Eric Andre

Who told you to go to therapy or did you see somebody you knew?

I think I just knew it was time. And I'm also surrounded by comedians and writers all day, so I'm surrounded by people obsessed with therapy.

Who are deeply wounded and deeply funny.

Deeply wounded, deeply funny.

Hi, welcome back to where everybody knows your name with me Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson. Sometimes on this show we talk to a lot of unique individuals, but I can say that there's no one quite like. Today's guest. Eric Andre is a comedian, an actor, a TV host, musician, probably more. You might have seen one of his Pranks on YouTube or the Eric Andre show on Adult Swim, which he's been the creator and host of for six seasons.

You look great.

I feel good you're handsome, I'm handsome.

What's your secret? I have pickled tits and a jelly belly.

If you make it to 75, people just treat you with so much respect. I think they're afraid you may crack and break or something, but I've reached the Mr. Danson stage.

Okay, so no, ozempic.

Oh.

Should we start it, should we start doing it?

Yeah, what is Ozempic?

You take it and it stops the cravings, right?

Oh, it's not for the brain.

No, it's for the belly.

Oh, the belly.

It's for the belly, but you're a tall guy.

So no one has ever paid me to take my clothes off. you make a fortune taking your clothes off.

I was about to. I wouldn't say a fortune. First of all, a fortune. I make 300 bucks a week, and second of all, I will pay you $5 right now to get completely nude.

Well, guess what, they paid me $15 to never get nude.

Okay, well, that's a dollar amount I can't match.

You haven't done that thing where you look at your skin and you go, what the fuck happened? And it happens in about three or four years, very quickly, where it's just very sad, very sad.

No, no, no, yeah.

Why am I doing this to myself?

I don't know you're beating yourself up.

Let me take this back and say, because I watched for at eight o'clock, I got up and watched Bad Trip. I apologize for missing it when it first came out.

No, it's okay, I'm surprised.

But it is fucking brilliant.

I'm surprised I'm here and you watched anything that I've ever done.

It is brilliant. thank you. truly brilliant. I appreciate it and I've never laughed harder.

Out during the credit scroll.

They were so loving and kind, and thrilled and relieved. Somebody told you, I read in an interview. But it's true. I fell in love with America watching that movie. It was the humanity, yeah.

Yeah, that was the win.

Yeah.

Because it's easy to make a prank movie cynical and feel mean spirited and kind of give you an icky feeling, so it was hard to make it feel.

Did you know that right off the bat, when you started pranking people, that you had to do it a certain way or not?

Really, because on my show I can prank people and just be a nightmare terrorist maniac. And it's a short show. But when you're in a movie, a movie is a different medium than a television show. Television shows are only 22 minutes long.

So how written is it? I mean, obviously you have, the story was very written.

You know, it's a narrative, it's a narrative told through pranks, so we had, like, a very structured narrative that we wanted to nail. But once you're within the prank and you're interacting with a person, you're improvising and you're letting it go wherever.

But you have, you have written it enough, so you have planned for as many possible contingencies.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, curb, you know, curb is improvised, right? But there's like, but there's three months on the structure, on the structure.

Did you love it? Are you proud of that?

I'm very proud of it. It took me seven and a half years to make, it took me almost a decade to make and I made no money. So I all I have is pride.

Our whole family went nuts for it. My wife today, Mary's son Charlie, is like a fanatic fan. Oh, awesome, yeah, it's really cool.

We'll wait until the end of this podcast. Look under yours, don't look under your seat.

Did he have time alone in this room before I got here? No, I wouldn't. I came from so many shoulds and shouldn'ts. You know, it was like a gentleman never met, you know, It was rude, intentionally, unintentionally.

It's from your parents.

Parents and grandfather very English. I do have a fear of, oh, I don't want people to be suffering in any way if I'm pranking them and they don't know.

Well, I'm a sociopath.

No, but you're not because you don't take it out on them, you make yourself the brunt of the joke.

Yeah, because if you, if you don't, you just become unlikable quick.

But what's really cool and makes it almost?

Yeah.

And it ups the level of. So when you laugh, I think you laugh even harder out of the relief that you know your hero didn't get stabbed. Did you ever get beat up?

I've gotten manhandled, I've gotten manhandled and roughed up.

I haven't seen that. How did that go?

That was a little bit um sketchy, it was a little bit tough.

What was your? What was the seed of the prank?

Alex Jones This wasn't hitting camera, this was overt. Um, I, I. I. Alex Jones was giving a rally, giving some speech outside at this rally. It was like a Bikers for Trump rally.

Body guards were coming after you or no?

He had a one body guard, uh, but he was kind of deep in the background. I don't think he was paying attention. I didn't think it was get that heated so quickly, but you should really watch it. I don't think I'm doing it.

I will.

Well, I mean, I'm not giving you a homework assignment, but I mean, uh, it's, uh, more effective if you watch it. But that was a little bit sketchy because of an open carry state. So all those guys are, like, armed to the T, So, uh, you know?

So you didn't grow up in Indiana?

I grew up in Florida, Boca Raton, Florida.

Woof.

Yeah.

O.OF.

Yeah.

And I read that you and your dad and your sister were like the only African American people of color, I mean.

I mean, it wasn't the most diverse place in the world to grow up. I don't think we were the only ones, but we, yeah, we were not. we were. We were, uh, in a cul-de-sac, and your mom was. Was she there? My mom's a Jew from New York.

And and not down in Florida with you, did you?

No, yeah, she was they, they were. My dad was from Haiti, they met in New York, my mom's from Manhattan.

Right, yeah, and what was your pre-teenage years like? were you? I mean, I was Arizona, jumping on horses and doing that kind of thing.

I wasn't jumping on horses, I was very um. I was always a class clown. I was very nerdy and academic. But then I realized when I could act out and misbehave, when I could get laughs from misbehaving, then it was all over. Then I was, I was very hyperactive.

That must have been confusing for them.

I would always have like, parent teacher conferences because I was constantly getting in trouble. And they would drag my parents in. And all the teachers would be like, Oh, his grades are fine, his grades are fine, he just won't, he won't shut the fuck up. And I, I would, I was bad.

When did you experience that like an outlet other than amusing your friends and stuff for that energy?

I was always playing music and I was always in shitty bands, and I went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and uh.

Upright Bass.

For upright bass, I went to jazz school. Yeah, and how did that come about?

I mean, where? why? music, why?

I was just obsessed with music, I still am. I just was obsessed with music, so I knew I wanted to do something creative.

As a pre-teenager.

I was playing piano since I was five. Wow, and I played tuba in band in middle school, and then, like playing, I played cello and bass.

I played cello for about three years.

Really.

Yeah, but I, I didn't have.

Yo yo ma yeah.

I don't have music in me, I, I like, memorized the notes and I knew that that meant this finger here. But I never had music running through my soul kind of thing. So I kind of gave up. I started. My parents bought me a my first little guitar because I put the cello on my lap that way.

Well, how'd you pivot into acting?

Uh, I wanted to be a basketball player.

That's why it doesn't make any sense that doesn't answer my question.

Sure, I pivoted.

That doesn't make any sense.

Are you even listening?

No.

Actually, I'm not. Where am I? Um, just constant fear there's going to be a prank coming my way.

No.

I went, I went. I went from, uh, yeah, cello was I. I was just trying to identify with you, as in music, I cello was nothing, I. That barely. That was a blip, that was a blip.

And you went to college for basketball.

Uh, no, I thought that I, I went to a prep school in Connecticut and that played basketball and I. We won our league champion. Nice and. But, as I said, like any high school of like 1200 kids or somebody would have cleaned our clock, we were a very small school.

Then I went, What year, what year, this mid sixties?

66.

I said, What? And were you part of a counter cultural revolution where you smoking weed at halftime?

I missed the sixties completely.

Now we're in the thick of it.

I smoked.

You weren't doing acid and three pointers.

No, and I went to Stanford, so I was in San Francisco Land in the sixties and missed it completely. How?

How's it possible just being from Arizona?

I don't know what I was, so didn't know I was faking my way through school. I was so on academic that I thought I'd have basketball. But that was the same year that Lou Alcindor Kareem was a freshman at UCLA. And it was just like, Oh, well, fuck, I'm not, this is for me.

And continue to study acting.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, where did you graduate in New York?

Uh, no, no, uh. Graduating Carnegie, Mellon and Pittsburgh, then went to New York to look for work.

Uh, but I just started in theater.

Yeah.

Yeah, how long? What? What was the gap between finishing school and cheers? What would like those years?

Uh.

Are you doing plays or were you acting plays?

Commercials, soap operas, anything.

I wait in tables in the background, too.

I always managed to get a job.

Yeah.

And back then, in New York, you could get if you work on a commercial. On Tuesday, you couldn't collect your unemployment for that day, but they like to collect it for the rest of the week. So you could kind of scrape by, uh.

Uh, and.

Uh, went to New York. 72 left in 78.

It was a little less expensive than it is now. Yeah, yeah, you can afford a place.

It was also a little crazier.

It was very dangerous. Yeah, did you see some? My mom had to worry about, son of Sam in the 70s, she, like, had to cut her hair short, yeah.

Where was Son of Sam, in what borough, which was that happening, do you remember?

I don't know. She lived in Harlem, and then she moved to Queens. I think it was Queens or something.

It wasn't Manhattan, I remember that.

I don't know, yeah, but where'd you live in Manhattan?

Uh, west side, upper west side, it was kind of bombed out back then, really, Amsterdam, and uh, 90th.

Uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh.

But but I was acting, so I didn't care, I was taking classes, I was auditioning I, it didn't matter.

Hey, what a cool time to be doing that there.

Yeah, how old are you?

40.

So New York, do you what? Hmm, so you were what 80s, you were coming of age kind of thing.

I was in, I was born in 83.

83.

Yeah, I saw New York when I was six years old. I went to the top of the World Trade Center and I saw when they had graffiti on the trains. I caught, like the last sliver of like, Uh.

Was time Square had that been gentrified? Yeah.

It, it was dodgy, but I don't really have memories of that. Um, I have the earliest memories of times where I have. It was kind of in the gentrification stage.

Right, okay, so you got to Boston, you got to Berkeley, yeah, school of music.

Yeah, I was still being a fucker, I was still being a nuisance, I was being a nuisance. I would do, I would like, wear a tuxedo for no reason and skateboard around the hallways, right?

And with in your mind just going for the laugh today, or are you thinking?

I had nothing to do with, I didn't want anything to do with comedy professionally, I just thought it was too hard and intimidating and I.

Thought about it Is that why you thought it was too hard, or?

Uh, for like, a millisecond. I would have had great admiration for standup comics, but I was like, I could never do that. That seems like a nightmare. Um, uh. And then at the very as as I was finishing school.

Um.

The music industry was kind of, uh, falling apart because napster and peer to peer file sharing and stuff was, um, right, fucking everything up. So, like, you know, uh, rec. The records of the Seventies, the cassette tapes of the Eighties, the CDs of the nineties were all, uh, irrelevant. Because they they, they started to like the technology.

Yeah.

Yeah, the technology was deteriorating, so we're being replaced. Uh, and my friend Brian Mosk, and he was just like, You're so funny, you've got to try.

And then was that the first time you started trying it?

Yeah, that's when I started trying to stand up and I fell in love with it instantly, and I also I loved it. Also out of convenience, because I had to schlep my upright base everywhere my whole college, you know, all four years of college. And then when I started doing standup, I was like, I don't have to haul any equipment anywhere. I can just show up and just have there's a microphone already there.

Would you write your your material?

Yeah.

And what was it? The same kind of attitude.

It was very, um, loud and, uh, hyperactive and hyperbolic and psychedelic and absurdist. And it was, yeah, it was like the beginning of, like, my, my, figuring out my point of view.

And was, Are you getting paid at this point or no?

In Boston, no, not a dime, not a dime, not a dime, for, like, the first decade of comedy.

And did you? did you put your head of following? did people?

Not in Boston I only did my first year in Boston, then I moved to New York and I started doing standup. But I was like, working day jobs. And it really took like a decade of of, uh, just crawling through the sewer before I made any money doing it or had any following.

Right, yeah.

It was a decade of just.

Uh.

The the the doldrums. I was like, Oh shit, I'm not close enough to my microphone.

And where? I'm sorry.

I only did one year in Boston, then I moved to New York for five years, then I moved to L.A. After that, I finally, like, got an agent and a manager.

When? when did you go?

It was kind of working.

A little success is coming my way. When did you go?

Little Teeny. The very first thing I booked when I moved to Los Angeles was Curb your enthusiasm. And I got, I got two lines, I said two lines to Larry. It was the episode where he thinks, uh, his, his ex wife is cheating on him with Jason Alexander.

Right?

And he was just asking me, but I had two little lines that I was like, Oh, yeah, and it was. And it was like one of the first auditions I had when I moved here. So I was like, I'm going to fucking make it. And then after that, I didn't book shit for like, years, I couldn't, I would fall apart in auditions.

Did you audition for scripted shows when you fell apart? Yeah.

I was auditioning.

By doing what?

By taking classes and actually reading and rehearsing.

Who did you study with?

I studied with Leslie Kahn and John Rosenfeld and they whipped me into shape because I knew nothing. And then, just educating myself. I read, you know, that Joanna Merlin book? Auditioning, it's auditioning or audition. I just had to, like, demystify the process for myself because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

Easily.

Might not be totally relevant.

But you know, what you do so well, which not all standups do, is you throw the ball back and forth. A lot of standups will go. I got the ball, yeah, let me run with it, yeah.

Well, I also feel like that's where comedy lives. You got to, like, be in the moment and experiment, and it gives it an element of danger and suspense and surprise. You got to almost surprise yourself.

Why make life harder than it needs to be? With Consumer Cellular, you get the same fast, reliable, nationwide coverage as Big Wireless, but without the cost of Big wireless. And switching is easy. And I'm talking to you, Nick, pretty soon you're going to be switching because these commercials I'm reading are going to convince you to do it.

It took them, it took them time because my talk show is very bizarre. I think my mom got it, my mom's American.

Is this all right for you to be doing? yeah.

Also, my dad was, he escaped a third world country, then, like, put himself through med school and became a doctor, so he didn't want me to do.

That takes some seriousness.

Yeah, he didn't want me to be in Korea. He'd be like, go to law school or med school, go to med school, and I was like, I don't want to fucking, I don't want to go to med school.

Describe it Somebody who you cared about asked you just to describe your comedy. What would you say?

I would say it's very.

But also all the adjectives I got for you, right? But also you're talking about stuff. I mean, obviously I keep going back to that movie because I literally just watched it. And I am not over exaggerating. I have never laughed so hard and enjoyed it. I was so tickled to thank you after seeing that.

We showed the movie an early cut, we went to Sasha Baron Cohen's house and we showed him an early cut of the movie tech because we needed help. The movie was in shambles in the beginning. But he said, he goes the wind for your movie, he goes my, he goes. My movies are showing. Try to show off how, uh, shitty, uh, hypocritical and hypocritical politicians are, and then the people in power. He goes your movie as the victory is showing how, um, people of color and working class people are like, good and good Samaritans.

And if you had done a straight movie, meaning narrative, dialogue, all of that scripted, it would have felt like a bit of a lecture. You always it's a tough thing to put that out in the world, right? If you did a pure news interview 60 minutes segment, you know not. But when you combined it with the danger of prank, yeah, it really was impactful.

Yeah, thanks. pretty cool. thanks, appreciate it.

So what kind of toll I've? I've heard you talk about anxiety. Yeah, uh, is that was that from, you know, as a kid? always? when did you know? Oh wait, this is something I have, I think.

I think always, but I didn't know it was, uh.

At age, if I may ask, is this okay to talk about?

Yeah.

No.

I don't, I'm an open book. Uh, 25, 26, I started doing therapy.

Because something stopped working or the toll was too great.

It was around when I couldn't book an audition to save my life, when I was like having fall down, panic attacks and audition, and you know what, auditioning is nerve wracking. I need to, like, give 25 year old me some credit, Oh.

How many?

One, he went on, one, once somebody saw him, do stand up and they're like, Oh my god, you'd be great for this role. It was like in the 70s, early 70s.

Especially if you need it.

Yeah, when you need it and you're broke and you're like, you just come to. And I was like, just got to L.A. fresh off the turn up truck and I. I said, just didn't know what the process was, I didn't understand it. It all seemed this just like this intimidating, confusing thing to me.

Were you doing standup at the time?

I was doing standup at the time.

Here in L.A.

Yeah, I would do standup in the time at the time and then in L.A. and I would hit the road, but also, uh.

That's a kind of a bold move. A lot of people go, don't they turn to other things that don't work, you know, yeah.

I've definitely, I've definitely done a shot of vodka before an audition.

I could never understand smoking dope before an audition. Hell, no, no, that would be a nightmare.

The weed has never hit me, right? No, it doesn't. weed is advertised like. It's like, soothing and calming, for me, the opposite.

So who? who told you to go to therapy or did you see somebody?

I think I just knew it was time. I don't think anybody needed to tell me. I think I was like, let me just give it a shot. And I'm also surrounded by comedians and writers all day, so like, I'm, I'm surrounded by people obsessed with therapy.

Who are deeply wounded and deeply funny.

Deeply wounded, deeply funny, and and and therapized, so it just seemed to make sense. And then when I started therapy, my first therapist told me about meditation, and I get started doing meditation.

Yeah.

Daily TM, yeah, twice a day. And and then right when I started therapy and doing TM. That's when I started booking auditions. And feeling like, oh, I had some like agency over my anxiety. But it's like it never ends anxiety, you know, it's just part of my.

Uh, and anxiety is I? I don't have what you have, but I have had paralyzing anxiety attacks.

I used to have performance.

I used to have them maybe once every year.

Yeah.

While perform, while, but performing not live or something like that, but on a TV show or something, yeah, and it would be just mind numbing. It's horrible sentences.

Words You're completely out of body, so disassociated.

And it felt like high school.

And that's horrible.

Here comes my line, and I have no idea should I cry?

Should I?

I have no, I, you know, just immobilize it.

Yeah.

Everybody, I had a scare, uh, on stage, you know, 15 years ago. I don't know that I will ever.

Never again.

No, I had so much fear and adrenaline pumping I was. We were doing these. Um, the Atlantic Theater is this great theater that feeds into Broadway. And they're friends, and they asked me if I would like to come in and do this. One week of, um, it's like a 20 minute. My piece was a 20 minute monologue.

Oh, no.

Total blank, and it's like sticking your finger in a light socket. It was like, horrible feeling. Am I going to cry? fuck?

Yeah.

It was horrible, it was horrible.

Yeah, I do this thing I got from music school. I have to. I'll type my lines out, so it's just my lines.

Do you think any part of you would, I know this is going to sound stupid? Would miss your anxiety as a performer if you stood up and there was no anxiety, yeah.

I think the anxiety helps, I think it, I think it. It can hurt if it's a full blown panic attack, but it. It only helps. Because I have done standup shows where the room is lightly packed. I don't have any new jokes I'm excited about and I don't feel any anxiety. I'm going to, I feel bored and then you bomb.

I don't usually I find myself in a like, in a car, on a set, being driven to the set by a teamster or whatever. Sometimes I don't put my safety belt on because I'm in Hollywood, everything's fine, everything's taken care of.

Yeah.

With a knife, are you thinking, though, Oh, it's okay, though, I'm in my bubble, are you? Literally? Oh, this could go really bad.

I'm thinking two things. I'm thinking, oh, this could go really bad in the moment. But I'm also fast forwarding ahead to the editing bay where I'm like, I'm so glad I got a great reaction. This is so high stakes. We have footage, we have usable footage, so I usually am more in a positive state of mind.

And you got to see the guy with the knife, I do believe, at the in the credit scroll, where you got when he saw him. Realize what was going on. Or am I making that up?

I don't know if we showed his full reveal, the knife guy, we showed the guy that was going to break a bottle over me.

This is going bad. Yeah, I can't remember how you cut out of it, but it was it was a clearly a good time to cut.

It was a good day. Yeah, I think I was urinating next to him. it wasn't real urine, but he, he, he.

He's a little bit upset. Did you ever get anxiety during the filming of that?

Because every day, really.

Because, like the real I find, usually, my anxiety is, um, it's not really based on something real, it's not like, it's not like.

It's kind of both. I have, like this generalized anxiety that's not based, that's based on just fiction.

Yeah.

And my, my overactive brain. And then I have, like, real fear, like, Oh, I might get punched during this bit. And you only have one, you only have one, you only have one. Take. A lot of times, like the the the, I think the hanging off the roof thing, we only had one.

But that's not anxiety to my mind, That's fear, that's concern, that's that's real. You should be fearful of this, right?

It's your mind.

It's my mind looking for trouble. I don't get anxious. if you know if some, if I cut myself badly, I don't get anxious.

Right?

I get fearful, but I can get anxious about the thought of.

Right?

You know?

Yeah, that's a good distinction, I think that's a good distinction. Can I keep on this part?

Cause I'm such a a neurotic mess that I find surprised, interesting.

You seem like a cool summer breeze.

Right, I have psoriasis everywhere, just because I, but I stress, Yeah, no.

You don't have psoriasis anymore.

I cause they have these wonderful little, uh biologics they're called, where you can take a shot of something and it.

Is it like an eczema?

Yeah, but then it becomes something that gets into your bones and stuff, and so it's psoriasis. Psoriatic arthritis becomes a problem.

Oh, you had it your whole life, or recently?

Right after, seriously, right after the 25 year old who auditioned for the doctors.

That's when I started Valium, so it was a stress reaction.

Yeah, I do believe, I think you have a propensity, and I think diet and a lot of stuff can contribute to it, but I do believe it's stress.

Yeah, you ever read those John Sarno books Healing back pain?

Yes.

Divided by those, books saved my life. I had back pain for years.

Until you recognize, Oh.

It's a stress reaction. Yeah, I mean, to the point where I was going to get back surgery. And I read those books, I did a movie.

I know so many people who cured themselves.

That guy's a saint. Those books saved my life, I recommend them to everybody.

Do you think you have fear on top of anger, or just like internal?

RaGE Yeah, I think it's, it's um.

Uh, you done. uh, somebody told me that you had talked about it, so I feel okay asking about what? And I don't even know MDMA.

I have done MDMA micro dosing.

I mean.

I've done macro dosing as well.

But that that's self treatment, yeah, have you done it under a guide? Yes, I.

Yeah, I've done MDMA therapy.

Is that the same things that they try with?

Uh.

Vets who have post-traumatic stress.

Yeah, big time.

And can I ask, cause I've never done it, but I'm really curious.

Now's the time I put it in your water, that's the prank.

So far, it makes me want to pee.

But I was going to do more than that, brother.

What is so, can I ask what that is like? So you take it and you are, you become in a whatever state that that drug makes you in and then you talk.

Well, you do a bunch of talk sessions first, without the without the medicine, without the psychedelic, it's a psychedelic amphetamine, so you do a bunch of talk sessions first. So you just talk about whatever issues are bothering you. But the doctor, the the doctor is really kind of paving a pathway. So that when by the time you do the session with the MDMA, you kind of get rigged, that you get right to it.

Because without the drug, you may be.

It's too, it's too, it's too painful, right? It's too painful to access, so you rewire, especially if you're veterans with PTSD, there's something more. There's some deeper trauma. So like, Yeah, so it allows, it allows you, it allows you to enter that old, those old traumas in a way that you can't while you're, while you're.

Or do you do this for weeks or months, or however long?

Uh, I've only done it, um, I probably had like 30 or 40 talk sessions with him, and I've only done it, um, done the MDMA with him twice.

And how did it feel afterwards?

Incredible, amazing.

And relevatory, like you went relevatory.

Yeah.

Yeah, wow, like, like, shook up major things that needed to be, uh.

Rearranged.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

Yeah, yeah, isn't it now? I mean, now it's a full on FDA goes yes, or somebody's going, yes, let's experiment with this, yeah.

It's on the precipice of being legalized. I mean, there are places like Oregon has decriminalized all drugs. It just needs to happen on like a federal level.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And did that happen?

I saw a meme recently, it said, I like the war on drugs because drugs won.

Where did your moral, whatever guiding principle, or spoken or unspoken, come from? How do you know what's good and bad? how do you behave in life, and where did that come from?

I guess my parents, I guess, uh. My mom has been like a civil rights activist her entire life. She marched on Washington. When she was 18. She saw Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech and she's always been into, like, um, political activism for for marginalized people.

Um.

Sweet, almost to a fault, though. They're a little bit, uh.

Uh.

They're so, they're so people-pleasing that they they fall, they fall into codependency, but um.

My mother was, you know, my parents, you know, I got unconditional love, which, right off the bat, is one of the biggest gifts you can give to your kids. Yeah, but my mother was really good at dealing with the positive side to life, you know, enthusiasm, creativity, encouragement, joy, happiness, willingness, all of those things. But anything petty or angry, uh, was to be suppressed. You know, no, no, no, no, don't, don't dwell on that.

Yeah, my parents.

Uh.

Didn't my my mom's alive, my dad passed away. But my parents are very like, Um, they're not they. They. They were very academic and egg egghead types, very like bookworms, but they they, they lacked um, emotional intelligence, um, but they're very sweet. But I was also. I also was born and came into consciousness like at the back half of their marriage as they started drifting apart. So that was tough.

Right?

And I got the decline. And when they got divorced, she was 20 years old, she was already in college. And I was like 11, turning 12, which is awkward, awkward coming of age. And they, they, they were not good at explaining that they were getting divorced either.

This has nothing to do with you.

This has nothing to do with you, we're both going to be there for you. 110. We still love each other, but our love for each other has changed. I'm not going to, I'm not no longer going to live here, but I'm still going to be close and I'm going to be in your life.

Uh.

I'm going to live, uh, somewhere else, uh. And then me, at 12 year old, having to put it together and ask them. I had to, like, I had to like, drag it out of them to what's going on here?

And that's the time in life, especially then when you should have all you know gentle focus coming your way to see. So you can develop into who you are, as opposed to have to take care of your parents, no.

It was, it was not, it was not great, but I like, and I resented them for that forever. But then I realized they just didn't have the capacity to communicate what they needed to communicate in that moment. They just are both on their own parts of the spectrum, and, uh, they just don't have. They just they don't, they don't, they don't possess the qualities to to communicate.

It's such a good place to be when you finally realize, Oh, my parents are just these really nice folks who are doing the best they can. Yeah.

They're human.

Yeah, they're.

They're everyone's flawed, there's nobody's perfect. Uh, it's a relief when you realize that, but you. I did resent them for that for for a long time, and I love them. I mean, I. It wasn't like I hated them at all.

Um.

But, uh, my dad passed away last year, my mom's alive, my dad, my dad had cancer, my kid had cancer.

Were you around them?

Towards the end, yeah, all the time, towards the end, yeah.

It doesn't matter how old you are, man, when you cannot prepare yourself for losing a parent.

You know, it's unbelievably painful in a way.

So he was willing, and he was willing.

He was as responsive as I've ever seen him because he kind of knew he had to get some of this stuff out. And and he told me, he never told me. He loved me my entire life, he never said I knew, I always knew he loved me, but he never said I love you. Until, like, a few days before he died and he just eked it out. It was like with his like kind of his last breaths, and it came out of nowhere.

Oh, wow, I love you.

I love you, I love you, I love you and I. I started bawling, bawling, crying, goosebumps, telling the story, and then he looked at me like, I'm bawling, crying.

Crying.

Bawling, crying. And then the eerie part was he looked at the foot of his bed and he goes. My two friends are here. And I was like, Well, and it was just me and his nurse, and and I was like, What? And he goes. My two friends, my two friends from my my childhood, are here.

Did any of this change your anxiety and your performance stuff?

A little bit, because I think I always. I was always seeking my father's approval because he was so aloof in my childhood.

After he died, yeah.

After he died, yeah, he died in December, he died recently. Oh, it's been a re.