Lizzy Caplan
Appearances
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
can confirm it was horrible. And then like every funeral after that never felt as bad, you know, like a grandparent would die or it just never, it never hit as hard, obviously. And then my dad, I just assumed he was 80. He was Not well. It wasn't that surprising, even though it kind of was in the moment. But I was so, so, so fucked up over it, obviously.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Yeah, I don't know. I guess it's like it's impossible for me not to just be making constant comparisons to when my mom passed away. And I had no skills, no tools, no... I mean, I had support, but like 13-year-old friend's support, which is... Not amazing for that situation, like, as hard as they all tried. I just, it was, there were so many years of it just being so, so, so hard.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And now I realize, like, oh, I do actually have support and a therapist and Prozac and... You know, like a great like I will be OK. I ended up being OK the last time against the odds because that was crazy. I just like I definitely I'm processing it in a much healthier way. I'm letting myself be sad. But that's not that was not easy for me to do as a kid.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
As a kid, it was just like exactly what you're saying, like keeping it moving.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Armor, armor, armor. And now it's better. It's better for it to happen now and in this way. But like. It's fucking crazy. It's just crazy. I'm so, I guess I'm just so sad about it, which feels healthy. I'll take that over angry and confused.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
It may have been in there somewhere, but no, it was after my mom. I look at 13-year-old kids now, and they look like tiny babies. I just remember my dad sent me to a therapist once. It was a group therapist and it was a bunch of other kids who had lost a parent. And you had to hold a talking stick to talk about that. And I went to it once and I was like, this is bullshit. I hate it. I'm fine.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And I guess convince them, my dad and my aunts or whatever, like, I don't need to do this. I'm OK. And they believed me. And then they like never sent me back to anything like that or worried about me again. I don't know how anybody was like convinced by a 13 year old saying that she's fine when this happens. But I think nobody else was fine in my family.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
So everybody was just kind of picking up the pieces.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I mean, I don't think I was the bully. Is that what bullies say?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Come on in, guys. Stephanie from Second. No, I wasn't a bully. I've had the same friends since then, since before then. And they're still my closest friends now. I always think that's a great sign. And my dad was like that, too. And my mom. That was a big thing in our family without it being like a lesson that was explicitly taught. Like, you just keep your friends.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
But yeah, nobody like fucked with me. I guess I was tough. I was angry, but I thought it was that was a toughness thing.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And I tried to be funny. And it was just like this. Oh, I remember when I was 13, like the height of humor was the retort, your mom. Yeah. So I just remember like say something and somebody would say, your mom. And just like immediately the look on their face like, oh, God, I said, oh, God. And so I would just go to like trying to make everybody else feel less uncomfortable.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And I lived in that way of being for a really long time. And now I don't care if people are uncomfortable, which feels like a win. But I didn't have that as a kid at all.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
It's horrible. And I'm sure that it's been an impediment to professional things for me, but I don't care. Why?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
We're going to Instagram it right now. I don't I don't know how to do it. I feel like a dinosaur for not doing it. I was like right on the cusp. Now, anybody younger than me, I think like it's mandatory. They tried to tell me it was mandatory to to be on this stuff. And I just fought it and really was like this whole social media thing is really going to blow over.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
This internet, I don't think it's going to stick around. And now I do sometimes think like, oh, I probably should be playing that game a little bit more, but I just can't do it. I hate it. It's embarrassing. The amount of times you have to like divorce your feelings about your friend who you know and love in person and then their social media persona.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Then some people like, I just can't, I like can't reconcile those two things anymore. And it's like an illness. It's weird. The narcissism. It's made everything fucking worse. Like, let's be real. It's made everything worse. I'm hoping because our kids are the same age, I think.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Yeah. I think I'm praying that it like isn't as omnipresent for that. But I don't know. I don't I really don't know. I see it. I'm staying with some friends now. I've known their daughter her whole life. She's amazing. She's 13. She goes to private school in Los Angeles. And it's like it is a fight to not give this girl a phone and access.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Yeah, because your kids are the age like this is the beta testing generation on this stuff. And now we see like, oh, it's bad. But as a parent, like I get why it's difficult. I get why you don't want to be the one being like, hey, you're You're going to be the one kid who doesn't have this, and that's going to make you weird and an outsider. But it's so bad. It's so bad.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And I guess that's kind of like the main takeaway is people aren't paying attention to you that much. So anybody, people are paying attention to you all the time. No, no, I am.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
The reality is like people assume you're working. They assume you're busy. Nobody needs to know about like those fallow periods. And the reason why people are even thinking about it is because you feel the need to just like chime in with your opinions every single day or like what set you're on every day. I just don't. Yeah, it's a real disconnect for me. Like what?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Why do we all have to like log our fucking opinions about everything all the time? Like it's our job. And you see, you know, like on message boards or whatever. Sometimes I'll look at the at the Daily Mail. Oh, God, the Daily Mail is so, so bleak. And the comments like it doesn't even matter. You know exactly what people are going to say.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Like they're going to judge this person on her appearance or her decision or something she did 10 years ago. And it's it's like these people think that it's now part of it's their job now to sit down and like do their part of this equation, which is like. log in their opinion about what a piece of shit this person is. And I just think like, who are these people?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I know we always think like, okay, they're in their mother's basements or whatever, but they're probably not. They're probably like living out in the world. And yet they take time out of every day to like sit down and let you know how they feel about Britney Spears is dancing. Like who, what, why are you weighing in on this?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I mean, I actually, I realize I'm sort of like talking in circles right now. I feel like I have fairly insightful things to say about this. Not today. But I do think like, how can you not connect these dots that like the lack of community, like people's quality of life just being shittier. Everybody's isolated.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
People are fully okay living in this kind of like alternate reality where it's your opinions and the more fiery your opinions are, the more people pay attention. But like, it's just create, look at where we are. The world is like, look at where we are. It's Trump. What the fuck? Like, does Trump exist without any of this stuff? Like, I don't, I don't think so.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And beyond that, we're just, people are sad. Kids are sad. Everybody feels isolated. And there's no I think we're in a weird position, too, because, yes, it is fully incorporated into our lives. We're young enough that like we had phones from a young enough age that it's like woven into the fabric of our beings. But we had childhoods that weren't.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And now they don't have that. I don't know what that looks like in the future, other than more like really lazy Gen Z people who don't know what a good a hard day's work looks like. Which I find myself saying all the time. You just sprouted a bonnet. I know. I am like so. Tom, my husband, really makes fun of me a lot because I am like a dinosaur about this.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And look, I get left behind in this scenario. Like, I don't think the Internet's going to stop because it's making us sad.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
But that's hard to do, like for your job. That's really hard to do. I mean, talk show hosts are usually very mean and you're very nice.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
We need to figure out how to fix this. I know. I know. They're like the greatest balm of all time and also...
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Sweet Prosex. But yeah, it's amazing. Even if you're in a bad mood, like a normal bad mood, and you go in and see your kids, unless you want to have them, when they're talking to their therapist or writing their memoir later, be like, mother was sad all the time.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
We're not those people. My best friend lives in Altadena. I'm so sorry. That's like unbelievable. And watching her, she has a six year old and their house did not burn down, but they're totally displaced and they have to live in the back house of a friend from schools. And like it's actually turning out to be kind of a great situation for now.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
But what if she didn't have this little girl to like get to school and not be a husk of a human? Like, I don't I don't know. Yeah. I realize now because I mean, I had my kid kind of late, like how much time you just spend like wallowing your own shit and then you don't get to do that anymore. And that like rips you out of it. It's a it's a wonderful thing. Is this the funniest episode?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Agreed. I think you I think you have to. And it is like absorbing the because I'm from L.A. I just moved like we sold our house in December and gave the keys to the new owners on January 24th. So like right after the fires and you're supposed to come back and pack up the house that we've lived in for 11 years and say goodbye to the house and have all these people. Where are you moving to?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
New York, baby. All right. All right. Yeah. Yeah, that just happened. And, like, take Alfie to Disneyland and do all this shit, and we couldn't come back because of the fires. And being in New York and watching it, I have, this is my hometown, but I've, like, talked so much shit about L.A. and what it means and how it's changed and how it's gotten worse.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I'm sensing a theme in my overall personality. Do you have more Prozac? No, right? I got to up it to 20 milligrams. I think it's time for another one. Also, Prozac is new and we'll recommend, really.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I mean, I'm like obviously loud and proud about it. Maybe I'll regret this part of it. No, no. But yeah, so watching it from afar was really strange. And seeing like my hometown go through this, I felt like this groundswell of love for LA, which hasn't gone away. I think this city is amazing. I think Altadena specifically is amazing. Like what they're doing. And that was like the L.A.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I didn't grow up in Altadena, but I grew up like in the Miracle Mile. And it was much more that vibe than, let's say, the Palisades vibe, which is its own unimaginable, like I don't even know, tragedy. But there's something about like the Angelenos who are from here, who aren't in the business, who just like have regular jobs, regular families, and like you're just doing it in L.A.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Like that was my upbringing. And I have so much love for this city. And it was really beautiful. It's horrible to be away because all of us like in New York who are from L.A. kind of huddled together because you'd go into, you know, when it was like actively happening or just kind of starting. And I went to get my haircut. Like, how are you doing? Well, not great. Like L.A. 's on fire. Oh, yeah.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
You know, when you're not from L.A., you don't live there. It's just like L.A. has fires. It's just like another thing that's happening somewhere else. Yeah. And when it's your home, it's crazy. And so my dad, obviously, passing away was brutal. And then I've stuck around for these couple weeks and feeling the sadness of LA has been really intense.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
But also, everyone in New York, it reminds us of 9-11. People are really coming together and building each other up. And the community, that was the main kind of complaint I had about LA. There's no community. And there so is. And I feel like an asshole for saying that.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Yeah, I wonder. I mean, I have you felt because I'm nervous about that. Just like how everybody was like showing up and flooding the GoFundMes or whatever. And like like you're saying, like everything, people move on to the next thing. Eventually, this is going to be a long recovery.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Dan Stevens. It's Gabby Hoffman. It's the craziest cast.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And I like limited series, too. I like watching them and doing them. It just feels like a very long movie. I haven't seen Zero Day. My dad died. I don't know if we mentioned that. So I haven't watched the screeners, which is bad because I do want to watch it.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I don't always hate it, but I do want to watch this one because it's fairly dense and complex and I want to be able to like talk about it. It's topical, a little like eerily topical. It's I hope people are in the mood to watch something that looks a lot like what's happening in reality, but is kind of this like horror show version of it. Very smart people made this show.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Very smart people were in this show. And I don't know, it's ensembly enough that I think I could I could watch it without like hating the experience too much. But I think it's good. I mean, I had a great time doing it. It was surreal. You oftentimes like the don't meet your heroes thing rings very, very true. It didn't on this. That's nice. De Niro's like just a nice man.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
He's like a kind, generous man. I always think so. Leslie Linka Glatter, who directed all the episodes and she did Homeland and she's she's the president of the DGA. She's like a badass, incredible woman. She's done a bunch of movies like she's she's wonderful. And she directed every episode and her vibe on set is she did one episode of Masters of Sex in the first season.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And I wanted her to, like, be our all-the-time director, but she was doing Homeland, so she didn't. She maintains this on-set energy that I don't even... Like, it's six months. It's six months to shoot this. Robert De Niro's never done a television show. I believe he didn't know what he was getting into in terms of, like, the time, like, how much time it takes and, like, the hours.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
And he was in everything. Um... But the first day of shooting on that, the crew is always in a good mood for everything on the first day. The last day, six months later, everybody was in as good of a mood. The vibes were so good.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
It was just like a job that felt important, but at the same time, right size in terms of like in your real life, like you'd go to work and you'd go home and these people didn't need to be like your best friends and you didn't need... It was just like... It felt very grown up, like adult, but also really fun.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I don't know. It was great. It was a great experience. And we honestly, like during the strike, which was the last fun thing, just taking it back to like the doldrums again, we were supposed to start this June of last year, maybe. I don't know what year it is. We were supposed to do June to December, and that was the strike. And we ended up doing January to the next June.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
So it was a full year, and everybody stayed on board. Everybody was just as excited, and we knew we got to... Which is rare, because usually that's when people say, you know...
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
It was nothing. It was. And even just having that moment of like, well, everybody else or so many other people were really stressed out about what they were going to do and work and all of this, like knowing that Netflix is probably not going to shelve the Robert De Niro series. Like it just felt.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Hi, my name is Lizzie Kaplan, and I feel... Meh, I've had better.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
like we had a safety net at a time when there wasn't a lot of safety nets and again like if it's just the experience which for me is truly the only part I like of this whole job like it was a great experience and I think it's really good and I think you should definitely watch it America.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Let's just make it the number one show on Netflix until the next thing comes out on Netflix, America.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Why do you love Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos so much? That's what you're trying to say.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
a gold coin in case anyone doesn't know what that is um i also think that even like not in the 30s like in in recent times they would typecast you and pigeonhole you and now it's like only it's very new to not have that happen like in the past 20 years maybe right people think oh you can do more than one thing right but a lot of people do find themselves like stuck in a lane and it sucks i'm stuck doing one thing because that's what i can that's not true conan
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
You're not stuck in a lane, though, because I just read that you were incredible in your Sundance movie. Okay.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
This is so surreal. I feel like we're just starting it. There should have been more jokes.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
That's really nice. Thanks, Conan. Yeah, he was a very funny man, very strange man. It's... Wild. It's wild. The whole thing. And I actually kind of wish I brought him around to more parties and more things because people had good experiences with him. But yeah, it's weird. My mom died when I was 13. So I feel as you do, but it's very fresh for you.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
Like you feel like an orphan, even though you're old and not you. You're very young. Yeah. Speaking for myself.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
I mean, I, I don't, I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around your version of it, which is like the one, two punch. But I do think there's something which you will never know, but there's something really kind about it happening that way that you didn't have to have like the five years of looking after your mom without your dad. And that would have been brutal.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Lizzy Caplan Returns
That's a good chapter that nobody really needs, but yeah. Yeah, I I just kept thinking like my so my mom died. It was awful.