with the other kids? Obviously, you and Cohen became really close. Jeff, who played Chunk, you're lifetime friends. Yes. He's even your lawyer now, which is incredible. He's my lawyer. We're best friends. We see each other all the time. Aww.

Isn't that awesome Chuck became a lawyer? That's crazy. Yeah, entertainment lawyer. But the reason why he became a lawyer, he wanted to be an actor. And when he hit puberty, all of a sudden he wasn't this fat, cute kid anymore. Right. And he couldn't get a job. It's hard to go from a kid actor to an adult actor.

And he reached out to Dick Donner and says, what can I do? And it was Dick Donner that told him as his kid, if you still want to be in this business, acting isn't the only thing. You can also do other stuff. And Dick Donner paid for all four years of his college tuition. And he went to maybe USC, then UCLA. UC Berkeley, UCLA. Oh yeah, Berkeley and then UCLA for law school. Wow.

There's all these angels in this story. It's lovely. That's why it's very heartwarming to see how successful these people are, yet at the same time, they're so generous and kind. Man, okay, so was that movie fun, though? Of course you were feeling probably the least prepared or the least professional.

But were you having fun? Oh my gosh, it was incredible. Where were you at? Oregon or something? We shot the exterior stuff in Oregon. Then we shot the majority of the movie at the Warner Brothers lot. We built the pirate ship in the biggest soundstage. I believe it's stage 16. And flooded it. That water was heated. And Harrison Ford taught you how to swim, so you're set. One day we're walking on the pirate ship. The next day we're going down a water slide. I mean, it was like a kid's dream. Yes.

Yeah, wow. And how did you get on with everybody? I imagine Brolin was much older than you guys. He was like the older brother. And we spent a lot of time in a trailer doing schoolwork together. We were like a big family. So as with any other family, there was a lot of fighting. There was a lot of love. There was a lot of making fun of, laughter. We had all of that. I imagine your on-camera personas or roles that were assigned, you bleed into the dynamic outside of

The set. When you're a kid, you're basically being yourself. Did you have a crush on Martha Plimpton? Not Martha. I was too young. You were. Were you 13? I was 13 going on 14. I had major crushes at that age. You were a little bit ahead of sketch. Again, I was enormous. I think it was later on that I thought Carrie Green was really pretty. Yeah, she was. She is.

So, okay, that movie comes out. And now this is another hit movie. It wasn't as big of a hit as people thought it was. You have Dick Donahue as the director, Steven Spielberg as the producer. I think we made around $60 million.

$667 million versus Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom made $200 million. But it was also 1985, and $60 million in 1985 was still a major. It was profitable. But I know what you're saying. There's a handful of movies like this where we all think they were even bigger than they were. The classic example is Shawshank Redemption. Every human being has seen that movie, and it made like $8 million at the box office.

That movie became a hit on home video. And that's what Goonies was. It became a huge hit on home video. I bet just as many people walking the planet today have seen Goonies as they have Temple of Doom. Yes. If not more. In fact, there are more Goonies fans than there are Indiana Jones fans. I bet. It's a very seminal movie. It's one of those movies where you grew up watching it. It made a huge impact.

on your childhood and they change you. And it was beautifully assembled in the archetypes where almost any moviegoer could find themselves in that group of kids. That's the genius of that story and that screenplay by Chris Columbus. It is. I think lesser writers tend to write multiple characters, but none of them are very clearly differentiated. That's the mark of Christopher Columbus. Those are very specific archetypes that play perfectly off each other.

And any kid watching that movie, you can relate to any one of those characters. And even at times, right? Like, I feel like Chunk sometimes, and then also I feel like Brolin at times. I feel like your mouth or Mikey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the reasons why that movie became a huge hit is really the direction of Dick Donner. Back then...

It is unheard of to do a movie where you have overlapping dialogue because of the editing. So you always have one actor finish their dialogue before another actor say his. But we were kids and we were just talking over one another. The sound guy said, we can't have this. And Dick Donner said, shut up, just let them be kids. Oh.

Just let them enjoy themselves. And that's what we did. We were just being ourselves. Yeah. And just kill the editor later. That's the editor's problem. I'm sure they had so many headaches putting that movie together. So that one comes out. And now I imagine you're a bit more savvy. You've now been at this for a couple of years. And you go to the premiere and it's out again. And you're even more popular at school.

Then did you start thinking like, well, this will just continue like this? Not yet, because I was still in school. So I was busy all the time. If I'm not on a set, I was in school trying to have a normal life. That's why I never had any real friends in school. It's because by the time I made a friend, I would be gone.

And then he would move on and have some other friends. Well, that's a question I had. Even as an adult, it can be kind of sad that you go on a movie set and you're with people for three months and you're as close as people can be.

And then you return home to your real life and you just don't see them anymore. And you're like, well, what happened? And then you go back to school and all of a sudden you find yourself kind of like the new kid on the block. Yeah. You don't have any friends. And a lot of times what happens is when I first go back to school after a hiatus, everybody would have a lot of interest in me. It's like, oh my gosh, like,

key, right? Yeah. And then they would have a lot of questions for me. Of course. But then that quickly wears off because I already got everything I need from you. And then all of a sudden I feel myself being alone again. By the way, in your life at this point is already in this pattern of extreme highs and lows. I wonder if you've even gotten addicted to that cycle.

Does that make any sense? Wow, that's a great question. I am an arousal junkie because my childhood was all these peaks and valleys and everything was really heightened. And I kind of crave that level of drama a bit. You're absolutely right. In some fashion, I grew accustomed to that. It's kind of like a musician when you're performing on stage in front of 70,000 people and you hear like all these cheers and applause.

And all of a sudden you go backstage or to your hotel room and it's just dead quiet. It's such a huge contrast. So you at this point have an agent, you have the whole team, but you end up doing, interestingly, shortly after the Goonies, you do 40 episodes of a Taiwanese show where you're speaking Mandarin. What was that experience like? Because that's got to be, I don't want to say a far fall, but a much different experience.

It was very different. If you look at my resume, I basically accepted everything that was offered to me. I never said no to anything. After the Goonies, I did a television show for CBS.

And it was after that, then it started drying up. And then here was an opportunity from Taiwan. He says, we want you to do a 40 episode. And I said, of course, because I wasn't doing anything in the States. I would go to Taiwan and do this and come back. That sounds lonely. Even though I'm Chinese, you know, I grew up basically in the States. Yeah. I've grown accustomed to what life is like

in America. Your other, even though you're, in theory, Chinese ethnicity. When I go there, and I think the Asian diaspora in the States knows this. For example, when I go back to China or to Hong Kong, they never look at you as one of their own. You're like a foreigner. So when I went to Taiwan, they thought I was American. And I don't read or understand

write Chinese. So it was a challenging time to do a 40 episode television show because one, I didn't speak Mandarin at that time, so I have to learn the language. Oh my God. And second, they had like a teacher to teach me phonetically how to say those dialogues. And you had to learn your dialogue orally. When you're 16, 17, 18, your memory works great.

It's not like now I learned my dialogue way in advance, you know? Did you notice any tension in the family? Was there ever any jealousy between the nine siblings? Were they like, well... Or did they pluck him out of this group? No, no, we were never competitive with one another. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Because I started to make a lot of money. So when my siblings got a little older and got their driver's license, I was able to buy a car for them. Yeah, what a hero. All of this, you know, comes with a lot of benefits. That's why they're all very happy and very proud of what I've done. But that's important.

because if I was the younger brother and I was the one auditioning the first time for Indiana Jones and then this bizarre turn of events happened, I'd be like, that's my bus ticket. I bought the bus ticket. Yeah, that's my lottery ticket going there. Just quickly back to the Taiwanese experience. Yeah, I have a friend who is Mexican, but he was born in Chicago. And he tells me when he goes to Mexico, even though he speaks Spanish, he's

He's almost in another world. It's almost worse. Like if he were straight American and white, there would be this kind of fascination and this maybe implicit status and all this stuff. But the fact that he's neither Mexican nor in their mind what the Americano is supposed to look like, it's almost the worst of all three options. That's why for my entire life until recently, I always felt like an outsider.

When I go back, they treat me as if I'm a foreigner. When I was growing up in the States, I was treated like I was an American. So for the longest time, I always felt rootless, especially because I'm Chinese, but I was born in Vietnam. Yeah, you're a mess. Yeah, so it's not good for you mentally. I think maybe many,

many years ago I needed therapy. I never had it. That's why I'm messed up. Yeah, because identity, this identity we construct is the core of what makes us feel safe. I think I spent my entire life searching for my identity and never got it. I think it can be a much harder road when it's as complicated as yours is. It's not until recently that

that I'm very comfortable with who I am. And also for the very first time, even though I've been in this business for 40 years, it was the first time that I felt Hollywood has finally accepted me, that I belong. You're not an accident. You're not a lottery ticket. By the way, that's what I'm not putting a fine enough point on. You're spectacular. I mean, the fact that you got plucked out of school, now that's luck.

But boy, do you deliver in Temple of Dune and then fucking my God, do you pop in the Goonies? And this is among a group of very talented people who have long careers. So additionally to the luck you're showing up and you're spectacular.

Which is wild. But even though you're spectacular, I could see where you might not think you had earned or deserved that because you didn't set out to do it. It was very complicated, I'd imagine. When Indian Goonies came out, at that time, it's great because it's current news. This just happened to you. Then can you imagine what it's like five years later, 10 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later when you are in your 40s?

And people still talk about the work that you've done when you were 12 years old. This is, I think, a uniquely hard experience to be very recognizable and famous and not working. Yeah. We just interviewed Chris Pine and his father was on chips and he was huge. Everyone in the country knew who his father was. And then he had a long period of not working and he had to just get normal jobs.

And to have a normal job and be famous, I think, is a unique experience that has got to be extremely hard. It was difficult. I've done Comic-Cons for many years where I'm signing autographs on a picture, you know, I was a kid. Yeah. I feel grateful and blessed that I have those two movies. But for the longest time, I always wished that I have something different.

as an adult will people recognize me for? I said it in my acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, and there was something that scared the shit out of me because it was something that I never shared before. But for the longest time, I was so afraid that no matter what I did in my adult life, that I can never surpass what I achieved.

as a kid. Your experience can only be compared to the 16-year-old that wins the Olympics in gymnastics and now has the rest of their life where there'll be no more Olympics and there'll be no more gold medals and there'll be no more Wheaties commercials. Right. It's a unique thing to peak so early. I think it could be torturous. For a long time, you know, there was like rumors how, oh, we're going to do a Goonies sequel and I was just praying to God and Buddha, please let that continue.

come to fruition because I always thought that would kickstart my acting career again. And every few years there will be rumors, you know, Warner Brothers or Spielberg would hire writers. And now we have a script and I always be holding my breath. And it's like, oh, please let the phone ring and tell me that we're going to do this again, you know? And it never came to pass. So at a certain age, you have to make the very painful decision that you're going to stop pursuing acting. Yeah. Yeah.

This becomes an interesting chapter in anyone's life, even if you didn't have the previous chapter. But you do. You decide to go to USC. That was one of the most difficult decisions that I've ever had to make in my entire life. I was in my early 20s. It was like right after high school. You're already in your backup plan.

Yeah, everybody had their entire life ahead of them. And I had it behind me. I find myself going, oh my gosh, there is no road for me to move forward. Right. I can never hit that success. Beat that. The idea of stepping away. I remember I was 23 years old. This was eight years ago.

After the Goonies. And people are still asking me about that movie. And I was still being recognized for those roles. It's on now VHS. It's actually probably gaining some popularity in weird ways. And everywhere I go, people go, oh my God, you were so great. What are you doing now? What can we look forward to next?

Oh, it's soul crushing. It is. And the pressure. And of course, your identity is all messed up because if you have such big success when you're a kid, you're almost chasing going backwards. Like, how can you ever move forward in life if the best is behind you? Yeah. And you had an identity that was defendable, which was I'm a movie star. For a couple of years, you were a movie star.

And then when you're 21 and someone asks you, you're like, well, I'm still a movie star, but I'm not. But yeah, I'm so confusing. Yeah, you graduate and then you see your friends, your classmates moving on to great and better things. I'm surprised you didn't turn into an alcoholic.

No, no, I didn't. You know, surprisingly, I never drank when I was younger. Not until later years. I drink now. Yeah. One thing I was going to say, of course, you're as close as you are to your family, because as you were saying, you have this really obscure identity. You're not Vietnamese. You're not Chinese. You're not American. So, of course, the family had to be the only place. It's like, well, I know who I am here.

I am the sixth child of none. Seventh. Seventh child. I have an identity here. Also, when you grew up in a big family, you don't need friends outside. Your siblings are your friends. Yeah. Family has always been a huge part of who I am because they were my friends. And if I needed anything, I can always come to them. But what's really difficult was when I wasn't working.

And this was like my family has started their own businesses. They're all very successful. And they always see me at home doing nothing. And they were worried. And they would say very gently, very carefully, very sensitively, Ki, you want to do something else? Do you want to come and join the family business? All the time I would get asked out of their love for me.

Yeah. Because they didn't want to see me just doing nothing. Sitting around. Sitting around waiting for my agent to call all the time. It's depressing. There were so many times where I just wanted to say, let's just give up. I was constantly thinking about that because I knew I can't go on like this month after month, year after year. And it's like...

Gosh, what the hell am I doing? Yeah. What was your explanation for why you weren't working? Did you come up with some concoction of like, is it because I'm not cute anymore? I'm not a kid anymore? I blame myself. I thought I wasn't tall enough. I was never classically trained as an actor, so I thought my acting wasn't good enough. When you're fighting for a role and you don't get it, you feel there's got to be something wrong with me. Of course.

And we got to add in, which you're probably not even taking into account at that time. There's like two roles a year for Asian men. There's nothing. How many are coming up in the 90s? I did American Born Chinese and the showrunner, Calvin Yu, used to work at the mailroom of an agency. And it was his job to go through all the scripts that comes in and then catalog them. And he said back then he went through 100 scripts. And out of those 100,

he'd be hard-pressed to find one meaningful Asian character. Yeah. Right. I don't know. I mean, God bless any Asian actor that gave it a shot. All the roles are for me. And I was completely hopeless for nine years. And I looked, the part,

I can't even comprehend having had the exact same experience. But also on top of it, I'm Asian. I know like, yeah, two fucking opportunities. So you auditioned for nine years before you got that first role? Yeah. What made you want to go on? I was like, it's never going to happen. I accept that.

but I will be so disappointed in myself when I die if I didn't try it. It wasn't even that I thought I could do it. It was, I'm going to prevent this enormous regret, which is if I give up on this, I'll be so disappointed in myself.

So I'm just kind of wallowing in this sea of like, well, it's not going to happen and I'm never going to quit so that I don't regret it. But then probably I'm going to regret having tried this for my whole life. So yeah, it was just like a constant debate in my head of whether we're going to keep going or not. That was the same reason.

why I decided to get back into acting. Really? It was because I was turning 50 and it was bothering me. It was eating at me and I was so afraid. I knew what I want. I knew what I love. And it was that fear of regret. And I could see so clearly, I was 50 at that time and I said, I'm going to turn 60 very fast. And I'm going to look back this past 10 years and I'm going to say,

God damn, Key, you're such a coward. You didn't have the courage to do this again. And it was that feel of regret that I said, let's try this again. And coward's the operative word because that's the exact same word I would use. We don't want to die as cowards. And I think that's OK. Well, a coward to yourself. It's one thing to be monitoring to the outside. Like, I don't want to look like a coward to the outside. But if you yourself are

feel like a coward. Like that's a good motivation. Yeah, it's like one of the oldest stories told. Are you going to be a coward? Are you going to risk failure and maybe do something? But you know, that's worse when you think you're a coward versus someone telling you that you're a coward. Exactly. Because if someone telling you, that's just a one-time thing. But if you're thinking mentally inside, it eats at you. It doesn't let go. And it's one of the most shameful assessments of yourself you can have.

And that's interesting. That's kind of a product of story. We like heroes and we like people who go after it. And it's just interesting how internal that is for us.

The fear of being a coward is very powerful. Wow. Okay, so you do go to USC. And it turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made in life. It gave me the knowledge that I needed. And at that time, I didn't know. Despite having been in these blockbusters. And when you're an actor, you step in front of the camera, your perspective is very narrow. You only see your fellow actors. You see the director. You see the producer. And you don't really quite understand them.

You're looking from the inside out. - Yeah, it's kind of like when you have a spotlight on you, you can't really see the audience and going to film school expanded my perspective.

Right. And you learned to edit there. I learned to edit. I learned about camera. I learned about lighting. I learned about sound. I learned about the casting process. You're the director of the short film that you make. I went to SC, so I was part of also a bigger group. And so we would sit in front of the casting process. You would have other students that are coming in. You would have many people trying out for the role. And it was my first time stepping behind the camera and going,

Oh, maybe it wasn't me that I didn't get the role. A great experience for all actors would be to be on the casting side for a minute because it depersonalizes the experience. You see quickly people are right or wrong for stuff. You can't act your way out of being wrong for the role.

And so it's not personal. And you might have been great. And you might have been the best version you could have been. So you don't need to beat yourself up when you leave there that you didn't get it. It's simply, yeah, you were not right for the role, which is hard for us. We take it so personally. You know, something weird happened on my way here. I was driving and I was by myself. And all of a sudden, for some reason, flashback to the days when I was much younger, driving to an audition because I've never been here before and was very similar. I had that feeling where

I was going to the casting director's office, never been there, don't know what's it like over there. And, you know, you have that nervous, you know, the nervousness. Like, come in here, Dax, Monica. Like, I was nervous because I didn't know what it was like. I've heard your podcast before. I always feel like I'd be really bad at podcasts because they don't get to see me. I have one of those voices where some people think

It's a good voice. Some people think it's a really annoying voice. That's everyone's voice. Everyone thinks that. No, no, no, no. Like you guys, like Dax, oh my God. You have one of those voices where it's so freaking soothing. It's like, ask me anything and I'll tell you everything.

Well, thank you so much. And I'm so sorry you felt that familiar feeling on your way here. I know that feeling very well. That's funny. But you learned to edit. And then what's incredible, too, is while you were on Temple of Doom, you were working with somebody that was teaching you taekwondo for the movie. And you fell in love with taekwondo.

I think this is very fascinating. - I studied Taekwondo right after Indiana Jones. - And for the whole ride, right? You never stopped doing it. So at some point out of USC, you start fight choreographing. - Yeah. - That's incredible. How did that come about? - I was right out of film school and I knew a action director named Kuo Yuen in Hong Kong.

Because many years ago, he came to me and wanted me to be in his movie. I couldn't do it because I was under contract for CBS at that time. But then we kept in touch. We stayed friends. And one day he found out that I graduated from film school. And he called me and asked me if I wanted to work for him. A week later, I got on a flight, went to Toronto. I walked on the set and it was the X-Men. What? First job right out of film school.

Oh, my. Was doing fight choreography. I was an assistant action choreographer. There were three of us, and we were in charge of the Wolverine-Mystique fight in the Statue of Liberty. Oh.

Wow. It was on that set I met a very young man named Kevin Feige. Oh, because he was like an associate producer on that. He was an associate producer on that. I met him there and little did I know that 22 years later we would be working together. That is so wild. He'd be running Marvel. You'd be an Academy Award winner. All of it's impossible. Yeah.

The impossible can be possible. So you stay busy for the next 19 years doing all kinds of things. I was learning. I was happy for a period of time because I had a career behind the camera. I was working in Hong Kong. I was busy. That's all we need to be, kind of. Yeah.

But then after a while, something just nagged at me and I didn't know what it was. I didn't understand it. The satisfaction diminished over time. And I felt like the road is getting narrower and I can almost see an end. When had you met Echo? In 2002 when I was working for Wong Kar Wai. You met her on a set? At his production office.

In Shanghai. What was she doing? She was working for the management department at that time. She was also working for the producers. When you're working in Asia, there's no one job description. It's like you wear a lot of hats. Like you do whatever they ask. What needs doing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And did you guys kind of fall in love immediately? It was one of those where when we first met right off the bat, we just talked nonstop. Our conversation can go on forever.

Hours and hours. I didn't know that I was falling in love with her until it... It was too late. Yeah. You know, we were in Shanghai at that time and then I got called back to Hong Kong and it was that separation that I felt, wow, I really miss her.

And I felt that, you know, that butterfly that you have in your stomach that you have when you're in love. Had she grown up seeing you as Dada? She didn't. A lot of people in China didn't grow up watching the 80s movie. It was not until years later. Our first time meeting, because she knew that I was coming in, she saw a movie that I did. And she asked the filmmakers, did they do something to his voice? Did they run his voice through like a synthesizer? Is that why it sounds like that?

The first thing she said to me was, wow, you really do sound like that. No wonder you're self-conscious about your voice on podcasts. Your primary love was critical when you met. How soon after that do you guys get married? Two years later. I gather from your speech, she was weirdly supportive throughout this whole journey. I ask her all the time. We've been together for 22 years now. There was not a year that went by that she didn't believe in me.

There were many times in our time together I felt like she deserved somebody better. I just felt like

Like, God, you know, why'd you choose me? I'm not successful. My life is almost over in a lot of ways, I felt. And I said, why? And he says, trust me, just trust me. You're going to be successful again. I promise you. Year after year. And even at some point, I go, you got to stop saying that. It's never going to happen to me. And I would get angry. Why do you say that? You said that five years ago. You said that 10 years ago. And it didn't happen, okay?

I know why you got angry, because now you're going to disappoint her. She has a belief in you that you don't have in yourself, so you're going to disappoint her. And she's betting on the wrong horse. That's a great way to put it. I felt like she bet on the wrong horse. That's heartbreaking when you love somebody and you feel like you can't live up to their belief in you. From day one when we were together, she said, you're going to be... I hope she gave you the biggest fucking I told you so that's ever been given. No.

She should wake you up one morning and just go, I told you so. She earned it. She has a great eye. Many years ago, she saw a television show with Eddie Redmayne. This was before Eddie Redmayne became Eddie Redmayne. And she said, this guy is going to win an Oscar one day. Wow. And I go, really? I go, he's great, but I mean, come on. He says, I can guarantee you he's going to win an Oscar one day. And then sure enough, Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar. Wow.

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Okay, so in 2018, you see Crazy Rich Asians. Our friend John directed that. Oh, you know John Chu? Yeah. Oh my gosh. He's a USC boy. Yes, he is. Was there any overlap? No. Even though you're older, you went later. Yeah, he was much later. He was there when Laura was there. I know, but he went later at 23, so I thought maybe that gap. I was there from 97 to 99. Oh, shit. I went there for my majors. Okay, never mind. So you see that movie and something clicks when you see that movie? Yeah. Yeah.

You go, wow, they're going to let us do this now, I imagine. Well, no. The first thought I had was, God, I wish I was up there with them. There we go. The entire cast was Asians. It was the first time I've seen a big Hollywood movie that featured an entire Asian cast. And the entire time I was watching it, I just thought, wow, I could be that character. I could be this character.

I would love to be in this scene. I would love to say that line. At the same time, I was really enjoying the movie. You're demonstrating the power of representation. If you can see yourself somewhere, you start to believe that you could be there. Yeah. It's so powerful. Good on you, John. I know. I'm not going to make it through this interview without crying. I can feel it welling up. And what's so great about it is that it was a huge success. Exactly. It was a phenomenon. It made me believe that forever.

Wow, we can do a movie with an all-Asian cast about an Asian story and people will

will watch it. They want to see it. Yeah. Okay, so you decide, I'm going to give this another shot. Where the fuck do you start? You don't have an agent. You're not doing the theater. It starts with a conversation with my wife, Echo. And it was just a night where I'm enjoying a glass of wine and very casually because I was really nervous. Yeah. Cavalier just brings, hey, what do you think if I give acting a try again? And Echo is always supportive of everything that I do.

supportive of all my ideas. And she says, I think that's great. If that's what you want, if that's what you love, go for it. And then I...

brushed it away very quickly. And then again, a few months later, I would bring it up again. But that entire time, it would just be in my mind. Can you do this? That voice in me. Jump, jump, jump. Yeah. Would be so loud. I would literally have to like, I got to go out for a walk just to clear my mind. Just get that noise out of my mind. But one of the things that she warned me about was that if you're going to do this, you have to prepare yourself first.

for rejection. - Right. - Yeah. - You can't-- - Come home every day destroyed. - If you're gonna do it, you can't just be thin-skinned and throw in the towel at the first rejection. 'Cause she knew you were probably very fragile and vulnerable. - When you're 18 and 21, you get rejected. She said, "Sure, I got my whole life ahead of me." But when you're 50 and like still going out and auditioning,

And my gosh, it's like getting rejected again and again. I didn't think I have it in me. It's very brave. How'd you get an agent? So I had a friend in an agency. It was like a mid-sized agency. I called him and I said, please represent me. He was a senior agent at that agency. And he says, Ki, I can't represent you, but let me introduce you to this wonderful young agent. She's very aggressive. She's very ambitious. If she's willing to represent you, then you have an agent.

If she doesn't want to, I can't push on her. And I remember driving to Santa Monica, waiting in that conference room. And she came in. Her name is Jacqueline Kim, who I'm with right now at UTA. I'm assuming she's Asian. She's Asian, yeah. Do you decompress a tiny bit? I just wanted an agent. I wasn't like being picky. I wasn't in a position to be choosy. I know. I guess I just wonder if you feel like she would be more innately rooting for you because, I don't know.

I was being interviewed. It was okay. I didn't have an ego going in because I knew coming in, I have to put all the success that I had as a child, put all of that away and approach this as if I was a complete unknown. Yeah.

So after that meeting, I drove home and I got a call from my friend and her saying, yes, we would like to represent you. And I remember her even telling me, she says, this is what you need to do, Ki. You need to get yourself a headshot. You need to go online and sign up. There's a website called Actors Access. Oh, yeah. I was really happy going online, filling out that form. And I'm like thinking, wow.

God, do I really? Like there was a bit of his, you know. Yes. You're like, am I doing this? Am I really doing this? I have to get an account so I can see the breakdowns. I can see what is out there. Bringing back some. Yeah, I'm getting like sweaty remembering all this. So I did all of that. And what's really interesting is, so I did all that. And because of the memories that I had when I was much younger, I didn't expect her to call me. Maybe I'll hear from her later.

six months later. And that's okay. I can do other stuff. And literally two weeks later, she called me and said, hey, there's this little movie that I think you might be right for. Two weeks? Two weeks later. Again, this is back to like impossible good luck, impossible bad luck. She told me about the Daniels. I wasn't aware of the work at that time. She did tell me that it stars Michelle Yeoh. And she said, it's one of the leads. And I go, what? You

You're like, I thought I was going to audition for commercials. I thought I was going to be auditioning for like minor roles. Yeah. That's what I was prepared to do. Maybe a guest star on a television show. Get some insurance maybe by the end of the year. Cobble together enough days. Wow, two weeks. Okay, so now this is where our lives intersect a little bit. Because Anissa had been doing my hair on Bless This Mess, a TV show. And then she left to, I think, do this movie. And I needed a haircut. And I'm like,

Girl, I need a haircut. And she's like, I'm way the fuck out. You guys were like in Simi Valley. We were doing The Laundromat. Which, by the way, I wish I could go there after I saw the movie. Because it was just a shithole plaza. And I'm like, what movie are you guys making? And it was low budget. She's like, well, we're filming that thing. And I look and it's like, that old lawn.

Where there's your primary location. I just remember thinking like, wow, this is scrappy. And it was just before the pandemic. Right before. Literally, we started at the end of January. And we shot up until right before they shut everything down. And then did you resume for a minute? We shot.

Shut everything with one more day to go. The entire world was shutting down. And we just kept going because we knew just a little bit more. One more day, one more day. And we kept going until A24 came to us and says, listen, guys, the entire country is shut down. You need to shut down. And we had one more day to go.

I never thought we would get past that. So you came back for one more day? We came back eight months later and they gave the Daniels time to put it together. That might have been a blessing. It was a blessing because the visual effects was done by five guys in a garage. It wasn't like a big visual effects company working on a movie. So we gave him that time. It gave the Daniels time to put it together. And instead of coming back for one day, we came back for two.

This might be one of the most impressive movies I've ever seen in my life. For a million reasons. It's such a good movie. A, it's just a fucking brilliant movie. Even if the budget was $200 million, it would have lived up to that. It looks like it. It's impossibly good and complex. And the editing of all the editing I've ever seen in my life, I don't know how they kept all that straight. It's so impressive. But of course, I was there. I saw the set. I saw what was happening. There's no way I'm going to predict that that's going to be the outcome of that.

It was so tiny and scrappy. Yeah, it was. In fact, we didn't even have trailers. And this is the genius of the screenplay. The gamers wrote it in a way where they can shoot the majority of the movie in one building. And the entire cast had dressing rooms instead of trailers because we couldn't afford that. We didn't have a big crew or anything. But what was great about it is that the entire budget was put up on the screen instead of going into people's pockets. Yeah. But when you saw it, did you have the same thing I had, which was like,

wow, this movie's gigantic. For sure, it felt much bigger than what it cost us. And what you probably felt like on set. I felt small on set. Often it's the opposite experience. You go away, you make a movie for three months, you think you're making Gone with the Wind, you go to a first screen, you go, oh, okay, it's not that. It looks kind of tiny. And this is like the full opposite. It's like a big spectacle. When I read the script for the first time,

I knew it was a great script. Was it hard to follow? I was able to follow. I got all the jokes, but there was just one thing that I had questioned about was, how the hell are they going to pull this off? Right. It was so wild and crazy. That scene where Michelle Yeoh's character and Stephanie Hsu's character sinks into the sofa. Yeah. And I thought it was a visual effects shot, but they did that practically.

Oh my God. They built this couch. They rigged it where you can sink into the couch. I did not know it was practical. And it was so brilliant. Our industry has gone through a long period of time where don't even think about doing it practically. Just do what they post. They don't even want you to use squibs anymore. It's like everything will be done digitally. Like, wow, really? That's why it was so refreshing to be on the set because we did everything practically. Wow. Wow.

Now, I wouldn't have thought this when I was watching it, but now that I rewatch some of it today and I know about your fight choreography background in your second degree black belt in Taekwondo, when you had your action scene, were you able to be helpful?

Did you stay out of the way or did you go like, hey guys, by the way, I have choreographed quite a few fight scenes and I'm a second degree black belt. I have some thoughts. A lot of things that happened to me was really a blessing in disguise, like going to film school, working behind the camera as an assistant action choreographer for everything, everywhere, all at once. I only wanted to wear the actor's hat.

But when the action team came to me and said, these are the moves we're thinking of for this scene, I understood it right away. I knew the language. I spoke it. I knew what it takes to make it look good on camera. I spent a lot of time training actors how to throw punches and kicks. On X-Men, we would show Hugh Jackman. These are the moves.

And this is how you do it so it looks great. So I had that knowledge. So going into it. You felt confident. Very confident. It's a great scene. The fucking fanny pack. That movie, I think, is one of the best movies I've seen in...

20 years. I mean, it's so powerful and good. What I love about it is at first, I'm trying to understand. I spend like some portion of the movie at the beginning being like, okay, do I get it? And then at some point you just surrender and you're like, I'm just going to watch. I'm just going to take it in. And by the end, you understand everything.

Yeah, you have all this anxiety and then you surrender to the notion that it'll all make sense if you stop thinking. You have to do a leap of faith. Which is the point of the movie. I know. Like, it's the moral of the movie. It's so poignant. It's so beautiful, too. The love story between you and your wife in that is so, so crushing. You're so good in it. What's amazing is I've met so many fans their age. It's a wide range. Can I tell you my then eight-year-old, one of her favorite movies she ever saw? Wow. Eight. And did she understood it? She did. Yeah. Yeah.

That's great. I think a lot of young people got it right away. I meet a lot of older fans, and they said, I love the movie. I've seen it three times. I didn't understand it the first two times. I had to watch it with my daughter. Oh.

and have her explain it to me. I think I understand 60% of it, but I want to watch it again. Them not willing to give up so easily. There's something special about it. Yeah, I've seen it twice, and I could go for a third viewing for sure. Oh, that's so good. You know, what an incredible experience. It's brilliant. You're brilliant in it. Especially for a dude who'd not done it for 20-plus years to come out and immediately be that proficient at it is pretty mind-scrambling. You win the Oscar. You win the Golden Globe. You win the SAG Award. And now...

Does a new round of anxiety creep up? Because you've been here before. Did you have a new round of like, oh, I got to take every job that comes my way. They might not ever ask again. Or were you like, no, this time we're going to do things we like? I did go through an anxiety phase after I won the Oscar because I was like,

All of a sudden I felt, okay, so I have this really successful movie and it reminded me of Indiana Jones. Of course. So then I go, is history going to repeat itself? Am I going to do something next? It's going to be like the Goonies. And then after that, I'm just going to slip off the earth. You've formatted your brain for these highs, lows, highs, lows. That's what you know. Something terrible's got to come your way now.

Yeah, you know, I was asked a really interesting question yesterday. Do I still have anxiety or doubts about my next job? And I do because when you have that for so long, it doesn't go away overnight. But I did feel like there was this huge anxiety of like making sure history doesn't repeat itself. I'm getting a second chance and I want to make sure that whatever I decide to do next, I wanted to make sure that it's going to be able to carry me forward.

And I was so lost. I remember attending an event with Steven Spielberg, and he asked me, how am I feeling? Am I okay? And I said, Steven, no, I'm not okay. Good for you. He says, what's wrong? Let's have lunch. Aw.

So we had lunch and I told him how I was feeling and he gave me some wonderful advice. And it was at a time also where people were reaching out. So I was getting offers. You're back to school where every kid's interested in you. Yeah. It's all very familiar. That's right. And you have a hunch this is going to go away, just like it always has. You're like, they're interested for five minutes. The fear, the fear that all of this is going to go away. And I felt like I had to...

make the right decision on the next step. And that was really hard.

Well, you joined the Marvel Universe. That's a great... But that was before the Oscars. I did that in 2022. It was after the movie had came out, before all the accolades. It was slowly growing. And then I got that wonderful call from Kevin Feige about joining Loki. And then I had that. I was very proud of it. And then the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the SAG came after that. Wow.

The amount of like heightened experiences you've had. Both ways. Yeah, all the directions. Spielberg sent him Christmas presents for 39 years. Yes. It's hard not to love this guy. I love him too. Oh my God. He is the sweetest. When I won the Oscar during one of those commercial breaks, I went up to him, gave him a big hug. And I told him, I said, Stephen, I hope I made you proud tonight. And he said, Keith, you've always made me proud.

This is too much. Well, you were celebrated from Loki, too. You won a TV Critics' Choice Award. I was nominated. Oh, you didn't win. No. Well, then I take that back. Honestly, that was such a huge gift of being given that opportunity to play Orboros. Can I say something really quick about Steven Spielberg? I feel like he must...

feels some responsibility for you. The presents say that a little bit. Like, I plucked this boy out of his elementary school and changed his life. I have some responsibility. I have some responsibility to him to make sure it's good. Not that he should have felt that, but I could see him feeling that way. Has he said anything to you as such? No, I mean, he's given me so much. He was the first filmmaker.

to put an Asian kid in a big Hollywood movie. And he didn't do it one time. He did it two times. He changed not only my life, but also my family's life. So he's given me so much. I don't know how he felt, but I would never say that he should be responsible for it because he's already, oh my gosh, I could never ask for anything more than what he's already. But I just mean he seems like such a, he seems like such an incredible person and soul that I can imagine that he probably

probably took that out of him. You know, over the years, I would do something and I would get a card in the mail and said, Kia, I just saw you in this. You were brilliant. He was keeping it

He was keeping an eye on you. Yeah, he was keeping an eye on me. So, Key, what are you doing next? I know you were in Kung Fu Panda 4. Yeah, that was my first voiceover ever. And how did you like it? I loved it. It was a very different experience. I think doing voiceover work, you have to place your faith and trust in the filmmakers more than live action. Because I didn't get to read the full script.

I didn't know what was going on. So I was in a recording booth with two of my directors. And I just have to believe that whatever I'm giving them is good enough. You know, I have no knowledge of context of what I'm doing. You're doing the performance in a vacuum. Yeah. So weird. I'm bad at it. I've done a bit of it and it does not come easy for me.

It's almost like the opposite of what I had to train myself to do as an actor, which is be calm, be still, have patience. I would think undersell it. Your voice is so beautiful. It's like perfect for it. Well, just to be so heightened, my fears of like, oh, my God, I'm being so broad right now and terrible. But that's what it calls for.

Well, with all this stress on your shoulders, what are you doing next? I just finished a movie for Universal Studios. It's called With Love. My first ever movie as the number one on call sheet in a major studio film. That's so exciting.

Are you allowed to tell us what it's about? It's an action movie produced by David Leitch and Kelly McCormick, who did The Fall Guy. Yes, I know David Leitch for years. Yeah, he's great. It's an 87 North movie. It's a big action movie. We had a lot of fun. I grew up watching Jackie Chan and Samuel Hung, you know, the Hong Kong 80s action movies, and they all did their own fight.

So going into this one, I knew the very first thing that I wanted to do was to do all my fights. There's something special about watching a movie knowing that the actors are doing it all and not some stunt double. I completely agree. But then mentally, I think I'm 21. Yeah.

But then when I do it, I'm surprised. I go, oh, wow. I'm feeling really proud because I can do the moves. Then I wake up the next day and go, oh, my God, my back. But nothing a couple of Tylenol wouldn't fix. I cannot recommend enough for people to go back and watch the early Jackie Chan movies from Hong Kong because he was Buster Keaton. I mean, he's jumping out of buildings.

he's jumping onto buses from 40 feet near. I mean, the amount of stunts he did, we've never seen anything like that. And I don't think we will ever see anything like it again because now you wouldn't put an actor in that position. I mean, he's broken so many bones. Yeah.

He's going through plate glass windows. Those early movies are almost impossible to believe they're real. And especially now with the technology of AI and deep fake, it's like, why would any actor do that? Yeah. Well, that's so exciting. It's a big love story and action movie, and it comes out next February. Wonderful.

Wonderful. You should go back on Colbert because you were on Colbert on Valentine's Day. That's right. Yes, yes. Yes, you started your segment by saying happy Valentine's Day. You're good, Dax. So you should go back and commemorate it. Oh, and Valentine's Day is her anniversary too. It is. That's the anniversary of this show. Yeah, we have a good cast. I'm in it with Ariana DeBose who gave me the Oscars when I won. She was crying.

Yeah, she was. I love her so much. I remember her opening the envelope and announcing my name with such emotion. She couldn't even say it. And then Marshawn Lynch is in this too. You know, you won a Super Bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fun. Oh, this is exciting. I'm so happy for you. Thank you so much. I'm so happy. What a beautiful story. What a story. My God. Really quick, I am landing the plane, but did cross my mind. It's almost like

an epic your life in your 20 years of wandering did you ever have the fantasy like you know who's gonna call me quentin tarantino he should because he has this history of bringing back people that we all loved did you ever let yourself fantasize that maybe he was gonna call you no

It's a weird question. I love him. I'm a big fan of his movies, of him. But he only brought Travolta back. Yeah, yeah. And he brings Don Johnson back. I never had that. I didn't know this, but being an Asian actor in Hollywood, we're conditioned to think a certain way. Let me give you an example.

When 87 North, David Leitch and Kelly McCormick came to me with love, I read the script and I said, oh, you got the wrong person. This script is written for somebody else, for a white actor. And I actually passed on it. And they came back the second time and they go, read it again. And I passed the second time. Wow. Oh, my Lord.

And then they go, we want you to come in. And I remember meeting them in person and they have slides of me as that character. And I was staring at it and I'm looking at David Leitch, who was one of the biggest directors in Hollywood.

And I said, how come he can see me in this role and I can't see myself in this role? It dawned on me that because my entire life, when I go to a movie theater, when I watch a movie similar to this, it always stars... Go ahead, say it.

Someone like you. Someone not like me. Ryan Reynolds, that type. Yeah, so I didn't know that I was conditioned to think a certain way. When you said, like, did I ever dream a director like Tarantino would call me one day? No, I never did. I dreamt that I would get a call from my agent.

telling me there's this great role for you. I think you're perfect for it. We're going to send you out. Giving the opportunity to try to prove to them, to try to convince the filmmaker and the producer that,

I am right for this. And ever since the Oscars, I'm very grateful for everything that's happened since. But it's so interesting how all these years, I thought I was good for it, but nobody thought I'd be perfect for it. Everything everywhere had to happen. I had to win an Oscar. And now it's flipped. Now they all think you can do it, and you're worried you can't. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? It is.

And it's so common. The flip that has to happen once you've achieved something you wanted, you have to reset your whole brain. We say on here all the time, like, I know what it's like to try to build something. I don't know what it's like to try to keep something. And it's a completely different mindset. And you have to rise to that occasion. And so, yes, you have to now do some work to believe in yourself in the way these other people do. But it's a minority's thing.

It's extra, right? Because yeah, you're growing up proving

proving yourself the whole time. You have to be exceptional. Yes, you have to be exceptional. And like you said, you don't even dream the same dreams the other hegemonic group does because that's just not part of the story. And so once you get there to rewire as in like, no, I'm a part of this group now is very hard. It's a very hard transition back to identity. I love Dan Kwan, half of the Daniels.

Dan Kwan says something that I really loved and resonated with me. He said, today's system is made up of follicle stories, meaning the stories of the past, something similar to that. And he said, if we want a new system, we have to make up new stories. For the last few years, I'm really grateful.

that Hollywood has opened up its doors for a lot of different groups of people that would never privy to those opportunities. And now they are. And we are creating new stories that's going to change whatever future that's going to come. And Keith, they're already the best ones we've had over the last 10 years. You have Atlanta, this black perspective. You have Rami, this Muslim perspective. You have everywhere.

they're immediately among the very best that have ever been made. It's really interesting, and that's why I wake up every day thinking, wow, it's great where things are going. A new dawn. Yeah, a new dawn, exactly.

Well, Ki, thank you so much. This was delightful and life-affirming, and I loved every second of it. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Monica. Thank you, Dax. This is incredible. I was really nervous coming here. Oh, I hope it subsided. And we'll come back and we'll talk about your movie. Yeah, come back next time. Valentine. Thank you so much. All right. Be well.

He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's gotta let him have the facts. Hello, Monica. Hi, Dax Shepard. Yeah, my voice went really high there, didn't it?

Hello, Monica. What's the highest you can go? Well, I just ate a bunch of weird food at a for real smorgasbord. I think maybe the world's first smorgasbord. Fun. Well, because I'm in. You're in smorgas town? I'm in smorgasbord, Norway. Norway.

Where are you? I'm not really. I don't even know if this place has a name that's so tiny. But it did have a real life called a smorgasbord. And what did you eat? Okay, I ate too many things. Shit, I'm jumping ahead. I was about to show you the view. But yes, okay, so I ate a bunch of prime rib, but I also got into the potatoes au gratin hard.

There's a lot of dairy and cheese. And then I guess what I did, I had dessert. They had a delicious strawberry ice cream that I smothered in a vanilla sauce. Vanilla sauce? Yes, with also a berry sauce. It was divine. So when you ask how high can I go, I'm a little handicapped at the moment with how high I could go. But I'll try it. You ready? I want you to try it. Yeah. Okay.

Okay, let me clear out my instrument. Please cut this. That's pretty good. That's good. Let me try again. Let me try again. Okay. Yeah, it's best if you do because I really don't want you to see me either. I'm going to cover my camera. Okay.

Yeah. It's not good. It does. It sounds, it sounds not high. It's like your voice sounds different, but it doesn't sound high. I don't. Yeah. It just sounds weaker. My voice. Yeah. It sounds like a mouse. Too much dairy. Okay. We're going to blame. Okay. We'll try it on the next one. I'll keep my instrument clean. I'll be preparing. So you, um, you have not cheated though. What on gluten? On the things you wouldn't eat at Letterman's house.

Oh, no, I haven't. Now, you know what I did have over – it's been a week now. I did have a bite of a croissant one morning. I had a bite of a croissant because – That's huge. Fuck do I love a croissant, especially when you're on the other side of the pond. They know how to make them. But that's it. I feel validated. Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah, I do. I do. I do.

I feel that you should have a little bit of Letterman's garlic bread. Tell Dave I'll have a bite of a croissant if he makes it for me. Oh, man. Okay. Okay, let me see your view. Okay. I'm going to take you as far as I can. Let's see here. Hold on. I'll submit a picture, too, so the viewer knows what you're also seeing. Oh, gorgeous. Monica, that's a fjord. Oh, wow. That's beautiful. That's a real fjord. Can you explain what a fjord is? Yeah, so...

You could think of it as like maybe a bay, but if a bay was super skinny and 100 or 200 miles long. So all of this glacial water comes down all these mountains and it fills up this bay. There's just so much water as we're driving here. There's...

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of waterfalls. They're everywhere. Oh, beautiful. The fjords are these super steep cliffs. And it's this long channel that's maybe, I don't know, at some points it's three miles wide. Maybe at some points it's 15 miles wide. And it ultimately goes to the ocean.

But it's the most gorgeous. We took a ferry ride yesterday on that thing Eric was telling you about, the Tour of the Nutshell, whatever it was called. And yeah, it was pretty impossible. It looked like a screensaver or AI generated. Wow. Cool. Now, I could do an hour and a half on my thoughts about being here, both in Iceland and here in Norway. Okay.

I have so many thoughts. Number one thought probably is this is the nicest day of the year and it's 58 and it was gray all day. So it's a harsh, harsh environment. Yeah. It's really harsh. And I was sitting on the side of the road today while the kids were running around these trails and playing in the snow and stuff.

And I was like, you know, at some point in human history, people left Africa and they headed north and they went through Spain and they went through Italy and Greece. And then they got up into Germany, still very good fertile land. They were passing all these areas where tons of crops grew and olives and

tomatoes and they were like, let's keep going north. And they got up here and they were like, okay, it's dark half the year. It's cold 10 months of the year. Nothing grows. Let's not go back to where we just walked through with all the tomatoes and the sunshine. Let's stay here. That is such an interesting thought to me. Maybe they got stuck. I would say this place is more of a cultural shock than I've experienced in many other places.

Like I'm experiencing it maybe more here than I did in India. No way. Yes. And I'm going to say this with tons and tons of respect to our Scandinavian friends. They're very stoic. They're very quiet.

I think they can't stand us. I don't know. I think we're loud and gross and, you know, maybe it's in my mind. Maybe I'm just feeling less than, but it's so specific. And then I'm comparing that to the data we always hear, right, which is like this is the happiest place to live in the world, but I'm not seeing much laughing or affection. Joy. Joy.

Yeah. And I'm like, I'm trying to compete. I was saying in the car today, it's like, there's just this disjunction between what I know and then what I observe. And of course, I'm observing it through my own cultural lens of how I define happiness. And I'm mildly aware of that. But also, it's very confusing. Like when you hear happiest place on earth and you come and you've yet to see anyone smile.

That is so interesting. And then I got it in my mind. I was like, could these tests really even mean anything? Because you're asking people what their experience is. And I can already tell that culturally, no one would ever complain here. That just culturally, no one would ever say this sucks. It's like it's not stoic enough. So it's like, I don't know. What does this data mean? How is it gathered?

It's also all relative. Maybe they're happy. It might be different than what we think is happy. And I think there's that. I think there's also these are means, right? These are averages of all the countries. And I think, well, what they definitely don't have is 20% of their population suffering in abject poverty like we have. Yeah. So then you're just wondering, like, well, what would these stats look like if you lobbed that off?

If you took out the bottom 20% of our country and just chose to ignore that, what happens? Like, are you seeing extra happiness? Are you just seeing an average that's slightly above because there's no suffering on the bottom end? Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It does. I think it, I,

I think more than that, though, it's conditioning. Like, we in America are very conditioned to want. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so happiness— Yeah, we don't have the just right saying here. Whatever. What is it? Shalom? Like, uh—

Lagoon? It's not lagoon, but it's something like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Not too much, not too little. We're like, no, no, there's no such thing as too much. Yeah, we are conditioned to want. So that's why I think most people say they're not happy or they're not content. But in some of these other places, they're very much taught that word. Be content, yeah. Content, it doesn't mean super high highs or super low lows. It's just like middle, middle.

Yeah. But we like high highs here and they come with lows.

I'll give you the moment that is most has. And again, it's hard to know if this is in my head, but I feel very strongly about this. The funniest moment. And it's repeated every few hours. When we all go in, all eight of us go into the gas station on the side of the road when we're driving and we get snacks. I'm positive, even though the person owns it and they would want to sell. I think they think you guys are buying way too much stuff. Yeah.

Like, I think they're disgusted by how much stuff we buy. Yes, I'm sure they are. Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, like Eric and I are both getting a couple of Coke Zeros for the car ride and then some waters and whatever. Yeah.

I'm like, even the owner wants to go like, I don't want you to buy this much. I don't want to sell this much stuff to you. This is totally inappropriate. And again, I don't know if I'm being triggered of being judged. It's all in my head. I'm not sure, but I do have this sense that they're pretty disgusted with how much stuff we buy at the gas station. And when we're ordering at restaurants, I can tell they're real. They've told us that's too much food.

No. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were at a pizza place last night and the guy said, that's too much food. You ordered that and that's too much food. Are you getting testy with them or no? No, no, no. By the way, I want to be clear. They're so nice. Everyone here is nice. It's good folk. There's no question about it. Their country is so fucking beautiful. And also I was thinking it's got to be annoying because there's got to be more tourists in this country than there are

I mean, there's so many tourists here. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. Well, in Iceland, we learned the number. It was preposterous. There's like seven tourists to every one inhabitant of Iceland. Oh, my God. There's only like four or five hundred thousand people that live in Iceland. And there's a few million people there on vacation. So, yeah.

You know, you try to factor that in, like, that'd be annoying as hell. But all that to say, I've just been doing a lot of thinking about this happiest place on earth thing. It's very interesting. Yeah, that is really interesting. And also because I've talked to Jess about it because he grew up, you know, he spent 11 years in Sweden when he was young. Yeah. And...

He has a specific take on Sweden that most people don't. And it is to him. Blam. One note kind of. Yes, there's like a little bit of a bleak, like a darkness, a gray. Yeah. And I was like, would you want to go back there? And he said, I'm good. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just different. I'm not at all saying one's better or worse. It's just, it's impossible not to notice. Well, also within one year, you've been to basically the opposite, like the opposite. You've been to India and you've been to Norway. Yeah, there's like one person per hundred square mile here. Yes. And then when we were in India, it's like, it's on. Life is on. Yes. And it's

And there's a fervor and a noise. There's a vibrancy. Yeah. It's really interesting. When we were in old Delhi, you know, there's poverty everywhere. It's poor. It's like a struggle. But people are having a great time. Yeah, they are. And that is an interesting juxtaposition to what you're saying. There's like no poverty, but it doesn't have that energy. Yeah.

Yeah, so then, of course, it's like I think it's tempting to go back in history to wonder when this divergence happened. And you're thinking of the Vikings and you're thinking of their different forms of royalty that they had. But really, I think you need to go back to the first migration here. I think like what I'm saying, the fact that someone preferred to be up here than to be down south where everyone had come from is

It says a lot. That's like, that's who you're starting with. And then, you know, and of course in Italy, those people got there and they're like, Hey, this let's go. This is a party. This is fucking hundreds of miles from Africa. They didn't go very far. Olives are growing everywhere. Uh, I don't know. It's been really fascinating, but again, what a gorgeous place. Impossibly beautiful.

Okay. I'm going to tell on us. Boy, now you're going to start thinking like, well, you deserve to be judged if you're being judged. And this is true. So Eric almost got arrested yesterday. Oh my God. What? What happened? Okay. So remember you were a little bit worried. I got to stop.

We should have done this at the very beginning. I think it would have been announced by now. Maybe people have heard or maybe they've read or maybe they don't know. But we have signed a new deal with Wondery and we're super excited. So we're going to Wondery and we're also going to be introducing on the fact checks videos. So you'll get to see my embarrassing faces. And we're going to also start doing video on experts.

Yeah. So we're going to have video on Thursdays, videos on both of our fact checks. You can still just listen if you want. That'll be available as well. Yeah. Not one thing will be taken away. We'll just be adding some things. And you can still listen everywhere. This is not, you don't have to download anything or you can listen wherever you already listen.

And what is very exciting, because I've had a hunch some of the listeners would have preferred at some point to pay to listen to us ad-free. That's also going to be an option now for you if that interests you. I just want to say, like, we have this because you guys, in particular the people listening to the fact check, you're all so consistent. And you've just made –

It's so much value for us and it's impossible. And thank you so much. It's hard to accept what a wonderful gift everyone that's been so loyal has given to us. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's very special. We're very grateful.

Okay, and now on to something not so special. So a very long – we were on, as you pointed out on Thursday's Fact Check. Eric booked us on a tour. It started on a train ride at 10 a.m. That was a two-hour train ride. We got off. We got onto another train that was smaller. That was another hour-and-a-half train. Then we got off that train and got onto a ferry, and that was a two-hour ferry. And then we got off that, and we rode on a bus for an hour-and-a-half.

And then we got back on a train and then went back to Bergen where we started. So that was like an 11-hour thing. Well, Eric vapes. And there's really not a lot of places to vape for him. So Molly and I happened to get up to go to the bathroom on the ferry at the same time. And as we turned the corner, there's like five bathrooms that all have their own door open.

And as we approach, there's like five of the ferry workers, people with walkie talkies, official gear. And I just immediately, I just have a hunch instinctually, Eric has something to do with this, right? There's so many workers have congregated and they're knocking on a door and they're going, are you okay? Okay.

And I'm like, oh, fuck. And I turned to Molly and I go, that has to be Eric. He has to be in there vaping. Because it's not, it's illegal there. Well, yeah, especially in the bathroom. So I go, do you think that's Eric? And she goes, oh, my God, do you think he's in there vaping? And right when we're, like, debating this, they open the door and oh, so much smoke starts pouring out of.

The bathroom. Like if you were directing the scene in a movie, you'd go, that's guys, it's way over the top. No, there's no way someone could have created that much. And the second we saw all of that smoke billow out, we both ran. We got out of there. We didn't want anything to do with what was going on.

And so we like go around the corner and we don't want him to see us. And now we can hear everyone talking. Now they're talking to a passenger and thank God he wasn't in there. But he had been and he left. And now a passenger is going, a man was in there. He left. This isn't me. This is another man.

And I then turn the corner of the doors all the way open. And it's just an impossible amount of vapor coming out of the, I go to air. I go back to our seat, Eric sitting there like no big deal. He's on his phone. I go, Eric, did you just fucking hotbox the bathroom? And he goes, why? Yeah. What happened? I go, the whole staff is there right now investigating. They're like talking to another passenger. Um,

And he's like, oh, my God. So then he puts on Kristen's purple hat that says, like, deja vu on it. And then he puts on, like, Molly's puffer jacket. Wait, why? To camouflage? Yes, all he had on was this tie-dye shirt. Like, he was so identifiable.

This is not the most Eric story you've ever heard. Oh, my God. You know, this also happened to him on an airplane. Like, he vaped on an airplane, almost got kicked off. Molly brought that up, and she was saying, Eric, you have to now admit you can't smoke in these bathrooms. There are detectors in there. Yeah. So now Eric is, like, in full disguise like he's in a movie. Yeah.

And he's crouched down. We have another hour and 15 minutes on this ferry. And he is truly panicked. I'm sure, yeah. He's like, they'll arrest you for that here, right? And we're all thinking like, oh, my God. What happens when Eric gets arrested in the middle of this tour? And we're on all these like catch a ferry, then catch a train. Like if we're dealing with an arrest, I don't even know.

Yeah. Begin to get home. Anywho, he kept the disguise on and he kept his low profile. And then we got off the boat successfully. Everything blew over. And he kept his disguise on on the buzz. It's not a disguise when you're wearing a bright purple hat.

Oh, my God. But anyways, he kept it on on the bus, and then he kept it on the final train ride. And I said to Eric, are you going to keep this on until we get to Denmark? Like, do you think there's an APB out for you nationwide? Yeah.

Oh, my God. That is so funny. Oh, Eric. I know. So if they're mad at us, they have a right to be, I guess. Yeah, stupid Americans breaking the law. Vaping in the can. Is it illegal here? I mean, I don't pay much attention because I don't vape, but is it illegal to do in a public? Well, it certainly is in the airplane bathroom, like a commercial airline it is.

I don't know. I don't know. I assume if the whole staff was there, it was. Yeah. I mean, it might be definitely probably there. But I mean, even here, because obviously smoking in a bathroom would be illegal. Yeah. If it's a non-smoking. Even though there's a song smoking in the boys room. No, it's still illegal. You know that song, don't you? Smoking in the boys room. I think it's Motley Crue.

What's been happening on your side of town? Oh, I'm reading a very sexy book. It's called All Fours.

Oh, I better be sexy with that title. It is. It's by Miranda July, incredible author. And it's kind of the book of the summer. Like everyone's reading it. Everyone's going to be horny this summer. Yes, it is sexy. Great summer to be a single dude. Definitely. Or you can be- And is it mostly about doggy style or? No, it's about a woman who she's 45 and-

She is going to meet her friends in New York. Her husband suggests that she drive there and like, you know, take a road trip and, and she doesn't make it there. She stops like an hour away and stays. Oh,

And stuff happens. It's midlife crisis-y, but it's hot. She just pulls the eject button on her life. Well, I'm like 100 pages in, so I don't know how this will end. But she stops basically an hour outside her home, gets a hotel room.

And is planning on going back after the, quote, trip is over. Yeah. But she meets someone in the lobby? She meets someone at a gas station. And, yeah, trouble ensues. Whoa. It's so good. If people love that book and they've already read it, it reminds me of a couple other books that are great that are older that are like that. But Erica Yong, Fear of Flying. Have you ever read that? No. No.

Supposed to be one of the most seminal feminist works. And it introduces the concept, I've brought this up on here before, of the zipless fuck concept.

This is her. Oh, yeah, you have talked about that. Yeah. You should really read Fear of Flying when you're done with this. Yeah. If you want it to be a horny summer. Horny summer. Yeah. I also, I started following the New York Times book review Instagram. Yeah. And there was a book that I'm really excited to read also after this that also sounds horny. Hmm.

I definitely recommend it. I'm enjoying it. Okay, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. There is something I wanted to add to our previous conversation because last night Delta and I watched, well, the last two nights Delta and I have watched two more episodes. I've completed it.

You're all done. Yeah. I think the thing we left out of our first conversation about it, which is really important, is they love it. I think it's so important. Like, they love it so much. Like, when that girl who's been injured is like, it's the best fucking...

five years of my life and I'm afraid the rest of my life's not even gonna live up to it like she loves it you know we had our own criticisms of certain or not you know observations but I want to be clear like the reason I don't mind any of it is like they want to do it so bad and they're so happy doing it does it destroy their body yeah probably but so does football you know

Yeah. I mean, that's why I said, I think it's a very interesting depiction of being attached to an identity because they do love it, but, but there are real, there are issues, you know, one being that like they're 23 and have to have hip surgeries. Yeah. That's rough. Yeah. And some of them, as you keep watching, you know, they like, they like it.

But they know it's not good for them, like mentally even. Yeah. But they can't put it down because who are they if they put it down? Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is like I have to be fair and make it equivalent to any other sport where people are really deciding like, yeah, man. Yeah.

I could get CTE. That's very common. Or I'm a wrestler and I have to fucking lose 12 pounds in a week. Or I'm a boxer and I have to destroy my body. You know, I think people want to write it off as something frivolous. But if you're going to write that off as frivolous, then I think you have to write off all sports as frivolous. I think it's like either you think it's fine to basically trade your body for this pursuit or not. Yeah. Of course, I can't relate at all.

You know, I'm like, oh my God, I wouldn't, you know, to be judged. And it's God, they're like in the military. It's like your kick sucked. Yes, ma'am. Like excited to hear it. Yes, ma'am. Ooh, is so triggering. I mean, I can relate. I can relate to it more than probably most people can. And in the last episode, it's the end of the season and it's so sad. It's over and they're going to have a new team next year. And some of these people won't be there. And I just was like, yeah, it's...

it's a testament to identity, but also community. This thing we keep learning over and over and over again, which is that is the most important thing. And that's what they're sad to lose. Sisterhood. Deep kinship and idea that only this group knows what this is like. I still feel that when I was watching and I was like, oh God, I was thinking about my squads. I still feel that. Like only those people on earth, those like

20 people will know what that feeling was in that moment. 36. They're still cutting on my end. Oh, I mean, for me, my squad was. Oh yeah. Yeah. Still,

Still, when I think about all those people, we all had a shared experience. I don't know what most of those people are doing right now anymore, but we had this very special thing and it's beautiful. Yeah. I think the craziest thing, there's the two craziest things are first,

The flying up in the air down into the splits, landing straight in the splits is insane. I cannot believe it. It's like they're trying to break their hips. Yeah. But I think even crazier than that for me was the notion that they all have to report to a hair salon. And here's where the cultural thing is really wild because you have one girl from New Jersey, which, you know, every city's got its look.

And she, but she's in Dallas. So they, they just send them all to the salon and then they let these three human beings decide what color hair they should have. And they really have no say in it. And this gal goes and is blonde. And they're like, you definitely need to be chestnut Brown. And she's like, okay. And they're just chopping and dying people's hair, however they fucking want. And then you see them looking at the pictures later. It's like, they're not even sure they made the right decision. The coaches are like, oh, I don't know. Was that the right color?

I know. Not to mention, this is before they've made the team. Yes, they could still get caught. And they do. And it's just like, oh my. It's a real all-in, man. I've never seen an all-in where you actually also have to get whatever hairdo they tell you to get. Other than the military, you should get in your head shaved and basic. Yeah.

Yeah. But fuck, they love it. Oh, my God. I was watching it with Delta, and I said, you know, when someone gets cut, all the gals come around, they hug the person, and they're all crying. And I, of course, was like, oh, I was panicked. I was like, God, if I was in that situation, I don't cry very easy. I'd have to, like, really be trying. And I said to Delta, do you think anyone's fake crying? And she said, oh, yeah, I think half of them are fake crying.

They're sad. And we were really looking and there was like no tears. Like some of the people that were sobbing the hardest, their faces were bone dry. I think that they're not all crying. They're all – you can be sad and not cry. I think they're being really nice, but I don't know that they're – well, Delta and I think only about half were actually crying. Was that?

I think you'd be surprised what happens when you're in that much of a pressure cooker. Everyone's emotions are just like ready to brim for anything. True, true, true. Heightened, heightened, heightened. Whether or not you actually are that sad, anything off kilter is going to make you cry. It's such an intense environment.

Yeah. Okay. The other crazy moment, and I don't know, people probably not like that I asked this, but there's a storyline where you're a girl goes back home and you're meeting her parents and the parents are being very honest about the fact that they only stayed together for the kids. And then the second the kids moved away, they got divorced. Yeah. And so we're watching this whole thing and Delta and I are snuggling in bed. And I said, if mommy and daddy didn't like each other anymore, would you want us to stay married or would you want us to get divorced?

I said, because I would definitely stay married for you. Luckily, I like mommy, so it's not an issue. But I would do that so I could wake up in the same house with you every day. And I'm totally assuming she's going to say, yeah, I'd want you to stay married. Of course. And she's like, no, you should never be with someone you don't want to be with for me. And I was like, how is this kid at nine years old like this fucking emotionally like –

stable. Yeah. It blew my mind. It was almost like a rhetorical question. I just wanted to know how she felt about this dynamic. There's two adults crying. I don't even know that she's ever even been introduced to this concept that parents might stay together. I'm almost like, well, if this is a kernel in her head, let's talk about it now. She's just like, no, I would want you to

I also, I don't want to say that she is, she is very emotionally stable, but I don't want to say that if somebody had another opinion that that means they're not emotionally stable because I think both are very valid opinions.

Yes, Lincoln, I didn't ask her. We didn't watch it together. But I know Lincoln would have said she would want us to stay together no matter what. Exactly. And that's fair and correct too. Yeah, there's not a right or a wrong answer. It was just kind of shocking to hear her say, like, I want you to be happy. Especially to their dad. Like, it's one thing if you're just, like, having a philosophical debate about it. But, like, telling your dad, like, oh, it's okay. Like, if you want to go. If you want to get out of here.

If you want to ditch this popsicle stand, go ahead. Blow this joint. Yeah. I 100,000% would have said stay together. Yeah. Stay together. I think that's most. Yeah, for me, because I need you and I need you guys. Yeah. I still kind of feel that. Sure. Like I'd rather you guys just be together. Yeah.

Yeah, even if you don't like it, I want to come home to this one house. I want to come home three times a year and you better be there. You better be there as a unit, one unit. I know. It's really selfish. As someone who wants to overcome those feelings, I would now say, yes, of course, everyone should be happy. Yeah.

But innately. It was kind of cool, too, because it almost felt like by the parents divulging this whole history of theirs, what I was initially interpreting was that like that was hard that she had to do that. But the final message the mom says is she's like, I'm so glad I did that. And I do it a thousand more times. Like the mom has zero regret that she did that. And that was a little unexpected. I thought that was interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

But Delta is wired interestingly in that way. Like you said, when you watch Parenthood during like the Crosby-Jasmine thing. Yeah, Lincoln wanted to slit my throat. Of course. She's so nice. Delta's like. Of course he cheated on her.

I like Gabby. I would have done it too. I know. I wonder, I really wonder like how she's going to be as an adult. Yeah. Like in a relationship, if she's going to be so laissez-faire or not. Yeah. Yeah. And then you wonder is like, is there a genetic component, you know? I mean, this is definitely, it's kind of my position.

I know, which is weird. But I wonder if that's learned also from you in some way. I mean, not that you say anything explicitly. I don't. That's the thing is like, I don't, I'm not ever talking about having been in an open relationship. I mean, the only thing that I have said to them, which is naturally they see TV shows, a parent cheats, and then the family gets divorced. And what I've told them numerous times when they bring that up is like, I would never divorce your mom for cheating on me.

Yeah. It's not a fear you need to have. Yeah. Would never do that. But that's the extent of it. I've not gone like, hey, you know, monogamy is a rare kind of a new concept in humans. No, I know. But I don't think she's like, oh, no, my dad thinks this. So but but sometimes there's.

A vibe and an essence you can pick up on from people that I wonder. I don't know. Well, there's no jealousy being displayed. Right. We're not very jealous people. So they're not really witnessing that.

Like, you better not wear that out. Or who are you with? Or, you know, none of that's even in the atmosphere. So. Yeah. And mom goes to work and kisses guys and we see it on TV. So I don't know. Maybe that's who knows. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, really interesting. But yeah, you got to keep watching. I can't believe the Indian girl is an orthodontist. I know. It's so hard for me.

That is so, she's like, when they catch up with her, I'm like, oh, she's a for real orthodontist. She's like, I gotta go, my patient. It's like, I feel like she should have such a confidence at the Dallas Cowboys. Like, hey guys, I'm an actual fucking orthodontist. Like I'm kind of here. Hopefully it'll work with my schedule. Exactly.

Exactly. And that's why. That for you must be. That's what made me a little sad. Absolutely. You're everything, girl. Yeah. You don't need this. And not again, not that she needs it, but but she does like she she wants to be accepted by. She also. That's my read on it. Yeah. I think she has the same thing you had, which is like, oh, cheerleader is what white girl.

But she had previously been a Golden State Warriors. I know. I just really relate to her. I'm like, oh, my God, you grew up with the mentality that I had that led you here. You're an orthodontist. You're like you're killing it. But it's not enough until you're accepted by this hegemonic group. And it keeps escalating. Yes, exactly. You've almost you're almost putting yourself in a position where it's like nobody's going to be accepted.

it on and on top of it an Indian woman's gonna be even harder like yeah like even the skinny white chicks are gonna get blasted you know

I know. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I can really, really relate. And then again, I don't know. People haven't watched it or are sick of us talking about it. But the last thing is just like – I'm not judging her, by the way. I want to be – Oh, yeah. Well, here's where I am. I'm like this is where my – what do you say when your cackles go up or something? The notion – this gal, the one girl who loves Jesus –

she's engaged. She's like 21 or two and she's engaged and she keeps saying it. This is my first boyfriend. I know. This is my first boyfriend. Like you can tell she's nervous about like, it's coming out. It's like, she, it's like, even if she thinks this is fine, it keeps percolating out. She keeps reminding everyone, this is her first boyfriend. And I want to go, yes, exactly. This is your first boyfriend. We don't marry our first boyfriends, but

But some people do. Some people do. But she liked him because he was in a church group she saw online. And my thought there is like, well, she can't have sex until she's married. This is the crazy trap that's created by this. You can't have sex till you're married.

I know. Is you got to get married because you're in your 20s and you're horny and you're going to marry the first guy. Yep. And he's going to marry you because he's not having, he'll do anything to have sex. He'll marry his brother. He actually, by the end, I was like, he's sweet. Like, I liked him. Weirdly.

Yeah. When they first showed up, I was like, oh, wow, that's that wasn't what I expected. I thought she'd be with the high school quarterback. Yeah. And she's with like the number one fan, you know, the guy who paints himself up and everything. But you're right. As the more the more I saw, I'm like, oh, this personality is pretty great. And I agree.

They should get married. They're cute. You start seeing more of them as it continues. And I was like, oh, man. I also grew up in that. I know so many people who married their first boyfriends and are still together and are happy. And we're, again, looking at it from a very specific lens to say like, oh, my God, that's nuts. Yeah.

It's not for a lot of people, and especially in the South. The Bible Belt. It is common. I was weird. Like, it wasn't that they were weird. Yes, yes. I was the odd man out. Yeah, I'm trying to imagine. But, you know, even as I say this, like, any one of my girlfriends, if I had ended up married to, that would have been fine. I had all really good girlfriends. Yeah, yeah.

So I take it all back. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, she is such a real-life Lila Garrity. Yes. She sounds like her. She kind of looks like her. There's this very religious component and dedication to goodness. It's really deep. Although if you remember, Lila was plowing. She was. She was riding Riggins like a rented mule. Yeah.

Oh, ding, ding, ding. Parenthood. Yeah. Anyway, I think it's a great show. It is. I love it. I also love the women who run it. I have very complicated feelings about them. Yeah, I'm mostly just like, whether I agree with any of it or not, the level of professionalism. Like, you are watching people that run.

really take their job as seriously as it can be taken. Yes. And they are like so meticulous and on it. I always like seeing that no matter what the thing is. 100%. And you're right. If it's a football coach doing that or a basketball coach, a male, it's like, oh my God, they're incredible. They are. They are really good at what they do. And they're right. When fucking they play Thunderstruck,

Them broads come out and let it rip. Fuck me. That's as cool as any touchdown that happens. It is. It's really cool. And they know it. They know it, too. And they feel it. They're doing a touchdown. So I'm like, yeah, this is all. Yeah, I know. The coach.

Kelly has a lot of vibes of my coach, also named Kelly. I'd say she's got coach vibes, period. Like that's a coach vibe. It's a winner's vibe. I mean, that's really what it is. An excellence only. In that show, we love the cheer show. Same. Yeah. Monica.

And also I get really interested in how practiced they are at giving people bad news. Like the way they phrase bad news is like it's a science. I feel like I could have been that. Oh, for sure. It is very type A kind of on it, on it. It's very perfection driven. Yeah, yeah.

But you do have to like, you really have to be on people to achieve that. I'd be terrible at it. You have to be on people, but you have to also earn respect. Like they have to respect you and fear you a little bit, but also know you really care about them. Like it's a real,

odd combo that they have to serve. But I think it's actually, to me, those are the best leaders or the best bosses, the people who can do all of that at once. Good combo for leadership. I only have one fact anyway. Oh, great. Oh, fuck.

Let's just take a second. I know. It's so inspiring. I mean, I'm going to say it. He's the sweetest person we've ever interviewed. And that's saying a lot because we've had a lot of nice, best, good boys. But he is by far the – He's a good boy. Yeah. Sorry, Jimmy. Sorry, everybody. Almost need a new category. I think we need – oh, no, I'm not going to – that's mean. I'm not doing that. Okay. But –

But I was going to say, we need a new statue with Key's face. What if we made another statue that was like four times as big and we put Jimmy's on the bottom of it? So it was like, it was Jimmy's that we already made that size, but then we put one that was four times as big on top of it just to like to show everyone the proportion of how good of a good boy this guy is.

It'd be like if you built one president's head like six times the size of the others at Mount Rushmore. Like, the message would be like, forget about those four we did. This is the one. We kind of blew it earlier. Yeah. Oh, just the whole story is such an epic tale. It is. It's such a ride. So many angels in it. Hearing all that stuff about Spielberg, it was so...

so beautiful. I can't. Yeah, man. I got to be a better really good way to be. I'm going to be a better guy. You don't. I mean, I'm not going to tell you to not be a better guy because I think being a better person is a good goal for all of us. But being a better guy is a good goal for all of us. Yeah. Being a cookie boy is a good goal. But the fact that he sent him presents and

Every year. Every year. We'd check in on him. Yeah. And I mentioned this in the episode, but I really, I think he is smart enough to know that he changed his life in a dramatic way, especially him, someone who, like, did not really speak English. Yeah. He plucked out of an elementary school, and his life changed, and I think he felt some responsibility for that, good and bad. Yeah.

Um, and I think it's really admirable because I think it'd be easy to say, oh yeah, hell yeah. I brought you up and I gave you this incredible opportunity and like, yeah, you're, you're welcome. Yes. A lot of people would be like, you're welcome.

You're welcome, and that's that. And that's how Key took it, right? It's just like, oh, my God, he gave me this incredible thing. He owes me nothing, which is true. But I think it shows real character that Spielberg can see the whole picture there. Yeah. Well, also, we're forgetting, too, that Spielberg was dealing with Key as a little boy. Like, think how much we liked him as my age. But imagine dealing with him as, like, I'm sure he just legit fell in love with him. Of course. Yeah. Oh, God.

What was the fact? Oh, it was about that, actually. It was about Lucas giving... Oh, all the Star Wars people merch? Yes, and he did. He gave a percentage of the $8 million picture to the film's little known young actors. It said, I feel terrible that it has been kept a secret that we were given a gift of a small percentage of the films at Harrison Ford. I've never heard of anyone but George Lucas doing that, so we might as well tell people about it now.

Uh, what Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher received was a salary for at least 12 weeks each plus one quarter of a percent. If this doesn't sound like a lot, compute it into the last report of the Star Wars grosses and it's opening two weeks, 6.5 million. You know, I, it's so sweet. Like for Harrison Ford, whatever, didn't mean much, but for Carrie Fisher, she continued to live a really comfortable life while she was alive. She lived very well and she didn't work a ton, I think by her own choice, but she

Yes, that movie gave her the freedom for the rest of her life. Yeah, really lovely. Yeah, so that was that. There's just no facts. It was just a lovely story. Human story. Yeah. I feel lucky that he got to tell us that. Me too. It's such a good one. I really hope people listen. I really, really do. It's very inspiring. It makes you feel so...

Much gratitude, I hope. Makes me, anyway. Yeah, same. All right, well, I love you. This has been a blast. And, you know, next time we talk, I may or may not be bailing Eric out of jail. You know, we're not done with the trip. I was saying, what if this smoking incident went to trial here in Norway? And then out of nowhere, a representative from Hertz Rental Cars showed up as a character witness to say. Oh.

That's great. That is great. All right. All right. Love you. Love you.