Famous People with Taffy Brodesser-Akner

• Prologue
• First Encounters with Famous People
• Understanding Fame as a Distortion
• Working with Famous Collaborators
• Depicting Celebrities On Screen
• Listener Questions on Cold Outreach
• One Cool Thing
• Bonus Segment

Prologue

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Famous people, they’re just like us, or are they? As screenwriters, we sometimes need to interact with celebrities, from movie stars to iconic directors. How do we go from star-struck to star-collaborating, and why is it that when we depict celebrities in movies and television, we often get it so wrong?

Today on the show, we have a returning guest who is uniquely qualified to answer these questions. Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a journalist who has profiled countless celebrities. She’s also the novelist and series creator of Fleishman is in Trouble and Long Island Compromise. Welcome back to Scriptnotes, Taffy.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner: It’s so great to be here. Thank you for having me.

John: We are here in person randomly in New York City. I’m here. I wanted to reach out for coffee. It’s like, “Well, I want to talk with you, but our conversation, we should have microphones.”

Taffy: Why would we let a conversation go unrecorded? What a waste of time.

John: It absolutely is a waste of time. This will not be a waste of time because I want to talk to you about famous people, dealing with famous people. From your New York Times profile page, it says, “I’m interested in the intersection of celebrity, circumstance, and personality, how fame changes people and the energetic fields around them.”

Taffy: Oh, my God, that’s what I’m interested in.

John: That’s what you’re interested in.

Taffy: I was correct.

John: You were correct.

Taffy: That is factually accurate.

John: Do you remember writing that sentence?

Taffy: I do because we had to write them recently. We were asked to do extensive bios that told the reader a little more about us and reassured the reader that we are all within the ethical confines of The New York Times, and we don’t take free stuff, and we believe in standards, which I guess you have to write down now.

John: And that you’re also human beings, which will tie into the bonus segment because in the bonus segment, I’d love to talk about Tilly Norwood because one of the most recent profiles you wrote was of this virtual actor, this fake person, well, this digital creation. Also, really, you wrote more about her creator and your own reaction to trying to interview this thing.

Taffy: Right. I did.

John: The spoiler is she’s just a computer.

Taffy: That’s the spoiler. Though, one is reminded always that The New York Times reader is everybody. The number of engineers who had to explain that she is not a computer was wonderful. It was wonderful for me.

John: Yes, fact checkers, “Technically she’s not a computer, she’s running on a computer.”

Taffy: Yes. To always remember who The New York Times reader is, I have a piece of newspaper from The New York Times kids section that was sent to me, copy edited by somebody. I have nothing to do with The New York Times. I have no idea how many other people received it. There were no typos. There were matters of opinion. Copy edits. I like to keep that in mind as I’m filing a story that “Anyone can read this.”

John: Absolutely. The nice thing about a podcast is, other than Meredith, there’s really no editorial department involved here. She will get letters, emails in about the things we talk about, maybe from some of the publicists or the people we discussed today, but it doesn’t really matter.

Taffy: Right. Meredith, would you do the right thing and not pass those on to anyone?

Meredith: Of course, whatever you want.

Taffy: Great. Great news.

First Encounters with Famous People

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John: All right. Let’s talk about famous people. Let’s go back to the first famous person you met. Can you think about who it was that you met, and was like this is a person who you knew was famous at the time you met them?

Taffy: The first time I ever saw a famous person was my 13th birthday. I was brought to the city by my father to see a Broadway show. We went to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe. This is a really interesting aspect to this. We went to Saks Fifth Avenue. My father just wanted to walk through. There was Rick Moranis trying on a sweater. My father understood he was Rick Moranis while he had the sweater over his head. He said, “That’s Rick Moranis.” I said, “Dad, that’s a man with a sweater on his head.” It was Rick Moranis.

John: Yes. He was correct.

Taffy: We said hello.

John: Let’s talk about that hello. It was like, “Hello, you’re Rick Moranis”? You have to explain why you know who he is?

Taffy: No, because of Spaceballs.

John: My father said to him, “See, it is you.” Rick Moranis said, “Hello.” Really, that’s what it was. We moved on. My father told me a story that when he was at UCLA, briefly, he worked, I think maybe the Cologne section, when he was at UCLA, of maybe Saks Fifth Avenue. If there’s a Saks Fifth Avenue there, whatever a big department store on Wilshire is. The management understood that he was able to recognize famous people who were incognito. They moved him up to Watches so that he could call up management.

John: Incredible.

Taffy: I have inherited this gift. I could be listening to a pharmaceutical commercial, and I will know, even by voice, the guy who was in an episode of Law & Order, who was also on Otherworld in–

John: Taffy, this is you and me. You and me both share this weird gene.

Taffy: You can do this?

John: I can do this, too. That guy was a minor character on Melrose Place in the fourth season.

Taffy: He had a three-episode arc where he played an anti-semite on Beverly Hills 90210. I could do it.

John: We could have been casting directors. That’s a great split for that.

Taffy: Right. Or we could have been stalkers.

John: We could have been stalkers.

Taffy: We could have been fan club people. We could have gone down a lot of weird roads. Instead, we did this.

John: Instead, we did worthless things like write books and movies.

Taffy: Right. It’s also because the reason we know that is because we were obsessed with culture. I have always been very interested. I can’t mark the moment, but I’ve always been interested in the life journey of the actor. Not where he started and not where he ended, but why we elected him, in this sort of last real democracy we have, what he represents to us and how it changes with every project he takes or doesn’t take or every scandal or hotel room he messes up or whatever it is, that everyone is in this story that actually the famous person wants nothing to do with. They want you to look at just their art, but they’re so recognizable. I’ve always been really interested in that.

When I started writing profiles, I was writing culture essays, and I was writing women’s magazine health stories, but I lived in Los Angeles. I had a very close friendship with an editor at Playboy. We would go to Kate Mantilini once a month, and I would tell him who he should do for a Playboy interview. One day I mentioned Krysten Ritter. He said, “She wouldn’t be a Playboy interview, but we have a 20 Questions. Why don’t you do it?” That was the start of my profiling career. Because there were so few journalists who did this in Los Angeles and weren’t on staff at The Hollywood Reporter or Variety, I became someone who did that. I did it for a million places. First Playboy and then GQ and The New York Times Magazine. That’s how it went for me.

John: I’m thinking back to my understanding of celebrity. The first famous person I know I met was Sorrell Booke, who played “Boss” Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard. The context was at an auto show in Denver, Colorado, that my brother and my dad went to. I was six or something, and I’m brought along to it. I didn’t care about cars, but there’s “Boss” Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard. He was signing autographs, but he was also like a Santa Claus. You would go up and sit on his lap. There’s a photo of me sitting on “Boss” Hogg’s lap.

Taffy: Wow. Different times. [chuckles]

John: It’s so strange. “You’re a person on television who I’m now meeting in real life.” I was a little kid, so I didn’t know how to interact that way. I feel like most people don’t really know how to interact with a famous person. Most people are doing the Rick Moranis with a sweater.

Taffy: The thing my dad said.

John: Yes. It was just like, “Oh, you’re you.” It’s like, “Well, of course they’re them.” Do you get recognized in public at all?

Taffy: I get recognized rarely. Only in New York. Weirdly, through the period where I was making Fleishman, I would get recognized when I was with the famous people from the show. I came to believe that it was easier for people who couldn’t stop themselves from walking up to them to walk up to me instead. This is what I think. The way people come to famous people is by telling them who they know who knows you. Just as a sort of like, “I’m a real FBI. I’m not a weirdo. My daughter babysat for some–” Meaning something that might as well be– It’s really interesting. They must recognize you a lot.

John: They recognize me by voice more often, but sometimes in Los Angeles, back when the Arclight was still in existence, I would get recognized at the Arclight a lot, which is like it’s a film play. It’s like that’s going to happen. At the Grove, sometimes it’ll happen. Randomly at Trader Joe’s, as I’m checking out, if I say something, it will happen.

There was one time I was at a restaurant having breakfast with our [unintelligible 00:09:39], the woman who was carrying my daughter. Somebody came up and said, “Oh, I’m a big fan,” or whatever, and left. That happens sometimes. Then this other woman who was in the restaurant was like, “Are you somebody important?”

Taffy: [chuckles]

John: [unintelligible 00:09:55] say important or famous, but it was just delightful. It’s like, “The answer’s no. I’m not in a general sense.” Something I’d like to talk about is, what do we even mean by famous? Because there’s globally famous. There’s the Will Smiths of the world. Then there’s niche famous, specialized famous. You were famous in the context of Fleishman is in Trouble, so they recognized you from that thing.

Taffy: Also, it’s like a New York Times– The New York Times people are characters in this world. I did not realize how recognizable I was until, I think it was January, I wrote a story about a nervous breakdown I had where I started going to this Broadway show called Operation Mincemeat over and over. I wrote a story called Why on Earth Have I Seen the Same Broadway Show 13 Times? An Investigation. In the weeks following that, people would shout across platforms to me, “Should I see it?” Someone would stop me on the street and ask me to help. I always felt like I looked like every other single person of my demographic in this city. I sort of still think I do, but it sort of makes you wonder. I don’t know.

Wait, your question was levels of famous. New York characters are their own thing. I think people just like to know that the world is organized. Sometimes, I’m in Madison Square Garden, I’m on the subway, and I think, “How are there still so many people I don’t know?” I know so many people. It would be so reassuring to me– I have this feeling that if you look hard enough at people, you will eventually realize how you know them, which is also a very Jewish summer camp thing.

John: It’s also six degrees of separation, in that sense of everyone does sort of know everybody. That thing of, “Oh, somebody I know knows you,” is a thing that still kicks in for me at said times. I went to a show last night, and Billy Eichner was there. I don’t know Billy Eichner, but I know people who know Billy Eichner. I could have introduced myself saying, “Oh, we both know blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’re both friends–” I didn’t because you sort of don’t, and that’s kind of also the rules. In a public place like that, I wouldn’t do it. At a party, I would do it. It’s all contextual based on what the vibe is. I wouldn’t want to break his little bubble of sort of anonymity. Of course, it’s theater, so you’re next to each other.

Taffy: You’re next to each other. I’ll tell you my Billy Eichner, which was that he DM’d me after he read Long Island Compromise. I saw him at an airport lounge and said, “I’m Taffy.” He was very nice. He was excited to talk to me because he had reached out to me. I feel the same way.

A few weeks ago, I was at the theater. I also am sensitive to outing people about where they are, but I saw Zach Woods at the theater. I wanted to say to him, “You will never remember me, but on my first GQ interview, I was sent to interview all those guys at a photo shoot. You were so nice to me, and I was so nervous.” I do think that every time I see him. I thought, “Why does he need to know that about me?” That’s the question I always ask. “What will we get out of this? I’ll feel a little ashamed, and he’ll feel a little uncomfortable.” I don’t know. Zach Woods, if you remember, you were really nice to me.

Understanding Fame as a Distortion

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John: Let’s talk about some different lenses to think about celebrity before we get into how you work with them. We’ll approach the conversation with basically, “There’s a famous person out there in the world, and do you talk to them?” At some point, as writers, hopefully, we’re making things. We actually have to deal with people who are much more famous than us. Let’s talk about fame.

One of my theses is that fame is a condition, but it’s not a trait. By that, I mean that a trait, like a person is narcissistic, kind, or generous. That’s a thing that’s true in all circumstances. Fame is just a condition that is applied to a person. It’s not an inherent thing about who they are as a person independently. If you put them on a desert island, they’re no longer famous.

Taffy: Because no one else is there.

John: No one else is there. It’s only whether they’re known by other people. As an example, Ryan Reynolds has been a friend for years. He and I went to Africa. We went on safari in Africa. We went to Malawi, which was really great, with a meaningful experience. In the US, he was pretty famous by that point, to the degree that if we were at a place, we’d think, “Oh, you sit with your back to the door so people don’t just see you coming in.” That’s a very common thing for recognizable people. In Africa, no one knew who he was. He was just this guy. It is a condition; it is not a trait. Does that resonate?

Taffy: I don’t agree. I think that the reason that these people, having talked to dozens of them about fame, when I’m interviewing them, I speak to them mostly about what fame has done to them. The thing I infer is that they have a trait, the same trait that made it so that everyone is told that being an actor, for example, is so unlikely you’ll ever be successful. It’s not narcissism; it is a refusal to believe that and to understand a destiny you have, which does not mean that everybody has the same reaction to it. It does seem like the people who are famous on the level of performance, at least, have something in them that when you are in a restaurant, you turn around because the energy comes at you. That’s what I think.

John: Can we distinguish between: Would they have that charisma if they hadn’t had that success?

Taffy: Yes, the charisma was aimed, and the success picked it up. That’s just what I think.

John: There was an actor who came in to audition for me for a role. He was completely wrong for the role. I remember saying afterwards, “You’re not right for this, but you are an absolute star. You actually have a quality.” I do agree that there’s a quality, but is that fame or is that just about magnetism? They’re distorting reality, but is it because they were born with that or is it because of the things that happened to them? Are they Spider-Man who got bitten by the radioactive spider, or were they Wonder Woman who was made of sand and magic?

Taffy: I think they are Spider-Man but went seeking– Like, you only look for that spider if you’re interested. Most people should not want that life.

I will tell you, I went to the theater with Josh Radner. I have his permission to tell this. I went to the theater with Josh Radner a few weeks ago. You cannot believe what it is like to try to get through Times Square with Josh Radner. Two generations of people who watched nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother, and the way he accepts it. Jesse Eisenberg, too, when I walk anywhere with him, they understand, I guess; maybe they’re so successful that they understand the bargain that they made. I can’t say what it is about those people that made them famous, but I think there are a lot of actors and then there are actors who become famous.

I think the thing you have in you, and maybe it’s not something you were actually born with, but something that happened long before you thought of acting, maybe it was a trauma you had as a child, and that’s what steered you, I don’t know, maybe it’s something you’re trying to prove, a way you feel unexpressed, and you become hell-bent on being able to express yourself to the largest audience. I think that way about successful writers: that there’s an audience. There are numbers that we require and that we are not happy until they’re met.

John: Some of the people we’re talking about are successful because of things that they have done, but sometimes there’s people who are famous just because of a thing that happened to them. Mostly, you’ve been profiling the people who are successful through their own work. Athletes, or– can you think of any examples of folks you’ve met who were accidentally famous?

Taffy: Tonya Harding.

John: Okay, sure.

Taffy: Tonya Harding and I spent some time together around the premiere of I, Tonya. She wanted none of it. She did not have the affect of someone who she was not. Then again, remember that by the time I interview these people, I am their 300th interview. They’re wary of me. They’re trained. They know that things come, they have an awareness of what they say, that someone like Tonya did not.

John: I would love to talk about when people agree to sit down with you must have a sense that they have a plan going into it.

Taffy: Yes.

John: How quickly are you able to see the plan? Do they articulate the plan? It’s got to be this weird dance back and forth between you in terms of what you would like to pull out and what they would like to reveal. It’s a performance.

Taffy: This is my theory: everybody has something by the time they’re very famous that they feel misunderstood about. If you don’t ask them questions and if you make your body very quiet and you let them talk, eventually they realize that you are going to listen and that this might be the moment. I don’t even know if it happens on a conscious level, that they can let you know what it is that’s been bothering them. They begin to talk. The way they tell their story is designed so that you get this one point out of it, the thing that is bothering them.

Everybody in a story has a goal. I wrote this profile of Gwyneth Paltrow. People thought, “Oh my God, she must have hated that.” She really liked it. It was because in that profile, her goal was not for me to not make fun of wellness. Her goal was to be taken seriously as the CEO of a company as opposed to an actress dilettante who’s the face of a business. I did do that. I did take her seriously, and that was all she cared about. They can’t really see the other stuff, I don’t think.

The reaction to the story, I try to use my access to get that thing, which they can’t give another way. You can’t give it on the couch of a late-night show because you’re telling an adorable story and you’re trying to be winning.

John: Yes, it has to be enjoyable and digestible, yes.

Taffy: Yes. This is like, “We are in it for two hours. The thing you don’t know is I’m going to get another two hours.” They always come in, and they say something like, “I’m not going to talk about my personal life.” I always say the same thing back. I say, “Let me quote my favorite movie, Indecent Proposal. Nothing will happen that you didn’t want to happen.” I just listen. Then people can’t help but tell you their story, and you know everything about them. It’s not even manipulative. There are things on the cutting room floor that didn’t apply to the story, but everyone who’s famous enough feels defensive. They’ve seen talk of themselves on the internet. They’ve seen stories that completely misunderstood them. They’ve seen journalists trying to make a name for themselves by taking shots at them.

Can I tell you the weirdest thing about interviewing famous people that never gets old?

John: Please.

Taffy: The people I interview are so famous. You have so much interaction, by the time you interview them—I wonder if this is true for you when you meet someone very famous for the first time, if there’s still any left for you to meet—that you’re sitting across from Tom Hanks and he’s talking and you forget that you’re supposed to respond because you are so used to Tom Hanks being on a screen and him not being an interactive character. Isn’t that crazy?

John: It is wild.

Taffy: I never get over it.

John: I’ve gotten better at it over time, of course.

Taffy: Sure. I mean, I’m a professional. I don’t just sit there.

John: It’s also different. If you’re going in there to interview somebody, there’s an agenda there, and there’s some rules, spoken or unspoken, around this situation. A lot of times, if I’m meeting a person or if any writer is meeting a famous person, a big director, an actor, you’re feeling each other out to see whether this collaboration is going to work. You’re trying to show your cards to some degree and really hear what they’re trying to do next, what they need to know, and feel it out.

Most of the reason certain screenwriters get paid good money for weekly work is because we can stand to be in that room and make people feel comfortable. It’s like, “Well, hopefully, we’re good writers. Mostly we can just withstand this kind of pressure and this kind of situation.”

I do get—it’s not even star-struck—but it’s star-aware. It’s recognizing that this person got to this place because of their talent on screen, but also probably talent off-screen that gets them there. I was in a meeting with an actor or a producer about a project. I watched and marveled as she was able to take this recalcitrant director on this journey to get to all the points that she wanted to cover. It was just masterful. I ended up emailing her afterwards like, “I’ve never seen anyone be able to do that just in terms of–”

Taffy: Was she able to do that, or did the director just know that they needed the star? Like, “Whatever you want.” It is so hard to get anything made, and you’re allowed to call the shots when you have that kind of power.

John: Well, I think what you’re gesturing at is that everyone was putting on a performance. Everyone was aware of what everybody else in that room needed, and everyone was doing the thing to perform the ritual for us to do the thing to get to the next step. It’s fascinating to see when that happens, particularly when it’s not clear where the power lies in the room. Generally, I always advise a writer is that: “In any room, there’s going to be one person who’s actually the decision maker, and so most of your attention should be focused on that person, but you do also have to spread it around because there’s other people who can veto or do other nasty things if you’re not giving them enough love and attention.” It’s like this, but celebrity and fame are one aspect of their power, and the smart people know how to use that.

Taffy: They do.

John: Let’s talk about how fame is a distortion field. Sometimes you meet with actors or directors, and they are perfectly sane, but the situation around them is so crazy. They’re not being told the truth; they’re being managed constantly. That’s a cliché we get to a little too often, I think, in depictions of celebrity, but they have opinions that are not being heard clearly. A lot of conversations are being had about them rather than to them, with them.

Taffy: You feel that that is they feel distorted?

John: Yes.

Taffy: That they feel like there is no– I agree with that. I think that I’ve seen it happen that you “yes people,” but then again, they’re complicit in it. They have stopped asking questions. I think that the weirdest thing that seems to happen from where I’m sitting is that agents, their representatives, stop telling them the truth, either because they’re afraid of being fired or because they’re afraid of giving them bad news, or they’re afraid of saying, like, “Watch out for this person, they’re not– There’s something strange there that I feel like I have more honesty from my representatives than some people that I’ve seen interact with theirs.”

When you’re in a deal with someone who is far more famous than you, meaning a deal is being made for a project, it’s harder to have an honest conversation because everyone’s being honest. I don’t chase fame, but maybe one day I could be famous enough for people to stop telling me the truth about

John: [laughs]

Taffy: -what people are saying behind my back, that you’re just not that good or whatever it is they’re saying. That would be nice.

John: I wonder sometimes with publicists whether they are trying to protect their clients from the world or trying to protect the world from their clients.

Taffy: Publicists to me, especially actor publicists, they have a general bad reputation, but I couldn’t do my job without them, without their honesty, without– The good ones know how to interact with somebody like me. Maybe they’re playing me too, but sometimes something happens, or something happens where I say, “I didn’t get enough time, and he was weird. I think you would prefer that we had a second meeting,” or “Maybe give him something else that I wrote so that he could see that I’m not a–” The publicist is usually helpful with that.

John: Why does anyone agree to talk to Isaac Totner?

Taffy: I don’t know why anybody agrees to talk to anyone who asks direct questions, though I think podcasting is the real threat to that form of– also, Isaac is very fair. Kendall Roy about to go on Ziwe, right?

John: Yes.

Taffy: Everybody thinks that they are the hero of the story and that if only everybody understood them.

John: Yes, exactly.

Taffy: I think Isaac is a great interviewer and very fair. I think that any of the people I know who ask direct questions are the bravest and most courageous people. Mostly you have to do that if you’re doing a Q&A or if you’re doing a podcast, but I do think that podcasts are this existential threat to real celebrity journalism because they are safe places to go and you’re not edited and you are speaking on your terms and the questions are very friendly. The threat is not, “You’ll choose that instead of this.” The threat is that you got as much publicity for it and that the clip went around more than maybe a magazine clip would go around.

John: Whereas classically, a star would agree to sit down with a big interview with you or with GQ or whatever as publicity for a thing where it makes more sense. They feel like they have a little more control if they’re just in a podcast situation.

Taffy: I spent three days on a tour bus through Alabama with Billy Bob Thornton once. I cannot imagine even suggesting that right now. Things change.

Working with Famous Collaborators

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John: All right, let’s try to get some practical advice for writers who are meeting with a famous director, meeting with a famous actor. This is bringing to mind: I was working on Charlie’s Angels, and Steven Spielberg had read Big Fish and wanted to talk to me about directing Big Fish. I was so excited, but it’s Steven Spielberg. I have to sit down across from Steven Spielberg and take his notes on a thing. There’s some dangerous things to avoid. I was able to avoid those. There’s being falsely deferential, where you’re just like bowing at their feet–

Taffy: They don’t want that.

John: They don’t want that. They don’t want that at all. You also can’t pretend that you don’t know that they’re Steven Spielberg, that you know they’re famous, because that’s false, too. Everything is performance, but just trying not to go too far in any direction.

Taffy: What if it isn’t performance? What if you, saying, “Listen, one of us is Steven Spielberg”? I find that, actually, weirdly—this is not a move—but saying the name of the person, presenting their own name to them, is your acknowledgement that is who– Right?

John: Yes.

Taffy: That, “We understand what’s going on here. I’m a professional.”

John: Acknowledging realities is probably the crucial first step, which is that I can say honestly, I’m so excited and so thrilled and a little dumbfounded that this is happening. I’m so excited to be working on this. I’m not going to be incoherent going forward. I can actually listen to what you want to tell me.

Taffy: Are you someone who goes in and says one sentence on what this person meant to you?

John: Generally, no. Although if there’s a recent thing they’ve done that I saw that I really liked, I will absolutely say that, or a performance I loved in something.

Taffy: I don’t do that either. You know what else I don’t do? I don’t say “big fan” because it seems like everyone says big fan. Big fan also, I know now from experience, that someone through the agency will say, “Oh, he’s a big fan of yours.” Then I’ll think, “Oh, why hasn’t he read this short document where the words don’t even reach the margins? Why hasn’t he read that of mine? He’s such a fan.” I think people just say “big fan” in Hollywood. It is the way of saying hello. “Shalom. Big fan.”

John: Fame and power are related, fame and wealth are related, but they’re not quite the same things. They’re people who are powerful, people who are wealthy, who are decision-makers. You absolutely need to be mindful of it and try to impress, but they’re not famous. You have to understand that somebody’s fame does change the picture around things a little bit. Certain aspects of their life are more difficult. Certain aspects are easier. They can get into any restaurant they want to without a reservation, but they can’t just walk down the street easily. Certain things are harder for them.

I’m trying to think of examples. They can go see a show in a theater, but it’s a bit more of a hassle, and they have to wait until the last minute to do a thing. They’re often not seeing movies in theaters when they can be released.

We had David E. Kelly on the show recently. I was going to mention to him, and I didn’t end up mentioning to him, that I sat next to him and Michelle Pfeiffer for a screening of The Madness of King George when I was in the Stark program a zillion years ago in St. Monica. Of course, I remember that because she’s Michelle Pfeiffer, but as an asymmetry to things and recognizing that your experience of daily life is just a little bit different because things get warped by fame.

Taffy: I think the exact right level of fame is that you could get into Odeon on a Saturday night when you thought of it Saturday afternoon, but no one will know you’re there once you’re there. Because again, from making Fleishman, from retaining those friendships, from going to Joe Allen on a Saturday night, it doesn’t look good and it doesn’t look fun.

John: You mentioned Joe Allen. For listeners who don’t know, Joe Allen is a famous bar and restaurant, I guess.

Taffy: It’s a restaurant.

John: Restaurant.

Taffy: 60 years.

John: 60 years in the Theater District. It’s hard to get a reservation, but you go there, and famous people are there and famous people are–

Taffy: People come after the theater, and the people who are on stage are there after the theater.

John: Absolutely. It feels like a commissary for famous New York folks.

Taffy: And people just in from Duluth.

John: I’ve had some lovely drinks and meals with famous folks there, but weirdly, they were friends of friends, so if I were to bump into them now, I’m not sure I would even mention that we’d sort of hung out because again, there’s that asymmetry. I remember that I had french fries with that actress, but she probably doesn’t remember who I am. That’s also the reality of things.

Taffy: It is the reality of things. It’s a little hard to be friends with famous people. Very famous people are protective of their image. I think that some people who do celebrity profiling, the truth is you’re so dazzled by these people that they’re overtures for friendship which are constant and which are there because they are trying to survive this. You’re like, “If we have a future friendship, will you be nice to me during this?” I always say that writing a celebrity profile, there should be those gun laws where you have to wait three days before you actually write it so you could remember who you actually work for because it is so dazzling,-

John: Yes, absolutely.

Taffy: -but it’s never even.

John: Well, it’s a false intimacy because they’re revealing so much about–

Taffy: Yes. Also, “Of course, you want to be friends with me. I showed up wherever you told me to. I knew everything about you, and I just let you talk.” I always say that if my friends and family could see me during an interview, they would never speak to me again. If they saw how thoughtful and quiet I can be, they would never speak to me again.

John: [laughs]

Taffy: I think that in terms of real friendships, I believe I have real friendships with the Fleishman cast. You have to make sure you’re fine with where you’re bringing them, that they’re not a sitting duck for being interrupted all the time. It’s hard. It is hard because you’ll always remember the thing more than–

Also, I don’t know if this happens to you, but based on texts and emails, because everything is read by everything, my algorithms, my TV thinks Jesse Eisenberg is the only movie star in the whole world.

John: Oh, of course. Yes.

Taffy: It’s really interesting to me. It’s interesting to me what it’s like for them in the world, but I think I’m prepared for it because of this other work that I do.

John: Jesse Eisenberg came on Scriptnotes, and he was delightful. He and I just had a really lovely conversation.

Taffy: He’s the greatest.

John: We emailed back and forth as he sent through his files, but it was a question of, “Is he a friend, colleague?” Not a friend, but, “Would I invite him to a thing? Would I invite him to the Big Fish reading?” I considered, “Should I invite him to the Big Fish reading?” Those are decisions you’re still constantly making. You never really know with a person what to do next.

Also, that’s true for normal friendships as well, but through the lens of people trying to make things: “Is this a potential collaborator or just a guy I had a podcast with?” The experience of making a series, making a movie, is that it’s incredibly intense for a short period of time, and then everyone moves on to the next thing. You still have this bright image of what this is, and they’ve made 10 other things since then.

Taffy: Fleishman was the last thing I made, and I remember on the last day of shooting, I can’t remember which of them it was. Maybe it was Claire Danes who said to me, “I’m not sure you understand what’s going to happen next,”-

John: [chuckles]

Taffy: -which is this, “It’s not going to slowly go away. It’s going to fully disappear.” You know, ah. [chuckles]

Depicting Celebrities On Screen

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John: Let’s talk about portrayals of famous people in movies and television, because it’s surprising to me how wrong we tend to get it, and the shorthand we have, but it’s not necessarily true. It’s as unrealistic as the writer pulling the paper out of the typewriter and crumpling it and throwing it in the trash can. That doesn’t actually happen.

Taffy: I would never.

John: You would never?

Taffy: A sentence I wrote– Never.

John: Precious.

Taffy: I would put it on the side and say, “You’re for later. I will use you sometime.”

John: Stock scenes that we’re used to with celebrities. The lonely star in the hotel room. Are there lonely stars in hotel rooms? Sure, but I don’t think I need to see that scene again.

Taffy: I wonder if they’re so happy to be alone for a minute that I don’t think I need to see it again. I also don’t know that it’s an accurate thing.

John: It is absolutely true that, like professional athletes, actors are away from home and they’re often in temporary sort of third spaces. That’s a true thing, but I feel like I’ve seen that scene too many times.

Taffy: I’ve seen that scene too many times. What I haven’t seen enough is the scene where the actor and the actor’s assistant– I’m so interested in that, this dynamic where you’re together so often that you’re friends. How often is it occurring to the star in the scene, who’s playing the star, that one person has to be cheerful and say yes, and the other does not? It’s a good one.

John: Another stock scene, the meltdown in the trailer, the throwing of stuff, the complete crisis in the trailer. Has it happened? Oh, yes, it’s happened.

Taffy: Yes.

John: Also, it feels a little familiar to me.

Taffy: It feels familiar, and it doesn’t feel like it happens that often. I think actors love to be working. I don’t know where the meltdown comes from. I think the meltdown very often is something else is going on, but not– the stock scene is the director coming to the trailer door and trying to get them to come out.

John: Yes. While that is true and while there’s generally some person on set, often a producer whose function is the whisperer who can mend those kinds of things and does this social glue, it’s just not that interesting to me. I think we can do better than that.

I get tired also seeing the scene where the famous person goes on the talk show and has the revelation. Because while I think it’s true that sometimes people don’t know what they’re going to say when they start saying it, or it comes out, I think it’s more likely to happen sitting down and talking to Taffy Brodesser-Akner than it is on Jimmy Kimmel or something else.

Taffy: I think it happens not anytime that is cinematically appropriate to capture. Remember also, and I’m obsessed with this on talk shows, that nobody ever zones out.

John: Yes.

Taffy: Revelation is a moment of zoning out. You would zone out if you had a revelation.

John: That’s true.

Taffy: That’s what I think.

John: Yes, that’s true. Examples of movies with famous people in them or movies about famous people: Notting Hill. Julia Roberts is an actress. She’s not Julia Roberts, but she’s–

Taffy: She’s sort of it.

John: She’s sort of Julia Roberts. Jay Kelly, George Clooney, is sort of George Clooney. They end up shooting clips of George Clooney, his movies in it. It didn’t work for me, I think partly because of that. I wasn’t clear what the rules of the world of his celebrity were.

There were familiar tropes in terms of the manager who is trying to overprotect him and is infantilizing his client, but it wasn’t clear. When the people recognize him on the train, it didn’t connect with me. It was surprising because George Clooney knows what it’s like being George Clooney, and yet the movie didn’t seem to know what being George Clooney would feel like.

It’s always one of those tough things when you’re just trying to establish how famous a person is within the world or what their career was before they got here. What does the character think their situation is, and what does the rest of the world think their situation is?

A movie that I liked more in terms of how it was doing was Marriage Story because Scarlett Johansson’s character is like she’s becoming a star over the course of it because she’s not really quite there, and most of her celebrity isn’t driving it.

It’s really about competing ambitions and two people who are both having career moments, and it’s ripping them different ways. An example of an actor playing an actor that was brilliant was Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value.

Taffy: It was so good.

John: So good.

Taffy: She was exactly that actor who was that actor.

John: It was cast exactly right, but you could see the intelligence of that actress in that role who’s trying to win over this director and trying to get the performance that he needs, but that won’t embarrass her, that will actually make sense, and she’s recognizing that he’s making the wrong choices.

The fact that she’s famous is important for how it’s established, but it’s really about the work when she’s in Norway shooting her scenes. Yes, so good.

Taffy: I love this game. Wait, why am I only blanking? You’ve prepared.

John: I’ve prepared.

Taffy: Why am I blanking on– I also love the category of famous people playing themselves, though for some reason I’m right now thinking of Nicolas Cage. Not in where he plays himself but in Adaptation where it’s own on every screenwriter that he’s ever shot.

John: Valerie Cherish as a character who’s struggling with– she both wants to be seen and wants to be invisible. She wants to be liked desperately. She wants to do work, and she does actually value the work, but she also values the fame. What makes it so uncomfortable to watch is how desperate she is to be seen the way she wants to be seen, and the comedy is that she cannot be.

Taffy: Also, especially what the last season distills is that she just wants to work. It asks a subterranean question that I don’t know that it gets enough credit for of: “How do I have to be outside of my work in order to keep getting work? Is it hurting me to do an endorsement? Is it hurting me to not be at this protest against AI?” I have a lot of compassion for the person who has to also be on when they’re at home.

John: What I think I admire most about the show is that it’s completely sympathetic to her. It’s recognizing her flaws, and it still embraces her despite her neediness, her narcissism.

Taffy: Especially that last season. The first was very brutal on her, but also what I admire about that show, it didn’t stop being what it was, but it adjusted for our cultural tastes that we can no longer handle that kind of brutality because we just see it in the world too much. We don’t want to see cruelty anymore.

John: Yes, you don’t want to see. He was punching down. It felt like hitting while she was down. Some other takeaways from this conversation: access is not intimacy. You’re getting all this information; you’re getting this chance to sit across from this person, but don’t mistake that for something that it’s not.

Taffy: Don’t mistake it for something that it’s not. Also, do not think that just because they agreed to be there, that you have the right to ask the thing that you know both of you, like the game of chicken, of like, are you going to ask about my recent breakup? Are you going to ask about this time I was arrested?

I think the interview goes best when the rules of polite conversation are in place, that you agree that you’re on this field together, where you’re allowed to ask questions, but not ones that are indecent. I think I started out that way because I was a coward, but I think I ended up there.

I’m now much braver; I’m older; I’m not afraid of anybody. I know the rewards of a story that everyone reads and likes, but I think the two things I would say is: you have to be decent because it’ll get you a better interview.

Also, now that everything lives forever online, you have to be okay with publishing something that, if you’re going to be mean, you will exist forever as mean. You will try to move on with your life. You might grow and change. I don’t want to look back and say I was brutal.

John: One other thing I would say is, be aware of the infrastructure around the famous person. Their assistant, their publicist, their team, those people are there for a reason. There’s a Chesterton’s fence thing. You might wonder, “Oh–” You can ignore that there’s no purpose for that. There is a purpose for it.

Taffy: What’s a Chesterton’s?

John: Chesterton’s fence is this idea that if you find a fence out in the woods, and it’s like, “Oh, we should take down this fence.” Well, that fence was there for some reason, and so you need to actually understand why that fence is there. Now that I’ve said it, you’ll find that it’s certainly useful.

Taffy: Who’s Chesterton? Where did it start?

John: We can look up on Wikipedia who Chesterton was, but it’s a useful framework for, like, just assume– Here’s a great example: DOGE goes through and cuts all the funding for the screwworm thing. It’s like, “Well, we don’t need it. There are no screwworms, so we should just take it down.”

The reason there are no screwworms is because we’ve been spending tens of millions of dollars each year just to stop them. It’s basically never assume you can just take a thing away. There’s a reason why it’s there.

Taffy: The corollary is the reason they need a publicist. The reason they need the assistant, the agent.

Listener Questions on Cold Outreach

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John: Yes. Their life is structured in a way for a reason. They’re probably not a captive to it. It’s probably allowing them to be who they are. Let’s try to answer our listener question here. We have a question about approaching somebody who you have an email address for. Meredith, help us out.

Meredith: Andrew writes, “There is an indie production company I’m a big fan of. I’ve seen probably 90% of what they’ve produced, and they’ve had TV shows and movies aired on American TV networks and streaming services. I think they would be great for something I’ve written. On their website, the head of production’s email address is available. It appears to be one of the only ways to contact them.

My understanding is that the head of production would be a major decision-maker in what they produce. Does it make sense to approach the head of production? How would you suggest approaching them compared to other decision-makers you’ve talked about in the past?”

John: All right. Andrew has one way into this place, and he sees an email address. Can he email that person?

Taffy: The email address is public. It’s public, yes. I thought this question was going to be like-

John: Let’s discuss this public thing and then also talk about if it wasn’t public.

Taffy: Yes. I think that you can because people want to be contacted if you put their email, right? I think that everybody is in the business of trying to find good stuff, and it’s a mistake young people make to think that the best people to work with aren’t always looking.

John: Let’s do a couple different scenarios here. Let’s say Andrew’s at a party, and he meets an executive there socially, and they don’t talk work at all, but now he knows maybe from the invite list he has the email address. Ethical, smart choice, is he demonstrating agency, or is he being an idiot to reach out to him?

Taffy: That I think won’t yield a good result. With every email like that you send, you have to prepare for the spiral of shame that would come with it. Hollywood is a crazy place. You could always get to people through their representatives, though I don’t know. I think the bigger you are, the more a representative doesn’t dare get something to you that might upset– What’s your answer to this?

John: I get a bit of the ick to reach out to somebody who had a context that was not related to the thing, and yet I think back to some of the Scriptnotes guests. We had the woman who wrote K-Pop Demon Hunters on.

They emailed 30 people a day for weeks in order to get somebody to read their thing, and it worked. They understood that it would have a 5% hit rate, and they were fine with that, and they didn’t feel the shame spiral. I aspire to that.

Taffy: I think the shame comes from having the social interaction first, and then leveraging it. I don’t have shame in emailing people whose emails address, like, what are you going to do? If you have no connections, if you have no-

John: Well, let’s talk about the shame spiral. When you were promoting Long Island Compromise, you sent out an email, which I ended up cribbing from, which is saying, like, “Dear friends, colleagues, and people who I daringly BCC-ed,” talking about Long Island Compromise and the tour and the things that were going to be happening. I loved it. For Scriptnotes, I drafted a version of that for–

Taffy: Sure, I saw. I received it.

John: Yes. That also felt good and felt right. Tell me about your thinking about it.

Taffy: I’m not asking anybody to show up for me individually. I am letting them know about my book. I am doing a hustle that an artist has to do. Am I asking them to appear on stage with me to promote one of those? That is a territory that I am afraid of overstepping. Also, you have been the recipient of these questions, right? How do you feel when you get them?

John: When it’s handled gracefully, like your email was, I’m just delighted for it. If it’s not coming routinely, then I’m great with it. There are times where things will come into Drew. He’s like, “I’m going to forward this to you, but I don’t know if you’re going to like it.”

It’s like, “Oh, I would totally do that. That’s fine. That’s five minutes of my day. I’m glad to know about this.” It’s the people who do it constantly that becomes the worry and the fear.

Taffy: When they’re doing it constantly, is it because they have a project? You can only write so many. If I did it constantly to you when I wrote books, that would still be three emails a decade, right?

John: Indeed. It’s different. If you were pestering about each episode of Fleishman Is in Trouble as it came out, that would feel like too much. It’s this weird balance. I think so often we’re inclined to under-communicate because we’re afraid of the shame as people won’t post on Instagram or Stories for what the thing is.

Then in real life, I see people posting these things over and over again. I don’t care. I’m happy for them. I see what they’re doing. They’re pushing their stuff and there’s nothing wrong with that. I think people in general could afford to be a little less concerned about how they think someone’s going to react to what they say.

Taffy: I’m not worried about people reacting to my posting or anything like that. Sometimes you just write, the next month it’s going to be book promotion. Mute me now if you’re not interested. It is more that I don’t like to say, “I have met this person who has a power differential, which is why I’m asking them a favor.”

I don’t want to know that they received it and what I placed in their lap is something that made them feel so awkward they couldn’t even answer. Then I worry, am I going to see them again? I am an incredibly awkward– I am so afraid of social interaction in that way that I’m so afraid of overstaying a welcome, of inviting myself. That is one of my weird wounds. I don’t know why.

John: For the Writers Guild negotiating committee that I was co-chairing this last time, I had to cold email and reach out to people who I knew and do very specific things. It was awkward for a time, but also I felt like–

Taffy: It’s righteous work.

John: That’s right. It was righteous work. I felt like I needed to do this day and this thing has to happen.

Taffy: Yes. Was it writers?

John: It was writers, yes.

Taffy: Yes, you’re welcome for negotiating your healthcare for you. I don’t know, that seems fair to me. It’s more like I have a cabaret, and it’s in the middle of the night on the 35th of November and I know that’s a holiday weekend. I feel like-

John: Yes, but if I can imagine the person would actually enjoy the thing or that this is a thing they would actually dig, I’d feel better about it. In the case of Long Island Compromise, they’re going to enjoy the book. They’re people who are in your orbit. They’re probably going to like the book also. It feels like if we got the Scriptnotes book.

Taffy: Hear that, listener?

John: Hear that, listener?

Taffy: Now in paperback.

John: Now in paperback.

[laughter]

John: With the Scriptnotes book, we could reach out to the folks who were featured in it and stuff like that. It felt natural to do that. At times, I don’t know, that’s going to be a bit of an ache. I think what you’re hitting on, though, is the power differential is the thing that makes it feel weird at times.

Taffy: Do you know any influencers, people who are professional influencers?

John: I know a guy who has a big TikTok, Instagram thing, who does basically videos that is just that and will do paid promotions for that stuff.

Taffy: Those people have such a good language for commerce. Their showing up is their gift or their price or their whatever. It feels like the thing you and I are talking about is so generational. I remember I interviewed Jonathan Franzen once.

I was saying, I really like Twitter. He couldn’t really understand. He said, “I hope one day you have enough. You don’t need that.” That’s what he was saying, implying that it was about promotion. I said, “No, I enjoy. I have two children at home.” My social media, Twitter at its height, was the funnest place to be.

John: Yes, it was fun for a while.

Taffy: Then I understood that he was not allowed to participate in it because by the time the internet came along, he was too powerful for it. He was too powerful to hang.

John: Yes, absolutely. In some ways, that’s Elon Musk. It’s like he wanted to be able to hang and no one wanted to hang with him, so he had to buy the whole thing.

Taffy: I know. It’s quite a thing. It’s quite a thing.

John: Do you have a list of– you would love to interview your white whales? The same way we always want to have certain writers on the podcast. Who would you love to–

Taffy: I would have loved to have done– I interviewed her once briefly for a story about Weight Watchers, but I feel like if I die without interviewing Oprah Winfrey, will it have been for nothing?

John: Honestly, it’s a loss for both of you because she needs a Taffy interview.

Taffy: Let me see that, Oprah. Who else would I have loved to interview? I had been pursuing Doug Emhoff for an interview about his work on antisemitism. Then when Kamala was made the candidate, they said yes. He never gave me the interview.

They said yes. I traveled with him. I didn’t interact with him. It was the strangest thing that I’ve ever done. I don’t know if he was what I would call a white whale. Gwyneth Paltrow was my white whale. He was so long that afterward, I was like, “I don’t know what– I’m in the wilderness now. Are there any famous people left?”

John: You wept because there were no lions left to conquer?

Taffy: There were no lions left to conquer. If you have any ideas, [crosstalk]–

John: Oprah’s a pretty– That’s pretty good.

Taffy: Oprah’s a good one.

One Cool Thing

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John: Oprah’s a good one. All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. I warned you in advance, my One Cool Thing is embarrassing for New Yorkers. My One Cool Thing is Central Park. There’s so many things I love about New York City. I think I still love Central Park the most, which is crazy. It’s just amazing.

Whatever season you go, you just wander through it, and it’s giant. It just keeps going on forever. There’s the sequence you can learn about how every lamppost actually shows what cross street you’re at and stuff like that. It’s just this remarkable, free thing in the middle of the city. I know people will come to New York City and go to Times Square and all these gross places. Go to Central Park.

A couple of different things I’d recommend. One day, walk the perimeter of Central Park and you’ll just realize, oh my God, this just goes on forever. Just how much the neighborhoods change street by street is great. It’s not a killer walk. Run in Central Park if you’re at all inclined to run.

Taffy: If someone’s chasing you.

John: Instead of chasing you, for sure. Go visit the little small things that no one sees. Just wander in any direction. It’s great. You have the map on your phone; you won’t get lost. Any excuse we have to take a route that goes through Central Park versus going on streets, we will absolutely do.

I think it’s great. Other cities, of course, have amazing parks. Paris has great parks. LA has much– Griffith Park is much bigger, but it’s not usable in the same way that Central Park is. It’s not right there. You generally have to get in your car and go to Griffith Park to do a thing.

Taffy: It’s not a thing you traverse through to get to somewhere else.

John: No. Absolutely.

Taffy: Or Central Park. I want to push back on your strange shame about loving Central Park. I want to say that, actually, I’ve lived here most of my life. As time goes on, I cannot believe someone hasn’t built on Central Park. It’s amazing and new that nobody has built on Central Park. Central Park is just for everybody. The way everyone is dressed as everything, just everything about it is perfect. You could get lost in The Ramble; you’re like in a fairy tale.

There’s a castle there. There’s a Shakespeare. In a couple of weeks, I’m going to see Romeo and Juliet in Central Park, which is something that in LA you don’t have because people don’t become feral when the weather is nice, the way they appreciate it here.

John: Even in the middle of winter, there are times when we’re doing Big Fish, and I would have Sundays off, and I would just get a muffin and wander through Central Park, listen to a podcast or listen to some music. It’s just great, and it’s just right there.

It may just be obvious to New Yorkers that, well, of course, there’s Central Park, but I can’t imagine if I ever were to live in New York City, I’d want to live close to the park where I could just wander there easily because it’s just great.

Taffy: A lot of us choose to live, whereas so many people move to Brooklyn. A lot of us still, there’s nothing. I like Prospect Park. I’m from Brooklyn, but-

John: I like Prospect Park too, but it’s-

Taffy: It’s fine.

John: -Central Park is huge.

Taffy: It is not magnificent. It’s great, and Central Park is magnificent, and where it’s situated, and the fact that it remains. Don’t forget the reservoir

underground in Marathon Man. Don’t forget the tunnels in the movie, whose name I’m forgetting, about the kidnapping in the ‘70s. Central Park is a story that I love. This is a great– Mine is New York related, too.

John: Please.

Taffy: If we were to pretend that there wasn’t a Knicks parade going on right now-

John: There’s a Knicks parade happening, yes.

Taffy: The New York Knicks. First of all, I will caveat this by saying it is really interesting that New York, which calls itself the greatest city in the world, also everyone is an underdog all the time. The New York Knicks really were our underdog.

To watch as this team came together a few years ago, and to watch them have this goal, and to watch how much it meant to the city, to watch how much the city needed this huge win that would become symbolic of things are miserable, but there is joy.

On my 21st birthday, I was at NYU. The Yankees won the World Series for the first time in a bunch of years. I went out into the street because I was going to my 21st birthday party. It was like being in a Broadway musical. People would pick you up and dance you around and sing to you. It was amazing.

That’s what it was like this past Saturday night. I can’t believe how lucky I was. I can’t believe how in love with these men I am. I can’t believe how much I know about them. I cannot believe how much I think about what their interactions are.

Do they hang out? Do they PlayStation? What are they thinking right now? The media tour that happened afterward, the ski goggles for the champagne, the fathers– it had everything. That’s my One Cool Thing. It’s everyone’s cool thing this week.

John: I love these moments of joy.

Taffy: I speak for everyone.

John: Absolutely.

Taffy: It feels like it’s something we could grasp. What if we could change the national mood with these things that we didn’t see coming? We think it’s going to come from infrastructure. We think it’s going to come from government. What if mood isn’t a thing that can be litigated by that sort of action, but by this?

John: Love it. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Meredith Stedman and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our intern is Lauren Loesberg. Outro this week is by Timothy Lenko. To get an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today.

You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram @ScriptnotesPodcast.

We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find us at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with links to things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a Premium subscriber. Thank you to all our Premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. We have new gear. We have two Premium subscribers right here as we speak.

You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Tilly Norwood and other AI actors and such. Taffy, where should people look for you? Obviously, The New York Times. Any place else they should look for you?

Taffy: I no longer can figure out how to interact with social media. If you need me, my New York Times email is on that website.

John: Wow, okay. They can reach out to you?

Taffy: Yes.

John: Do you actually read those emails or just–?

[music]

Taffy: I read every single– because in case you got something wrong. You have an obligation to make sure if there’s a correction. Inane or otherwise, you have to make sure your editor’s–

John: Taffy, I think you got everything right.

Taffy: Thank you. Tattoo it across my chest, please.

John: Taffy Brodesser-Akner, thank you again for coming on Scriptnotes.

Taffy: It’s so great to be here.

Bonus Segment

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[music]

John: All right, let’s talk about Tilly Norwood. You wrote a great piece. Not surprising that it’s a great piece, but a great piece on a celebrity who’s not actually a person or even a celebrity. She’s not even famous. She’s just this thing that’s out there in the world that everybody hates.

Tilly Norwood, she is the creation of a woman who was also an actor, is, I guess, still an actor, as she put this out there in the world. You went to London to interview her, but of course, she is just a face on a laptop. Talk to me about your thinking going into this and how it changed over the course of writing it because we’ll put a link in the show notes to your article, which is terrific.

Taffy: Thank you. You can cry a river for the celebrity profiler who finds herself with too many conflicts of interest to write about celebrities anymore. My Hollywood interactions, the TV show I made, and conglomeration made it so that there was barely anyone I can interview anymore.

I saw Tilly Norwood, and I said, “I bet we don’t have the same agent.” I started thinking about it as what is this thing? I’m not a tech reporter. At the Times, most of our tech work is done by tech reporters who know so much that I often don’t know enough.

John: Yes, the Kevin Roose.

Taffy: Kevin Roose is great. He knows everything, and he does not start from the beginning in every single article and every single podcast. I thought, here’s one for the dummies. Also, I did not know if anybody else had yet put together in mainstream journalism.

Plenty of people in entertainment journalism, but in mainstream journalism, the fact that there’s this vague threat of AI that I know that when we marched and we picketed, we all had signs, but for someone to have the audacity to name one and put a face on it, the hated celebrity is my bread and butter.

John: It was weird just, like, this is a lightning rod. I’m just going to make this thing who is deliberately a lightning rod for all the things to strike at it. I’m going to have this innocent, freckled face and a consistency of looks and things.

What I liked about the profile is that, yes, you’re talking about Tilly, the creation, but you’re really talking about the creator and what her motivations were behind this and trying to stuff that.

Taffy: Which I wasn’t intending to. It’s that, within a few minutes of talking to Tilly Norwood, though I had the same experience that a lot of people have when they’re talking to a chatbot, I was so bored because I guess I got into this. Not because I was so interested in celebrity. I was interested in people. Celebrities are the people you’re allowed to write about.

John: In profiles, you are giving information about the person that is not just their public image. You’re getting behind it, but there’s nothing behind her.

Taffy: There’s nothing under, behind her. I’ve never interviewed a one-year-old before. She doesn’t even have a bunch of things you could talk about with her. When I got there, I don’t think I thought it through practically.

I think my bosses were eager for me to get on another story. I was like, here’s something. We all missed me having a profile. I got to London, and I sat there, and it just became so clear. My brain was searching. I think this is what’s going to happen when you watch an AI actor on TV.

Your brain is searching for the story we were talking about in the main show: “Where does this person exist? Why can’t you cast new people for big parts? They don’t have a context. They don’t exist already.” That’s what she is, writ large, in this crazy way. It was more boring than anything else.

John: Yes. You write about how you came out of the experience exhausted and desperate to see human beings doing things, human beings doing art. That sense of, you want to see live people on a stage doing a thing in front of you. You want to have a conversation.

We’re at a place now where we can create these simulacra of human beings that do the things. You’re never really ripping on awkwardness in her performance. You talk about how her head gets a little bit bigger when she’s thinking.

Even like that, they were able to solve by the next day. The technology, she’ll continue to look better and better and better, but it won’t make her real because she has no actual inner life. She’s able to generate these sentences that are really clever and coherent, but there’s not a thing underneath it. There’s no consistency behind it.

Taffy: There’s no feet.

John: No. No feet, like out of her legs?

Taffy: There are no feet. Yes, she stopped at the torso that way. It’s so crazy.

John: It’s like Mark Zuckerberg. It’s virtual at people’s desk.

Taffy: It’s, as we know, my love for Moneyball, that last frame, the thing you’re looking at is him crying. An actor crying is the most mysterious and interesting thing in the world. Did you see that Kate Berlant show?

Did you go to that show?

John: Oh, no. I didn’t see it.

Taffy: It’s called Kate. You go and the whole feat is, will she be able to make herself cry on command? You are absolutely insane because how is she going to do it? She knows she has to do it. Everybody knows enough about the nature of crying. We all know enough about the nature of being. I don’t think I realized how much I needed human beings to be.

John: Yes.

Taffy: How much I cared about it until I did this story. Then what made me so upset is the idea that the rise of it will not just be that these are all tech companies now, all the Hollywood companies or tech companies. It’s that, do we need real people acting these things out that we’re not really watching?

John: Yes. You make the point of, she’s not going to be on a big-screen movie where everyone’s focused their attention there, but could she be in something on TV that you’re not really watching while you’re scrolling on your phone? Probably, maybe. That’s-

Taffy: Have you had the experience yet where your daughter looks over at your phone and is like, that’s AI and you didn’t know it?

John: Generally, I’m the person who’s pointing it out to other people, but yes, it absolutely is true.

Taffy: I have that because it didn’t even occur to me that things could– I think I’m the generation where, what? They went out and what?

John: On Slack, our friend named Matt posted this thing of this young woman who’s like, there’s a penguin who’s stuck in a six-pack loop, like in the plastic rings that hold cans together. She frees this penguin from this plastic. These other penguins come over and drop fish at her just as a thank you. It’s so sweet.

I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s so adorable.” I just hit my microphone. “It’s so sweet. It’s so adorable. That’s just too good to be true.” I googled and found fake penguin AI, blah, blah, blah. I found all the variations of it. It was a meme. They’d done a bunch of different variations. I hate that I’m so, now, skeptical of what this thing is.

Another example is, there’s this young woman who inserts herself in historic moments. Pompeii is erupting. It’s her first-person, and she’s doing the whole thing. I was hearing other people talk about, “Oh, it’s really cleverly done.” I’d agree it’s educational, but I’m like, I don’t think she’s even a real person. Dig deeper.

Taffy: What are you even doing?

John: What are you doing? There’s no real human being behind it. I hate that I’m skeptical that anything that I see on my phone is real.

Taffy: I hate that the people doing it aren’t good at it also. There’s this Instagram page that animates people who will look at you and say, “This is what it was like to be in Brooklyn in the ‘80s.” Someone looking into a camera is not what it– Your form isn’t even following your function.

It’s so artless. It’s tech people making art. I do think, I then want to tell you after I filed my story, a studio executive, who knew I was on the story, said to me, “You have to go and see this thing that I just saw.” I went and I watched a short that made me cry. I was like, “There goes that.”

John: Animation can make you cry.

Taffy: Animation can make you cry, but animation has a human performance in it.

John: Oh, I do agree that there’s human beings who are-

Taffy: Who are voicing it.

John: Who are pushing those pencils. Oh, voicing it. Yes.

Taffy: It’s the voice.

John: It’s all voices. Okay, yes.

Taffy: That the animation follows the voice, right? The voice does not-

John: Well, there’s animated things. The start of Up has no human voices.

Taffy: Except for the music.

John: Well, the music. Okay.

Taffy: I’ll argue this. That’s like saying there’s nothing human in a painting. Everything human is in a painting. Everything human is in Up. How dare you? How dare you? Take that back. It’s that it’s not made cynically.

The real question about AI and things like that is: is it so bad to have somebody who’s able to do in half a minute– I mean, the real question that people laid at my feet– It was the first time I ever did a Hollywood story whilst in Hollywood. Someone made reference to a script I have that everyone likes and can’t get funding unless that’s something they say to people when they just don’t like it. I leave room for that. He said to me, “If that were a $2-million bet, we would make it, but it’s not; it’s a $30-million bet.”

Then you ask yourself questions about indie revolutions and things like that. I don’t quite know. I couldn’t quite answer for my bosses what the difference between one and the other was. The relief in a story comes from its word limit.

Then you can’t keep going and just wrap yourself into a– I have some questions about that. She’s not a good actress. AI acting is, but it is fine.

John: There’s three different modes that you talk about in a story for her. There’s the thing where you’re giving her a prompt and she’s coming up with a performance. There’s also a thing where she’s just modeling her performance off of her creator’s performance, who actually is a good actress.

You recommended watching the Miss Holland videos that she does. They’re good. She’s funny. She’s talented. The degree that she can be the synth version of an actor who’s actually giving performance, the way that we do motion capture, I can see that. It’s animation, basically.

Taffy: Right. It’s not different from Thanos. It’s just easier. They don’t even have to wear little electrodes.

John: The little dots anymore. We’re past the age of dots. I don’t know where we’re going to get to in the industry in terms of what’s legit, what’s not legit, what’s doable. Of course, none of us want Tilly Norwood on our screens, but filling in background extras in a crowd scene, we’ve been doing that for years.

Taffy: Well, I want to ask you about that. It’s funny. During the course of the story, SAG was in the middle of their negotiations and couldn’t talk to me. They ended up giving me a statement as the story was really going to the printer. I couldn’t ask the questions that I have, which are: “For all of the union’s refusal to allow any of this, did they open the door by allowing that? Is it that they couldn’t see what was coming?” I don’t know.

John: I don’t know either. 10 years ago, should they have stopped CG crowd replacement in stadiums? That seems nuts to me. It is a slope, and it’s figuring out “Where is the appropriate place to stop on that?” I don’t know.

Taffy: I don’t know either. I just know that I’m attached to the people. I think we are very careful as a civilization to make sure that the people that we know are getting millions and millions, that they take it seriously, that we get to watch as they get old with it.

I can’t tell you what it means to be 50 and to now see the actors who are also 50 and the decisions they’ve made about the fact that they’re 50. Are they going gentle into that good night, or are they fighting it with everything they’ve got?

John: I’ve been thrilled to see actors aging because there’s actors.

Taffy: I love it.

John: I think of them in their 20s. One of the actors in Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Michael Angarano, I recognize him as an actor in his 20s, but now that’s time. He’s in his mid-30s. He’s playing a dad. It’s so weird. I think of you as a young man. Of course, he aged the same way I aged. It’s just–

Taffy: You can’t believe it.

John: Yes, I can’t believe it. It’s exciting.

Taffy: Also, an interesting thing about in casting Fleishman is we took people whom the audience knew as children so that they could understand that the thing we were going for is the brutal awakening of middle-aged. How could I be middle-aged, is how could Claire Danes be middle-aged, right? Not that any of them are middle aged; they are young forever.

John: Eternally. As we will as well. Taffy, thank you so much.

Taffy: John, thanks for having me. I hope you enjoy Central Park.

John: I’m going to enjoy it.