The Jordan Harbinger Show
1146: Ed Helms | Fame, Family, and Finding Joy in Failure
Tue, 29 Apr 2025
Ed Helms dishes on fame's hidden costs, his Office-Hangover filming marathon, and why historic blunders might be humanity's most reassuring legacy.Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1146What We Discuss with Ed Helms:At 17, Ed Helms knew exactly what he wanted: to be an actor/producer for TV and film. This rare clarity gave him a massive head start, though he now recognizes success wasn't just hard work but also luck, privilege, and opportunity — a constellation of factors for which he's deeply grateful.Ed says the strangest part of fame is that friends claim "you've changed" when they're actually projecting their own discomfort. Fame also strips away your ability to control public spaces — no more escaping the awkward stranger at baggage claim.At his career peak, Ed filmed The Office Monday-Tuesday, then The Hangover Wednesday-Sunday — chartering flights from Vegas for 6 a.m. Office call times. He even removed his actual dental implant for The Hangover's missing tooth scenes while shooting Office episodes with a flipper tooth.Young Ed naively thought he'd balance being a traveling dad with non-stop film work. But reality hit hard, and now he declines projects that would separate him from family — even hypothetical Spielberg films. His former ADHD-fueled hyper-focus has given way to prioritizing presence.Ed's book chronicles humanity's epic blunders — from dropped nukes to CIA cat-spies — revealing our enduring resilience. These absurd mishaps offer perspective: we've always faced ridiculous challenges and somehow survived. Next time anxiety strikes, remember we've been falling on our faces — and getting back up — throughout history!And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/dealsSign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What are the hidden costs of fame?
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You can find the course at 6minutenetworking.com. All right, now back to Ed Helms. The hangover takes off, right? I assume you get scripts for other comedies, but do you get like, here's a serious role and your agent's like, hey man, do you want to be more like a serious actor in this one? Like Bradley Cooper, right? It's like, you got Limitless, that's not a comedy.
Do you get those and go, do I stick with comedy or go serious in this one? And how do you make those decisions? It's got to be hard. I wasn't getting like the serious offers. I'm surprised. I thought everybody would come after you for everything or your agent just threw those in the trash maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Let's be realistic.
It's not entirely true. I definitely had some stuff across my desk that was maybe a little more serious or dramatic, but I was just very focused on comedy, probably to a fault for a while. I just was like, this is what I've always wanted to do. And I just want to be in these big, funny scenes. crazy movies. And looking back, honestly, I wish I had expanded my repertoire a little more earlier on.
I've changed things up a little bit. Even at that time, I was doing movies like Jeff Who Lives at Home, which was a Duplass Brothers movie that's funny, but very real and a little bit dark. And then Cedar Rapids is another one that Again, it's a comedy, but it's dramatic. But I didn't go, like, full drama. That's something I wish I had done earlier on. I'm curious why.
It's not like it didn't work out for you. Because I think it would have opened up more possibilities over time. Now I'm definitely more open to those kinds of roles. And I just did one that's, like, super dark. And I'm excited about it. And it was fun. I'm just... enjoying variety of challenges now, I'll still always love comedy.
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Chapter 2: How did Ed Helms balance family and fame?
Yeah.
Creed for Creed, Andy and Zach. Like it was pretty great. Sound guys. Can you tell them we're trying to work over here? This was like out in our trailers and stuff. But the other thing I'll tell you is the Christmas episode. I think people have talked about this a lot. The Christmas episode where Steve is dressed as Santa Claus and Kevin's sitting at his lap. And Steve is like suffering.
And the way that he's performing that it has all of us laughing so hard. And I'm in the background of a shot and I'm almost positive it's in the show where I keep ducking behind a plant because I'm laughing so hard. And there are so many instances where I just couldn't look at them because they were being so funny.
Even if you're off camera, if you're talking, you're in a dialogue with someone, you can't break and laugh at them because then you'll ruin their take.
Sure, sure.
So I had developed this practice where when I had scenes with Steve, a lot of the time I would look at his chin or his ear because I couldn't look into those eyes. They would destroy me and just make me laugh too hard. But this Christmas episode... I definitely am like, I think I'm over in the corner with Mindy and she's skirting around and we're both trying to hide.
Yeah. It had to be a fun set to be on. In The Hangover, I heard that tooth really came out or comes out. How was that possible? I guess it's probably common and I just don't know that.
Yeah. It's not that crazy of a story. I was born without that tooth. So I had the baby tooth, but when it fell out, there was no adult tooth. So I had a flipper, a retainer with a fake tooth on it.
You meant like a little arm that waves around. That's freaking weird.
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Chapter 3: What lessons can we learn from humanity's blunders?
It's one of many of the sort of like beautifully creative things that you just never know about movies.
Yeah. Otherwise, you end up with that Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones where they're like, that's not supposed to be like that. Exactly.
But yeah, one of those production cars of the Mercedes, and I think it was one of the ones that was a little beat up, got stolen. And the production is freaking out.
Yeah.
What are we going to do? We still have to shoot this thing. And they put like an APB out on it and they catch the guy who stole the car. And there was like crack in the front seat and all this stuff. And he presumably just wanted to probably sell it for drug money or something. I don't know. But so the good news is we got the car. The bad news is it's lightly dusted with crack.
However, the bad news is we got to clean it. It's going to be a while. The second bit of good news is it was already supposed to look like the beater. So once we get the crack out of it and the used needles, it's back in action. We'd have to worry about the dents. When you guys get like a new script for it, let's say the hangover of the office.
Are you as excited almost as the fans to see what happens next with your character? Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah.
Yeah, every office table read, I was so giddy. It was like going to a movie you're excited for every time. And then also those table reads, the production days are long and they're hard. And the table read was like this fun little party. Like we get in the middle of the day. It was once a week, so it would be like on a Tuesday or something at 10 a.m.,
It's also one of the rare moments when the entire production team and cast and writers are in the same space.
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