- I love doing intros, hi!
(techno music)
Hello, welcome to The Other Show, I'm Chris.
- I'm Sarah.
- And we're the creators of The Other Two
and we're here talking about episode five
with Ken, Helene, and Drew.
- Well, and this episode was directed by--
- Oh, Mike Karnell, my husband.
- Wow, her husband, wow.
- [Ken] Yes.
- At the time he was your fiancé.
- [Sarah] That's true.
- Yeah, we shot this episode days before your wedding.
- Shot this episode, left on the next day
to go down to where we got married.
Got married that following Sunday.
- Consummated the marriage.
- That following Saturday, consummated it.
And then we went on a scout on Thursday the next week.
- It's so pretty out here.
Makes me want to go to a football game.
- Makes you want to sit and watch a full football game?
- No, no, I guess it just makes me
want to watch Friday Night Lights.
- I feel like a lot of the show is you trying
to measure yourself against your little brother
or other people or am I doing well enough
or am I doing well enough fast enough?
- Isn't that the question we all
ask ourselves all the time?
- Yeah, hopefully going back to the high school
helped bring that to a boil, sort of,
I guess especially for your character, for Cary.
And even for Brooke since she didn't get to
go to high school really,
she didn't have a typical upbringing.
- But I went to dance school and did drugs.
- But in the writer's room, we would say like,
okay and this scene will be on the football field at night.
And the writer's room would be like
"For why, what happens there?"
And we'd be like, we don't know but there's
a big wide shot of a football field.
(laughter)
- I mean, we did Fiddler on the Roof and I think
if I saw it now I would, I would still think it was good.
- Did you play Tevye?
- Yeah.
- So you were a gay child playing
a 40 year old Russian peasant?
- Yes, but I think I pulled it off.
- In the writer's room we were talking a lot about
like roles that you, at the time, were like
"This is crazy that I was cast as this,
"but I was actually very good."
cause, no, you weren't.
- I still think I was pretty good in everything,
so that never happened to me.
- Well, you've done Broadway, so you probably were good.
- Yeah.
- I played, in ninth grade, I played Daddy Warbucks-
- In ninth grade?
- In ninth grade I didn't want to shave my head
and so I was like "I'll wear a bald cap."
we glued it on so I didn't, like you could feel
the pressure, you could feel, you didn't want to rip it.
So I would, I did the whole play
like I had a neck brace on.
- In the moment that year, were you like
"I'm getting away with this, this bald cap works."
Or did you know this was pretty rough?
- I was terrific.
- Yeah, you were terrific, you were terrific.
- At least I thought I was.
- I don't want to stop our conversation,
but we do have a superstar in our midst.
Because you won a very important award in high school-
- Thank you, yep.
- So just let's throw focus to her.
- What was the award?
- Well, in high school, in 1999, I won
best actress in New Jersey.
- Wow - Wow
- What Sarah?
- At a theater festival.
Best actor in New Jersey was also in our play,
and so was the best supporting actress
because our drama teachers ran the festival.
- Okay, well this was not told to me backstage.
- So I do think it was real, I do think it was real.
- The fix was in, the fix was in.
- Edit out my set-up.
This is not what was told to me.
- Cool hair, do you sing?
- No, I play soccer.
- Perfect, okay, athletes make the best singers.
Meet me in the library in 20 minutes,
and bring your ball.
- I was telling you this story, which is,
it was a very pivotal moment in my deciding
to dive deeper into being an actor.
I played sports and I was in plays in school,
and I would do both.
The varsity coach cornered me in the locker room
and he was like "Marino," and I was like "Yeah",
and he goes "You gonna play basketball this year
"or do that fag acting?"
- Oh
- And I was like,
"I'm gonna do the acting" and then that was it.
I didn't play basketball that next year, and I just,
and I still remember that and that was many, many years ago.
- [Chris] Yeah.
- But I remember that moment and the decision
of being like, we were talking about it-
- Yeah, it's a thing about, yeah-
- It's a thing that drove, that, you have these moments
of people who inspire you-
- [Chris] Yeah.
- Or people who say things that like, infuriate you
and motivate you to dig deeper into it.
- But that's cool that that made you be like,
that didn't make you be like,
oh, I don't want to seem like a fag, I'll do basketball.
You were like (bleep) him, I'm gonna-
- Exactly.
- I guess it's probably cause you weren't gay.
I was gay, so I'd be no, I'm playing basketball.
(laughter)
I love basketball.
(everyone speaking gibberish)
(bleep) fag, (gibberish)
- So, this is where kids go after dances?
- I think just the losers.
- Well, where do the cool kids go?
- I don't know, I was a diner kid.
- You guys have fun high school dance stories?
- I only went to dances with gay men.
(laughter)
- Yeah, that sounds about right.
- So, yep, I went to theater school, so did you.
Went to dances with gay men and I'm thriving.
- Right around the time that we were going to prom,
I had a high school boyfriend and
we were very serious about each other,
and we both were like in musicals and plays
and whatever together and we each
wrote a song for each other and
then we snuck into a church and
played them for each other and sobbed.
- That is-
- That is adorable!
- Is he gay now?
- No
- That is, by the way, it sounds
like it's from Dawson's Creek.
- I didn't kiss a boy throughout all of high school
cause I was in the closet obviously and then
my first kiss with a boy, I came out to
one of my friends from high school in my
freshman year of college.
I AOL instant messaged him and I was like "I'm gay"
and then he was like "Me too."
And then so the next time I was in my hometown,
we met up, we were like, well, I don't think
we're going to be together but should
we kiss each other since we've never kissed?
So I made us drive to a half-built home.
- What?
- It was half-built, I drove us there.
And then I kind of location scouted,
I was like, I think this room's big enough,
I can sit down onto a step, and we
made out there and it was great.
- You produced your first kiss?
- Yeah, I did.
I guess as an outro, I'll just say
Hi Eric, that was a great night
and watch our next episode.
(laughter)
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