Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Cristin Milioti
Mon, 02 Jun
From Default Workspace • No contributors
Cristin Milioti (The Penguin, How I Met Your Mother, The Wolf of Wall Street) is a Grammy Award-winning actor. Cristin joins the Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in the place of origin of the Jersey Devil, the great equalizer being her acceptance into the safe space of drama kids, and being on the greatest show of all time The Sopranos. Cristin and Dax talk about how theater at its best feels like a communal place of worship, the magical experience of being nominated for a Tony for Once, and how profound but intimate it was to play opposite Leo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street. Cristin explains being a true disciple of Batman before getting her role as Sofia Falcone, reflecting on a few deeply humbling moments of her career, and the immense gratitude that her trajectory has been long and steady as she approaches 40.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who is Kristen Milioti and what are her notable roles?
No, I'm like very caffeinated. You're caffeine to the hilt. I'm caffeine to the hilt. What's your sweet spot of caffeine intake where it's productive, it's helpful, and then it's destructive? Do we know the cutoff? I've yet to find it. I still, after all this time alive, haven't been able to find the line. So you do go too far sometimes.
Oh, all the time. Oh, wonderful. Yeah, I did it this morning. You did? Yeah. And what was that intake? Well, I had a canned latte from the hotel minibar. Oh, great. Because I don't live here. And then I walked to Erewhon. I'm like a moth to a flame, unfortunately, with that because we don't have anything like that in New York. And then I got a regular coffee.
I don't go there, but I did go in there one time because a friend of mine who was also sober was like, you got to go get this smoothie there. It's cocaine and it's not a relapse. I can't remember, but it was like a $21.
Beaver, probably beaver. Yeah, they're all like that. You are aware that you're being actively bamboozled, but it's a little bit like I feel when I walk in there, I'm in agreement with it. You're bamboozling me. It's a casino for health food. You're going to give me a great juice. I know you're hosing me. Yes, you're bending me over.
And I'm going to just buy it because I do want the taste right now. It reminds me of like an FAO Schwartz because I know all the sections and I get excited.
Now, back to your coffee, though, the thing I'm going to say about it is it's a little bit like taking pot brownies before everything was legalized and you knew what was in them, where it was Russian roulette. You don't really know. You're going to get the brownie with like 100 milligrams of THC or one.
Because Erewhon's like a single batch from this mountain, it could have like 6x the caffeine you're expecting.
But that's the gamble. That's the fun of it. That's the ride. I think one time we went on Postmates and went to Erewhon and was creating the most expensive smoothie we could. We didn't order it, but we just wanted to see what could you get to because there's all these add-ons you can do. And I think we got to like $43. Yeah, sounds about right.
So I'm going to say of the many people I've researched, over 800 at this point, I've never gone to the early life and not one word about the parents. Oh, really? Are you parentless? No. Oh, my God, not at all. I'm so relieved. No, no. Cherry Hill, New Jersey? Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Of course, when I think of New Jersey, I immediately go, oh, it's going to be a suburb of New York.
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Chapter 2: What does growing up in New Jersey mean to Kristen?
You'll get quoted later that this was your permanent opinion on this.
This is not necessarily how I feel in a week. I kind of like in theater, and I can't reiterate enough, when it's bad, there's nothing like it in terms of a torturous experience. And I'm someone who's also been in some awful plays. And when you are in an awful play and you can like hear the seats going up as people leave, you can just feel it. And it's just excruciating.
It's why you do it, though, because those are the stakes. You know, if it didn't have that, then when it works, it wouldn't have the elation. When theater is great, it reminds me of, I'm a very avid concert goer. I see everything. And you cry through most performances. I do cry. When you saw Joni Mitchell, you cried for three hours.
I cried for three hours. Wow. Where did I share that? Yeah, it's really emotional. And I think it reminds me of a place of worship where I can be in communion with an experience that is so individual to that one moment in time with the people who I'm seated next to and the people who are also communing things.
I wasn't raised with any organized religion, and I have wondered if that's what that at its best is supposed to offer, that there are things moving through us that are bigger than us that unite us. And I think when theater is good, my own heart and memory and life is in communion with strangers and with strangers in a dark room, like we've gone to pray or something.
I'm being so lofty, but it's good. It's cool to believe that. And I think that's maybe sometimes easier to do with a concert, especially because that music is something you listen to in private moments. That's what makes those things so gorgeous and emotional. But you're feeling it. You know, when I saw that got me, the Fleetwood Mac one, stereophonic. Beautiful. That was fucking radical.
you begin to feel like a fly on the wall. You know what? I get what you mean. Maybe I have just a, because I've been inside of them too. And I just really like theater as an art form. I am really being lofty. Stop self-policing yourself. Be who you are. You're loved and you're valued and you're at camp.
I do think the fly on the wallness is also what I like about theater. You can feel like you're in the experience with them.
Again, if it's really good, it's the difference when we do this show in person, the people in it. If somebody was a live show versus if they are watching it on YouTube or when we did Zoom interviews, that was still great. But the electricity that's happening between people, you can't feel. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How did theater influence Kristen's acceptance and confidence?
They are slippery.
So you definitely should not play vodka, okay?
Okay. And then additionally, as I said, my brother and my sister-in-law, and she's been in her slipper phase for seven or eight years.
Oh, wow. Postmenopause.
Or middle of, I don't know, probably maybe related.
Okay. Yeah.
But I, I realized like, oh, she's really knows how to do it. The second we get home, like anything post lunch, if she gets home, those slippers are on immediately.
So she packs her slippers on trips.
She is in the full center of her slipper face. And so I'm finding I'm with her at like 5.30 in the evening. She has her slippers on. I have my shoes on. And she's like, you should already have your slippers on. And I'm like, I know.
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