Rashida Jones
Appearances
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
It's stressy. It's fully stressy. Yeah. I'm not good at it. I'm not the person to ask because I always feel stressed and weird about it. Because the best case scenario is that You do it and you sell some sort of chemistry, but like it's all above board and professional. That's the best case scenario, which is like seems impossible.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
You know, it's still one of my biggest complaints. I remember we did the table read for that, and I was like, no, no. No one's going to buy it because I don't buy it, okay? Pick anybody else on this cast to try to play that in an honest way. It is so unfair that you're making me do this. It really, yeah, it still hurts. It really hurts. Because how familiar are you with Genuine? We were married.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
No, I'm kidding. I mean, you know, I live in 90s R&B. That's where my heart is. It's not here. I mean, it is with you, but for the most part, it's not present. It's in 90s R&B. So he's a very important figure. Yeah.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Thank you for saying that. What is your relationship to music? Music to me is the kind of thing you can't, there's something inherent about it that you can't explain why it has the impact that it does. You can break it down. You can talk about frequencies. You can talk about combinations of notes. You can talk about BPMs.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
But at the end of the day, the way it makes you feel is something that's just very hard to explain, you know, in a way that feels, if you don't believe in God, like the closest to an unknown that's outside of us. Like you can tap into something outside of us in a way that like, Even I love movies, but there's a visual aspect.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
So you don't like use your imagination as much when you're engaging with the thing.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I am. I am. And in fact, it's a shameful thing, but I took a lot of piano when I was little and I love playing piano, but I never really learned how to read properly because I learned so well by ear. So I play these like Chopin, Polonais, like big pieces by ear. I couldn't read it because I was like just picking it up, you know? Whoa. I know.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
It's sort of like it would be nice to have a balance of both, but, you know, it's definitely way more oral.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Isn't that funny? I was like determined as a nurse. I was like, you have to throw up. Like you can't. Right. You're going to get sick. And he's like, I'm fine. Right. And we were trying to get this like liquid in his mouth. And, you know, it's Hollywood. So things that happen like on camera don't actually happen in real life. So it was written that we like hold him down.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And he's resisting us and we give him this thing. But, like, you don't know. You don't know how small you are. Because I think both of us, like, I'm always like, I'm like a tall person, right? Like, I ask people if I feel tall. Yeah, I feel like a tall person. But I'm not. And I'm not. How tall are you? Five, three and a half. Yeah. Yeah. I'm five two. And Nick is solid. Yeah. Yeah.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
He's a solid dude. Yeah, he's like a Midwestern corn-fed dude. Yeah, dense and muscular. And we were trying to hold him down, and he was whipping us around with such ease. Like, we couldn't – we actually – both of us could not hold him down. And he was like – literally, he would just go – And we would just fly off the bed in each direction. We could not stop laughing.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Because he was being gentle. And we would fly across the room. He was being gentle. Yeah, he wasn't really, he wasn't fighting for his life. Yeah, no.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I feel like we were tumbling all over the floor. Like, every time we got back on the bed, we were, like, and we were kind of, like, in each, we were both trying to be, like, on top of him and then, like, just flipping over really quickly.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
There's that spot in Andy and April's house. Remember where we could never get a scene done? Just that one, that living room.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Yeah. And then I remember there was one time you were like, Rashida! Because I could not get through it. But I really, it felt like haunted. It did not feel like it was my fault.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
They were. They were long. And it was fun until it wasn't. You're like, oh, my God, it's 10 p.m. We just want to go home.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Like it was like a dream job. We filmed in between our conversations. Yeah. And also I think I remember very clearly in the pilot because we had already been friends for years when we shot the pilot. Yeah. They were doing one of those spy shots, and we were in your office, and we were talking. And it was like, you know, other people were like, oh, this is great.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Like, this is a thing that really works. They're friendship. We're really going to be able to sell it. And we're like, duh.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Crunchy. Crunchy. Can we talk about it? Yeah, I would love to. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was crunchy.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Yeah. So I had been on hold for this untitled thing that Greg and Mike were going to write. Right. And I had done a year on The Office, and— They let me go, which made sense. It made sense.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I love Karen. It did not feel that way. People did not like me. Like, fans were not about it. But they had to create tension for the relationship to be earned later. So I was the third point in the triangle. It's fine. I, like, accept it. But anyway, so Mike was like, we're working on this other show. I'll put you on hold. We don't know what it is yet.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Remember, people thought it was, like, a spinoff of The Office for a second. But anyway, so they kept, like, kind of changing the main characters of the show. When they pitched it to me, the boss was a guy. Okay. And they didn't know if they were going to cast me or not. But I remember you were extremely pregnant. Yeah. We had just gotten back from Italy. You and I were in Italy. Yeah.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
That's right. We were in Italy. And it was very hot. That's right. And a day later, you were like, let's go to lunch. I need to talk to you about something. Do you remember where we went? Pastis.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I know, that's impossible. And you need to accept it. What you did and how you did it was very hard because you took me to lunch and said, I'm so sorry, but they offered me the part. Both of us thinking it was the same part I was on hold for being created by a friend of ours. And so I immediately started crying in pasties.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And you held my hand and you were so warm and you were so... There was something about it where you were like... I know. I'm sorry, buddy. But you also, you didn't like do the thing that I sometimes do where I'm codependent where I'm like, I know I suck. I'm the worst person. I don't even deserve it. Like whatever I would say to try to make the other person feel better, which doesn't work.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
You didn't do that. You like held your space and you also comforted me at the same time, which was like a very beautiful thing. I wonder what Cher's version of this is. Let me tell you. Okay. Because I left him a message almost immediately because I'm not shy. And I was like, oh, I'm such an idiot for thinking I could even be on this show. Like, anybody wants me on this show?
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Of course I didn't get this. Like, Amy is like a, you know, comedy goddess. Oh, my God.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Very mean. Very mean. That's a person we're trying to not invite to the dinner party anymore. Yeah. And so I called him. I was like, hey, would love to talk to you. He was on a plane. And he landed and he's like, uh. I was like, mm-hmm, you want to tell me what's going on? Because it would have been really nice for you to tell me and not Amy to tell me that I wasn't getting this job.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And he's like, no, no, no, back up. We changed the boss. It's a woman. And Amy's playing the boss. And I was like, you... Oh, my God. Like, we might be working together? Yeah. What?
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And I still wasn't cast because I still had to do a bunch of chemistry reads after that. But that became, you know, this huge –
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
possibility of like my life being the best from the worst to the best god i'm sweating even thinking about that he wasn't they had they just hadn't decided things and they they were trying to build around you i think is what happened around that character so i think they had just done that and i think you wanted to tell me as soon as possible yeah because we were so close yeah which was the right instinct and mike decided to get on a plane which was his instinct
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Not great. Nightmare. Nightmare. Well, how do you handle that? I will say, you know, part of me was doing it because my little inner critic, that person that was at the table, is so loud and mean and unreasonable. And so I look to people who love me and can tell me that that's not always the person I should be listening to.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
So weirdly, my friends sometimes are like a stand-in for my highest self when I can't do it for myself. So I was sort of looking for that. And it's funny because I was looking for feedback about the things that kind of bring me joy and the parts of my work that my friends see light me up. The point is I was very targeted about it.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I ask people that I love and respect, and that is the thing to do, I think. I also think that if you are going to get feedback from people, because a lot of us get unsolicited feedback. Yeah. Bill Hader once said to me, it was when I first started writing and he was talking about notes because I did not understand that process. I didn't really start writing until I was like in my 30s.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And he said, you know, you should take. the note and not the solution. And that's what I feel like with feedback and people. It's like aggregate the kind of like common threads and they can be like, okay, I'm getting a kind of similar thing in this area where people seem to think I'm this thing. What does that actually mean? And where is that coming from for me?
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And is that something I feel like I can fix or investigate as opposed to being like that person has a problem with me? And then also, as we know, everybody's just thinking about themselves all the time.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Do you... I most likely go, that's a really good point. I'll address that. And then most of the time, if you don't, if you make the rest of the thing good, it doesn't matter.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And also it's a waste of energy because it's such a long process. And if you're like using all of your you know, currency to fight back with everything, you're going to be exhausted. You're not going to be able to be creative. Whereas if you go, yeah, good, great idea. Let's, we're going to figure out how to solve that, you know. But then you don't do it.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Sometimes, sometimes it doesn't make sense because the thing they're asking for isn't, is, you know, completely contradictory to the other thing they're asking for. That happens a lot. So you can't do both.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Again, it's like if somebody's having a problem with an area of the script or like a theme of the script or a character, you know something's wrong, but they're never going to know how to fix it. You have to do that.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Yeah, I'm not going to law school. But yeah, I think some part of me thinks I'm a judge. Isn't that just a testament to how much downtime you have on the set? That we created an entirely new show. Yeah. Yeah.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Well, contrary to what we just talked about, which is I love good music and I love the emotionality of listening to great music, nothing makes me laugh harder than... Really confident, really bad singing. Like sincerely confident bad singing.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Okay. I'm not laughing at them. I just like the gusto in which people – like I would watch the first couple seasons of American Idol with friends. Like appointment television sit down. Not, like, when it got to the good people, but, like, those first five episodes where people were just coming in hard with, like, no musicality whatsoever. And they were super cocky. Super cocky.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
There was one girl who... It was, like, what she did was actually musically amazing because she was tone deaf. She went to, like, six different keys in, like, 20 seconds. Like, just...
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
kind of brilliant but didn't know and nailed it and walked out being like i got it she said she was like mariah carey that's what she said that's so interesting that you say that because there must be some like psychological part of you that likes the way people are approaching yes music that's something that you revere yes so badly yes like it must be a huge release it is it it is and to that point i remember there's david wayne and i once i pitched this bit to him it did not go well when we did it at comedy at sketch fest is that what it's called yeah but
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Where I was like, let's do California... California... What was it? California Dreaming? California Dreaming. I'm like, but let's do it like super genuine, sincere... come in with a guitar, start singing, and then I'm going to come in with the harmonies and they're going to be totally wrong. It was funny in concept, but it was a release. It was like a feeling like, oh, I don't have to sound good.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Yes. How do they do that? I wonder if somebody coached them how to sing badly because there's good singers singing badly. I know. It's satisfying to watch Ariana Grande not get the note. Yes, yes. But it's not like – sometimes when really good singers sing badly, they're like – and you can tell they're good singers. They're actually doing a good job convincing people they're bad.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
That's a little bit more painful because it's in person. Okay. You know?
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And then they leave being like, nailed it. Yeah. Suck on that. People who are so confident were like, if you laughed, they wouldn't crumble. Like, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. You know what I mean?
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I'm going to send you some because I found them again. I found, like, the girl that knocked my socks off. Wait, let me just look at her before we go because we can do this now. I have a laptop. It's deep and, like, it's, like, in a super cut of, like— Do you remember her name? I don't, but it's, like— Do you remember what she sang? Yeah, she sang Phil Collins' Take a Look Against All Odds.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And she came in and she was like, people say I look just like Mariah Carey and I sound just like her, too. Is this her? No, that's not her.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
That's like acrobatic. That's very good. That's hard to do. I've tried to imitate that. It's hard to do.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
She's not hitting any notes. No, she's not hitting any keys. Or any keys. And within that, she's hitting all the keys, which is amazing. Like, it's really hard to do.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
She's so nervous. I mean, she's so nervous, you can tell. But she's like, this is not going well. She knows. She starts to figure it out. Wow, that is really satisfying. I'm going to hold on.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I think she was like, uh-oh. Yeah. Maybe too late, but she was like, uh-oh.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I was listening to, I'm really into frequencies right now. You know, there's like a lot of stuff, theories around like the frequency of sounds and how it impacts your brain and your mood. There's ones for anxiety, for sleep, for happiness, for abundance, whatever. But I was listening to one for road rage.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Yeah. And I find, I don't know about you, but I find that my tolerance for small talk has changed. Like I used to like it and feel like it was just kind of like a way to tiptoe into a conversation. And now it feels like, why bother? Let's just get into it. I know. Yeah. Let's not waste time. Life is short. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? What are you working on? Yeah, exactly.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
No, no, not your actual job, but yourself, your inner self. What are you working on?
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Oh, interesting. I was just thinking about this last night, actually. Well, first of all, I just want to say I'm very happy that you have this podcast because I'm just going to say I have been encouraging. I've wanted this from you for a very long time. Thanks, bud. Okay, sorry. I just had to say that. Thanks, Dee. Okay, Harvard, Hasty Pudding. Yeah, I mean, I went to Harvard. Yay!
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I was in the Hasty Pudding theatricals. But they didn't allow women. At the time, women couldn't perform. I was a manager. I was manager of the Woman of the Year event, which you've been. Yeah. I'm sure I have not. Thank you so much, Hasty Pudding Theatricals. What? I'm actually like the only alum. But anyway.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Anyway, and then my senior year, Mimi, my friend Mimi, who you know, we were the first women ever to write the music for the musical in the like whatever 400-year history of the show. But no one was allowed to sing it because it was written by women? I couldn't sing it. No, of course not. Wow. Yeah.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And then when I went back for class day, that was kind of like the one thing I snuck into my speech. Well, actually it was very political, but the one thing about school I snuck in was like, Make it co-ed. Let's go. I mean, enough's enough. And now it is. It is, right?
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
It's so silly, but I will say it was really fun and I learned a lot. I learned a lot about production because it's legit production. You travel to New York and Bermuda and everybody has to like chip in and work on tickets and costumes. And like, you know, we got to like, we had an arranger who arranged for like a full orchestra. It was so cool.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
And that almost took you down. Almost took me down. Or took you up. Yeah, it took me up and then way down. But then I joined an acapella group and everything was fine.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
Where did you guys meet? Freshman year. We did a play together called Love, Sex, and the IRS where we were – the play started with us making out. Wow. Lucky him. Thank you.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
I mean, he did it while we were making out. It was so awkward. I mean, that's the thing is you just audition for shows, especially in college, and you're just like who you get is who you get. Like the fact that we met freshman year is nuts.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Rashida Jones
It's so weird. But also, comedy make-out is so different than serious hook-up. You're so right. You know? You're right.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
I think it was that. I think you just read so much when you're auditioning. And even if you're not getting jobs, you just see the kind of landscape of what people are writing. And obviously there was good stuff. But I was kind of inspired by that moment in time that like the peak Judd Apatow where like all those dudes were just like... just writing themselves, you know?
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
And I thought I could at least do that, right? Even if it's not as good or as funny, I could find some audience. And I also had this feeling that like, nobody would ever cast me as a certain kind of thing. And if I'm gonna get that part, I probably have to write it for myself.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Anyway, that was hard. I wasn't saying that about, no, I'm not saying that about, but you know what I mean? Like I saw the entire spectrum and I thought there's somewhere I can land. And of course I had lofty dreams because I grew up on Jim Brooks and Nora Ephron. And those were the kinds of movies I wanted to be in and I wanted to write. So-
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
And I think having them holding each other's hands through the process, like we literally sat side-by-side and wrote our first script together, and I feel like that... How did that relationship start?
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
I did a movie in the 90s, indie movie with Mary, and I was obsessed with her. She was like the coolest, funniest person I'd ever met. She was like, you should go out with my brother. You guys are soulmates. And she's not wrong. It didn't work out. We did date for three weeks. It didn't work out. But he kind of is my, like, work soulmate, you know? We still work together, so.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
We started writing... Oh, it's so weird. No, we started writing a show in New York. I mean, we were just drunk. It's not even worth mentioning. Um... The only thing we completed was Celeste and Jesse Forever. It was the first movie that we wrote in its entirety and went out with.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Well, we kind of, yeah. It kind of was that a little bit of it. It was like an amalgam of the first kind of love that we had, our own separate loves, plus our dynamic as like a kind of somewhere in the middle of romantic and best friend-ship relationship.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Which is what the name is based on. And so like you'd get to school and you'd have, everybody would pick their headshots, you know.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Hard copy. Digital, we had ethernet my senior year. There was no internet.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Somewhere under that beard, you do look great. Just a lot of beard. But I see it. That's a hell of a backhanded compliment.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
I love it so much and I kind of like sing for fun. I've written for fun and I've sung backup on some albums and things like that. Really? Yeah, I sang backup on the first two Maroon 5s. No way.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
I can write. My reading is limited, but my dad's a musical genius. That's like the last thing I want to do is try my hand at that. But I love it. I have a deep ache for music, and I just don't ever feel like I'm good enough to do it. I'll never be good enough to do it.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Like he had it. There was a doc series on BBC. There was a documentary about him in the 80s. And I was with Jane Rosenthal. You know Jane?
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
you have to make a documentary about your dad and i was like oh i do i do don't i i didn't want to but she was right because the truth is he's so well documented he's so accomplished right that it's almost impossible to spend any time storytelling about who he is as a person to cover so much ground with just what he's like like contributed to the world and culture i wanted to do something that felt like it captured his personality because nothing ever has
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
and so that was kind of the goal and then al hicks who i love by the way have you if you've never seen he made a documentary called keep on keeping on which is about clark terry who's my dad who's my dad's mentor oh wow player and his last mentee who was who's this incredible jazz pianist he's blind justin coughlin it's like about their relationship it's like if you're ready to cry
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Keep on keeping on. So Hicks, he directed that. We met on my first day of filming in Montreux in Switzerland at the Jazz Festival. I had like a 5D camera. I was like trying to figure out what to do, how to do it. And we met that day and then I asked him to co-direct with me.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Yeah. Yeah. It felt, it felt intimate and too intimate. In fact, cause there's a whole scene where, I mean, he almost died while we were filming and we stopped filming. And luckily my brother was like filming a bunch of stuff in the hospital, like show my dad. Cause he was, went into diabetic coma and you know, uh,
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Luckily, the conclusion of the story was such that we could put it in and felt like the real triumph through that because my dad is a beast and he has cheated death many times. 91, still crushing it.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
No, I heard you guys talking about that. And we actually did. We watched it recently too. We watched all three. And great films. Great films. I don't know if anybody knows, but really great films. And three, great film. I don't know. I think we watched the edited version, but I watched it because I hadn't seen it since I know Sophia so well. And just seeing baby Sophia in that movie.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
You know what's crazy about Three, you guys? Yeah. It's about first cousins in love. I know. I just started watching it. And that's not the central conflict of the movie.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
We had met, we had met, I was in an act, I was like an out-of-work actor in an acting class in New York. And she came to the class to workshop Lost in Translation. What? And so I played the like main part for... a month with her.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
So I work with my acting coach, Greta, works a lot with Frances and Sophia. And they do like dream work around, you know, character, character dream work. And so she kind of came to explore and enrich like the characters in the film. And so I was like assigned to the lead part, to the Scarlett Johansson part.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
And then, you know, I had to do like dream assignments and come in and like, you know, embarrass myself by acting out my dreams. But it was really very cool. Like I got to play that part and work with Sophia for like a month. I was like 27 or something, 26, 27. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Also shot in Japan. I didn't get the part, but that's fine. Yeah. Didn't even audition.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
I mean, obviously, I would have done anything for her. But we stayed friends over the years. And then I shot, we did... She directed a Calvin Klein underwear commercial that I was in. And then she did this Bill Murray Christmas special for Netflix. And we had a little scene in that. And she was like, there's like something happening here. Like, this is like a good dynamic.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
And I think she got the idea sort of from that scene we had together. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
We have—when we were doing that workshop, Sophia was trying to cast him, and she had a dedicated assistant who sat outside our rehearsals with a phone waiting for him to call back all day, every day.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Yes, that was originally when I met her and we were working on that. She had not cast him. She was still courting him. And, you know, he's like a Loch Ness Monster.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
But he really is like, he did a guest spot. I had a show called Angie Tribeca.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
And he did a guest spot and he called me and I booked his ticket. He was like, oh yeah, I want to leave at nine. Oh, no way. On Wednesday. I was like, okay. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
He's pretty great. I mean, he is extremely charismatic. You know, he's like... And he's also, what I didn't really know, I'd worked with him a couple times before, but doing a whole movie with him, like, he's so... He's so good. He's so good. I'm not saying anything you don't know, but he's such a good actor and he's so present and he still works hard as an actor. You know, he's not checked out.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
He could be checked out because he's like, just his talent is... is you know undeniable but he's like he works hard he had like a lot of big meaty monologues in that movie where he would talk about like biology evolutionary biology and the nature of men and women and like it was a lot he had to he had to run down some serious theories and he was like fully committed
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Yeah, me too. And it was, yeah, I was on Parks and, you know, they have really kind of cool development where every, you know, they're development people, they're casting people, they watch indie films. Like that's how they get their ideas, you know? Like I had had some friends who'd written indie movies who'd written there. And we went and screened Celeste and Jesse forever.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
And then we got a call to meet on a project, all very, very under wraps, you know, like they have to keep everything really. And we went and met and we got the job. And so I went to, sure. And I was like, listen, I love you. I love the show. I want to be here, but I got a job here. It's at Pixar. I have to move to the Bay Area, but I need your blessing. And he was like, he's the greatest.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
He's the best boss ever because he let everybody do everything they wanted to do while we were doing that show. Chris Pratt, they filmed in London so Pratt could do the first Marvel movie he did. He just wanted everybody to be the best version of themselves. So he was like, yeah, of course, you have to go.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
It's collaborative. It's iterative. You're rewriting a script every three weeks. It is not a WGA job. I'll just say that, you know, like you're, and you're working with the story artists and they're sort of writing within their, the way that they, you know, draw changes the story. And then you have to like change the script to fit the sequences they've.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
No, no, no, no, no. There's no raw stories. There's no raw story. I just remember like seeing you around and like you were cute. All my friends liked you. I just feel like there's so much crossover. 80s, Valley.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Or 11. Yeah, right. But I feel like there was like, I'm trying to think of the 80s parties, 80s clubs.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
My mom was an actress, yeah. Was an actress for- Encouraging there? The great Peggy Lipton. Yeah. Yes, the great Peggy Lipton. Yeah, she was encouraging. I was like, my rebellion was like, I'm not doing this Hollywood bull. I'm not doing entertainment. You've been surrounded by it, and you're right.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Yeah, I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be taken seriously. I wanted to be legitimate.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
I wanted to litigate. Like, I wanted to be like, you know, Spencer Tracy in Hair at the Wind. You know, like I wanted to like argue the case in court.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
environmental law or criminal law or... I probably would want to have been like, yeah, like I would have been like a DA or something, you know?
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
That, no. I don't know. I'm in a real like maybe you guys can tell me because you're a tiny bit older than me. I'm having that moment right now where I'm like – I don't know anything. I don't know anything.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
There is something at this moment, there's something sort of like regenerative, and I'm sure it's coming for you, Will. Like right now you're sort of like resetting, which is incredibly scary. But most people I talk to who are 50, just turned 50, have this thing where they're like, who am I? There's like this full rebirth. Who do I want to be for the next 50 years if we're lucky?
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
What does my back half look like? What's actually fulfilling? What does my ego want? Do I need to fulfill my ego? Do I need to fulfill a deeper soul purpose? Like so much is coming up.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
But good for you for doing that work because you could just like slide by and you could probably be okay and live in denial for the rest of your life. And the fact that you're going deep right now means you're going to rebuild and be like the best version of yourself.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
And also that's all that stuff that you thought for your entire life was going to fill the gap. You're like, wait, it doesn't quite fill that gap. There's still a little piece missing. And what is that piece? And we're privileged enough to have succeeded in a way. But I think for everybody, they're like, wait a second, it's just going to be this forever? Like all the firsts are gone.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
But to your point, Jason, I think everybody here, including me, I want to not to be overly earnest, but I want to be able to create from a real source, from a feeling of connection. So I'm taking a little breath to figure out what that actually is and what that looks like and what I want to say. You know, I don't know. I'm not going to, I don't want to just put shit out.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Well, like the thing I always go back to is my dad says, make decisions based on love and not fear, which sounds so platitudinal, but it's really not. Like when you think about it, well, like, you know what you were just saying, like I have often looked... at my life and thought, let me just do this thing that I know is the kind of safe way to do it.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Or let me do this thing that's gonna make people love me. And because I'm afraid of not being loved as opposed to like really, really loving something and believing in something and not caring.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
I think looking at it, acknowledging it, and then I would say my greatest gift is like just continuing to develop my inner life. Like something that is not connected to anybody else, creating almost like a little... house inside, whether it's meditation or breath, whatever it is, nature.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
And I don't listen to your show, so I didn't know it was a surprise. I'm really glad I didn't say anything. Okay.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
He has a radio show, not a podcast, a radio show. Oh. But also a musician.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
I love you. I love you. What am I doing today? This, I'm doing this. I'm, I don't, what am I doing today? I'm like prepping for the summer.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
No, just like packing. Tanning booth. Tanning booth, of course. Where are you going? Just a lot of, well, I'm doing some press for the show. Oh, yeah. That Will mentioned, Sonny. I didn't write it. I'm in it. I'm in it. But I produced it.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
It's the best. I had been there like three or four times for a couple weeks, but I was there for six months.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Yeah, you can, but even getting lost is fun there. It doesn't really matter. There's no bad version of it. But yes, I was like dialed in because I had like the most amazing PA and like people who really knew the cities. And so like I just went to the best, coolest restaurants, gardens, temples, onsen.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
Yeah, I always wanted to be a writer, but I didn't feel like I was good enough or anointed to be that kind of person. I think probably because I went to school with a lot of people who ended up writing for television. Harvard. Did you really go to Harvard? And they were all in the lampoon, and they were funny, and the guys who were going to get the jobs and stuff.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
So I never felt like that, so I didn't feel worthy pursuing that. And then a strike happened.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
We met freshman year. Wow. We did a play together freshman year called Love, Sex, and the IRS.
SmartLess
"Rashida Jones"
We wrote a paper together in college, by the way. How stupid is that? We convinced our teacher that we should write a paper together.