(applause) - [Kelly] Hello!
- [Kit] Hey.
- It's nice to meet you.
- Oh my God it is so great to meet you,
I'm such a huge fan.
- Oh, ditto!
You are so talented.
I made a joke of like,
you don't want to give jobs away,
but you're so talented.
- Oh my God, likewise, of course, obviously.
- [Kelly] You can do all the things!
No! I cannot do any of the things.
- [Kit] I've been a fan of yours since American Idol.
- [Kelly] Well, thank you. - [Kit] Yeah.
- That's 17 years in the making.
I like it.
(laughter)
So how did you two meet?
Y'all are friends in real life, when did y'all meet?
- We actually met in
acting class. - Acting class.
(applause)
- 'Cause that is where Constance spends
all of her free time.
Literally in acting class.
- I spend a lot of time there.
So we met there and--
- [Kelly] That is awesome.
- [Kit] The rest is history.
- [Constance] Yeah!
- We met when we had first both moved from New York to LA,
and I'd never had a day job before,
'cause I had just gotten out of college
and had no idea how to do anything,
no practical life skills whatsoever.
- Why do they not teach this in school?
- [Kit] I know!
One of the things I didn't know how to do was
how to hold a tray,
and I really needed a job at a restaurant
and had a very important interview coming up
at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company,
at Universal CityWalk.
- Definitely.
- Yes.
- And I knew how to hold a tray.
(laughter)
So I was like,
you know Bubba Gump Shrimp Company's
gonna want you to hold a tray,
and so I actually brought Kit into the restaurant
I was working at, and you know,
showed him a thing or two.
I don't think I told you about Mistress Day.
- Mistress Day, what's that? (laughter)
- Oh, we were just talking about that.
- Yeah, Mistress Day is when
people have dates on February 13th,
with people they're not supposed to be with
and then they pay with cash.
- [Constance] And they, yeah...
(laughter) - [Kelly] Yeah.
- Oh my God.
- Hopefully they're not taking them to Bubba Gump.
- That's a sad Mistress Day. - But the waitress though-
(laughter)
- [Kit] That's a second Mistress Day.
(laughter)
- You're not the main mistress
if you're at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company on the 13th.
(laughter)
(applause) - You're right.
That's amazing, I never thought of that.
That kinda slide through some Taco Bell,
(laughter)
So did you do the Hollywood scene together,
like do y'all hang out together?
- We avoided the Hollywood scene together, I would say.
- Yeah. - [Kelly] Wow,
I do that pretty well too.
- We both came from New York,
we're very serious stage actors.
We're just very--
- Okay I'm out.
- not interested in any sort of,
like, Hollywood nonsense.
But we did do our first red carpet together.
- Yes. - [Kelly] Okay.
- It was crazy, it was EastSiders season one,
when we had just moved from YouTube.
'Cause we've had this crazy journey
where we've gone from YouTube, to Logo, to Netflix now,
subtitled in over 30 languages worldwide.
- [Kelly] Wow! - It's crazy.
- That's so great! (applause)
That's awesome.
- Thank you.
- Worldwide, damn.
- So, what was the-- - Back in 2012,
when we had first moved to Logo,
we did our very first red carpet together.
But, they did not have any seats for us at the award show,
so they just let us do the red carpet
and we took a photo with Abby Lee Miller from Dance Moms,
(laughter)
and then they escorted us out in an alleyway
by the dumpsters.
(laughter)
"Get outta here."
- So, wait, Dance Moms had a seat and you didn't?
- No, no seat for us.
- [Kelly] That's awesome!
- Hi, we're here from YouTube, where do we leave?
- Oh my God! (laughter)
Where is the exit?
- [Kit] Which way are we supposed to get out of here?
- You know what though, its awesome,
it builds character and it makes you funny,
and all those situations
happen to all of us in different forms.
I got locked out of the American Idol tour,
'cause they didn't give me a pass.
- [Kit] Oh no!
- Won the whole damn thing,
couldn't get into the building.
(laughter)
Couldn't get in the building, yeah.
There was this older lady and what am I supposed to say?
"I'm Kelly Clarkson,"
(laughter)
and she doesn't know, like, you know.
- You've just gotta carry a headshot with you at all times.
- I just waited out there, 'til somebody came to get me,
'cause I didn't want to sound like a tool
and be like, "I'm sorry I won my show,"
I didn't want to be that person.
But, for all the people that don't know about EastSiders,
what's the show about?
- So EastSiders is a dark comedy
about a gay couple in Silver Lake
and their friends, and the sad and funny messes
that they make out of their lives.
- [Kelly] Yes!
- We've been doing it for seven years now
and we have four seasons on Netflix.
The final season just premiered
and it's all about a drag queen's wedding.
- Yes!
I'm in!
(applause)
So, and your husband is here with you.
Where is John?
Hi, John!
How are you?
- So good.
How are you?
- So, I mean...
I'm very good actually.
It's the final season, so will it be hard to say goodbye,
since obviously you get to work with the one you love?
- It is bittersweet for sure,
but I'm so proud of our little show
that we made with our friends, literally in our living room
and I'm mostly so proud of him, he's a force of nature
and nobody else could have pulled this off.
- Yeah, doing all the jobs, yeah.
- [John] All the jobs.
- [Kelly] Yeah, yeah.
- You know, he originally wrote this script,
I remember because we were in our friend Brea's
little apartment and he was like, I just wrote this for me,
not to like make money or become famous,
'cause this is the story that I would wanna see,
so can we just read this together
and I wanna make this as a birthday present to myself.
And what I really loved about that,
is that I think Kit really makes things out of passion,
where so often you see in Hollywood
people making things 'cause they wanna sell it
and it's all about the business.
And I think it just goes to show that business
follows passion and heart. - [Kelly] Amen.
- And that's why Kit has been really successful.
(applause)
- [Kelly] Yeah!
Very well said.
So, Kit, 'cause you grew up not just in the South,
you grew up in the Deep South, right?
- Oh, I grew up in the dirty dirty.
- [Kelly] Yeah, I like it.
- There's the Dirty South,
then there's the dirty dirty,
- [Kelly] I love it.
- Which is where I'm from in Mississippi.
- Yes, I love it.
So, I grew up in the South as well, though.
How hard was that growing up
in that kind of environment being gay?
- It was really hard.
- Could you come out then, or did you have to wait?
- I had to wait, honestly, you know,
I grew up in a conservative, Christian,
ultra, ultra red part of the state,
and it was really hard for me to kind of like,
come to grips with that,
but I was blessed with a really loving family
and it wasn't easy for them at first,
but we all navigated it together
and came out a stronger family on the other side of it.
- [Kelly] That's so cool.
(applause)
That can be hard, 'cause I'm from the South,
from a ultra Christian community as well,
so I had friends that...
I always like asking people in the limelight about that
because a lot of people don't have the confidence
to do that, and so that's why I always ask people, like,
how did you do it or when did you do it, so.
- Well, I think we're seeing a new South emerge
and I think I credit people like you, honestly,
I've always appreciated your support of the LGBTQ community,
I loved your Tie It Up music video,
- Oh!
- Where you have gay couples getting married
alongside straight couples in this video.
Just showing that love is love is love, right?
- Love is hard, (applause)
you know what I'm saying, like even if you...
that's why I say, love is hard enough to find,
so when you find it, who the hell cares what it looks like,
- Amen.
- [Kelly] If you're the same or different.