Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 492: Marcus Henderson

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Marcus Henderson, brilliant actor and Duncan's pal, joins the DTFH! You might remember Marcus as Walter from Get Out, Granny from Tacoma FD, and from a million other roles in movies and TV. Origina...l music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: ButcherBox - Visit ButcherBox.com/Duncan to receive a FREE 7-pound New Year Bundle with your first order! Feals - Visit feals.com/duncan and get 50% off and FREE shipping on your first order. ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package.

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Starting point is 00:00:23 Place your order at officedepot.com and pick it up in just 20 minutes at your nearest Office Depot or OfficeMax store. Hello there. It's me, Duncan, and this is the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. If you're listening to this, I'm in Los Angeles right now. Beautiful Los Angeles. We're going to scope it out considering making the big move, though we keep wavering going back and forth. There's so much involved in moving these days.
Starting point is 00:00:52 I mean, holy shit. It's weird in the book of revelations. They never mention how many preschools you have to do interviews for if you want to move to Los Angeles during the apocalypse. We don't know what it's like there right now. I've been getting a real mixed message from people who are there, ranging from it's insufferable to it's fine. We're going to find out.
Starting point is 00:01:20 Anyway, because I'm traveling now, I don't have time to do one of my long, award-winning, beautiful, powerful, musical, almost Broadway-level intros. So we're just going to jump right into this episode with my friend Marcus Henderson. Now, before we get going, I would like to invite you to sign up for my Patreon. Once you do that, you will no longer be plagued by commercials. You'll just get straight DTFH injected right into your pineal gland. Also, you're going to get extra content. We meet twice a week for our journey into boredom, our meditation, and of course,
Starting point is 00:02:05 our legendary Friday family gatherings. We're a tribe, a commune, a vibratory field of consciousness calling you to come home. Come home to your family. Now, everybody, with us here today is a brilliant actor. You probably know him from Get Out or Tacoma FD. He's one of the most incredible things that came to me from the Midnight Gospel, because he and his friend Brandon reached out to me and said, what do you say?
Starting point is 00:02:38 We just like, we be friends. It was the coolest thing ever. Then we started doing like a weekly philosophy club where we just get together and talk. It was super fun. And actually, one of the bummers about leaving LA is Aaron and I just started hanging out with Marcus and Brandon and his family and then we split, so it really blew. But what doesn't blow is that Marcus is with us here today for a frank, smart, intense conversation about acting and what happens after you co-star in a movie
Starting point is 00:03:15 like Get Out. Everybody, please welcome back to the DTFH Marcus Henderson. Marcus, welcome back. How are you doing? It's great to see you. Feeling great, man. This is so good to be back here with the family again. I miss you.
Starting point is 00:03:58 I miss your family. I miss LA. It's great to see you. They just come back, man. We just come back already. It's looking like it's going to happen. It's like we just, we miss it so much. It's killing us.
Starting point is 00:04:12 We watched the game last night and we're like, oh, just thinking, oh man, if we lived there, maybe we could have been there with the kids watching their minds get blown by that. Did you watch the last night? I watched every game, dude. Oh my God, what a fucking game. I know, I know. Oh God, it was ecstasy.
Starting point is 00:04:31 The thing is, is that I really wanted Garoppolo to win so that he could fuck it up in the Super Bowl. That's really what I was looking forward to because I, for fantasy football this year, I pretty much used Cincinnati's whole starting lineup. Okay, wait, I'm sorry. Let me tell you this. Before we get going in sports talk, I know shit about sports. Aaron likes sports more than I do. And I almost started doing the thing.
Starting point is 00:04:56 I'm trying to do a fake like Garoppolo. Yeah, of course, me too. I wanted that. Yeah, Garoppolo, oh my God. Yeah. He's such a great guy. I told somebody yesterday, just say number 10. Just always when you're talking about sports, just say something about number 10.
Starting point is 00:05:12 Number 10 on that squad is like fucking terrible. But I have to say, when Aaron wanted to watch the game and I was being a real fucking dick about it, like I don't like football. But then like at 30 minutes in, I'm just like, holy fucking shit. You're the edge of your seat. Because they know how to build the narrative. The story is built so well. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:34 It's built so well. And this is a testimony to any human being who watches sports or doesn't watch sports, but catches like the World Series at the bottom of the ninth with two outs down by one, bases loaded, you know, like that's made for TV. Yes. Yes, it is. It's everything. That's those are miracles.
Starting point is 00:06:00 Yes. And it's just it's like sad. Like, you know, at the end of the game, like no matter what, some like a group of people's hearts are going to be fucking broken. So that's that's like there's this brutality to it, man. Would you see the Dallas game? No, I didn't. Okay.
Starting point is 00:06:16 So after Dallas lost, these people lost their fucking minds, man, like lost their minds. I mean, I saw videos of people crying and breaking down. Like, did you bet your whole house on the game? Yeah, it's deep, man. It's deep. It's, you know, it's deeper than almost anything. I mean, it's one of the deepest things in popular culture. I don't think people realize how like red and it's very sticky.
Starting point is 00:06:43 You get caught up in it and it's so there's so much weird, like, I don't know. Just just deep, deep metaphysical shit going on. I mean, just the chanting of the crowd and the energy. It's a ritual or something. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. And in basketball, there's been a lot of crowd control in terms of like censoring what the crowd says to the players because players have gotten a lot more sensitive to what's
Starting point is 00:07:16 being said to them while they're playing the game, which is, I mean, it's no excuse to call somebody, you know, a bitch ass motherfucker while they playing the basketball game. Like that's just, it's no, why you want to do that? Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's curious that like when you, if you think it's just the teams, it's totally not. Okay.
Starting point is 00:07:37 There is some participation happening via massive amounts of energy being poured into either group. It's like everyone's weirdly involved in it somehow. There's this amazing documentary. It was not amazing. It's just like a documentary. I was about to say amazing, but it's called The Malice in the Palace from when like 2004, 2005 or something like that, when Indiana played Detroit in Detroit and they got in
Starting point is 00:08:08 that huge brawl with the crowd and like Germain O'Neill, like Iran, our test to all these guys. Like, it's like, man, like this is crazy. You know, like that, like we don't want to see that happen again. Obviously. Right. Yeah. I'm surprised it doesn't happen all the fucking time. I'm surprised it doesn't happen like one out of three games.
Starting point is 00:08:29 It just descends into some melee or just the whole, just everyone attacking everyone else. But people manage to stay restrained. Dude, I want to talk to you about something because you're, I don't know. I know, I know a few actors and it's something that I'm always interested in because I love watching movies and I love, you know, I was a theater nerd. I just, I find it to be one of the most psychedelic art forms. But so I was watching Macbeth. There's a new Macbeth out, have you seen it yet?
Starting point is 00:09:07 I have seen it. It's so fucking good and so fucking creepy. And I just want to talk to you. I want to start off talking to you a little bit because you're one of the only Shakespearean actors that I know. And I want to talk about that a few different points. The first being when you are playing a role, a Shakespearean role, how much of what you're saying do you fucking understand, you know?
Starting point is 00:09:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it doesn't sound like a person. You like, what the fuck are they talking about? Yeah, it's so weird and trippy and like yet somehow relatable. But you don't know, like it's saying things like, you know, thrice a field mouse come this way and then a drop upon the fibers pipe. We saw it. But they're saying it with like this passion where you're like, holy fuck. So like how much, how much of that did you like actually deeply understand as an actor?
Starting point is 00:10:09 And how much of it are you just sort of doing the cadence of it? So I think that there are two things that happen in the process that sort of intertwine with each other. Number one, you are learning the cadence because it is a musical language. It is something that goes da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. You know that I am Vic Pantameter. But the other thing that's happening is you're breaking down your text. Like every word, every word means something is so skillfully placed, you know,
Starting point is 00:10:45 in the monologues, in the dialogue, like everything is said for a reason. Like when you get these couplets, like there is a world of things that you're able to do with language. And I think that, you know, Shakespeare just like universally, you can get a lot of things out of that, you know, no matter what your background is. You can definitely relate to Shakespeare and understand these characters in a way to where the language is just going to do it itself.
Starting point is 00:11:18 Like it's just like if you're reciting a song or something like that, like you may not know what every word means, but you can feel the passion of the artist that you're mimicking, you know what I mean? Like my son is Malachi's into Kanye West. Can't tell me nothing. You remember that song? Oh yeah, hell yeah. Wait till I get my money, right?
Starting point is 00:11:43 What does my five-year-old son know about that? Not a goddamn thing, but he loves that song. And like he wants to hear it every day on the ride to school, on the ride home, and he doesn't know what those words mean, but he feels it. Yes. So I think what happens in Shakespeare is that even if, even as the viewer, as the audience, we may not understand what is being said, but the passion from the actor who has done his research, who has been putting that place to be the author of these words on stage,
Starting point is 00:12:23 you immediately get that opportunity to make somebody feel something. You know what I mean? Totally. So yeah, that's what I think Shakespeare is, and intertwines the language, the musicality of the language with the meaning of the words. To me, it feels like it would be dangerous to play some of those parts, but not to be overly dramatic or whatever, but just sitting by myself in my living room, watching it, and as the darkness of that fucking play starts creeping into your life,
Starting point is 00:13:04 and you're beginning to understand that you've been lured into some awful trap. Like it's terrible. I mean, and of course, you know, I was obviously like super stoned, but I was like, this is like as horrible as any horror movie I've ever seen, as dreadful as any fucking thing I've ever seen. So acting that out, do you feel like I'm getting sick from this? By the way, I don't know which plays you've actually acted in, which? Well, I was just about to say at Alabama State, we did Othello.
Starting point is 00:13:41 I had the opportunity to do Othello twice, actually, and I did it the first time. And it was like my first play that I got to do a lead in, and I felt like, you know, what was really interesting about the experience is that Alabama State is all black school, and Othello is a black man in all white world. So how do you pull off a play like this in the setting that you're in? And basically, you know, no color, race, culture is beyond jealousy, is beyond love, is beyond rage, is beyond war, is beyond friendship, you know, infidelity. It all lives in that play.
Starting point is 00:14:38 And so being able to do it, it just really, you know, talking about living with it, man. I did it the first time, and it was just like, oh man, just get all these words out of the way, and just speak all these words as fast as you can. And then, you know, it'll all be over with. Yeah. The second time I did it, I had a much more calm demeanor about, you know, what I was doing, I understood the words, the musicality of it was coming together. And I definitely just had, like, a better understanding of that world.
Starting point is 00:15:16 Now, I was 20 years old playing the role, but like, it still resonated with me. Sure. I imagine it would probably get deeper and darker the older I get, because my understanding of the world is a little different now. Right. You know, as in any play or anything you do where you're younger and there are older characters, you know, you get older and you're like, you know, I play Walter Lee and the Raisin and the Sun, and he has a son and a wife, and he's living with his mom, and he just wants to like get from under.
Starting point is 00:15:52 He just wants to finally get a leg up. He takes that money, and he like, you know, he's going to do something with it. He's going to give the money to Willie, and Willie's going to make his dreams come true. Yeah. And now, as a 36-year-old man, I'm like, man, how many times have I given Willie my money because I thought I could get a leg up in this world? Wow. And how many times have I looked at my kids in the last, you know, 10 years and said to them,
Starting point is 00:16:26 I promise you, I'm going to make you give you a better life than I had. Wow. You know? Yeah. Like, I understand those words so much deeper now. Yeah. Than I did when I was 25, 26 years old playing those roles. Right.
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Starting point is 00:18:40 And just a little bit of time can change things. Just a little bit of life experience can change things for you, you know? Is that sort of like, so that must, the older you get or the more experience you have, then it almost informs your acting. But for young people who I've seen who are brilliant actors and you're like, you didn't, what the fuck has even happened to you that you're somehow able to fully become these characters? What method are they using? What is the, you know, what are you plugging into as a young actor when you don't have the
Starting point is 00:19:21 experiences and you successfully portray some roles, some older roles? I think it's a translation that happens, you know, amongst different things, you know, whether the translation be like, you know, I was in high school and my girlfriend ended up kissing my best friend, like, so therefore I understand jealousy. I understand, you know, betrayal. Now, you know, now I can take that into my world. So you don't have to be super old to understand. Or even like, as a little kid, when your parent promises you that you're going to go get ice cream,
Starting point is 00:19:59 and then you end up going to the dentist, you know, like. Have betrayal. You know what I mean? Like it's there. Right. We've all experienced these things from very young ages. How we define them depends on our experience with it though. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:20:15 Yes, there are people who have been in abusive homes and didn't even know it because that's normal to them. But then they get somewhere and realize, oh, shit, that was an abusive place. Now they have a language for it. Now they have a word for it that they didn't have before because it breaks up the normalcy of things. So I think kids or young actors who have a good grasp that you can tell that a lot of it is like a rawness that comes from them. I think that they're able to translate really easily their life experiences that they've had
Starting point is 00:20:54 up to that point. Right. But there's also, you know, I think that, you know, people can be polished also. Right. Well, OK, before we get into the polish thing. This is what I'm really interested in is the reservoir of feelings that great actors seem to plug into and they're universal. Are they universal?
Starting point is 00:21:17 I mean, like, in other words, like the, you might have when you get older, different methods for connecting with the emotion that this character is probably experiencing. But is there any difference in the betrayal you feel when your parents are supposed to take you to get ice cream and they take you to the dentist and the betrayal you feel like when, you know, so a business partner stabs you in the back, even though the story is different. Is the feeling the same? I think so. And I think it's dependent upon the individual.
Starting point is 00:21:54 But if you put it out in front of a mass audience, relatability doesn't have a meter. I think I think it's like, oh, that's relatable. But, you know, like, no, it's just it's relatable or it's not right. It is or it isn't in that sense to me, you know, like if, you know, I'm watching. I don't want to give me spoilers away. But, you know, if I'm watching the movie and then like the main characters, family who took care of him dies and, you know, and then all of a sudden he's alone in the world again, like I don't know what that feeling is to lose, you know, like someone who raised me.
Starting point is 00:22:35 But, you know what I do, I can relate to the feeling of losing someone. Yeah. So that's what I attach myself to, you know. OK, so you're studying. If you had to read a script like that, you're going to study that. You're going to think to yourself is your process of getting ready to audition or do this part. You're going to think to yourself, all right,
Starting point is 00:22:56 when did I lose somebody and then invoke that feeling as you read the words? Is that it? I think I used to do that. I used to do that, but that's it's really taxing. And it you can't really, I don't know. I haven't at least me for me, I haven't mastered coming out of my feelings in that way. So when I audition, I usually like I'm going to give you like a snippet, right? Because it's a free service.
Starting point is 00:23:27 Like I'm auditioning and that's a free service. I haven't seen any compensation for my worth yet. So I'll give you a snippet of what I can do, but I'm not going to like fully go all out in an audition, not now, because I feel like in some way I've paid that cost. You know, like audition tons of times every year, you know, when I first got out here, it was very like, got to get it right, got to do good because it was in person, right? It was like this thing where it was like, I'm meeting you for the first time and you know, this and this and that.
Starting point is 00:24:12 And then as you get older or you start to do it more and more, that like something about it becomes a little, what's the term? Is that called lacklustered? Like it just kind of fades a little bit, like that excitement. So then when you go into a casting director who hasn't booked you ever and it's like your tenth time going in, like I'm not so compelled to like, especially when I see the choices that went up and you think, well, I don't really know why I didn't get this part, but I'm going to tell you what, I'm going to give what I feel comfortable with, what I can go home at the end of the day
Starting point is 00:24:52 and say, you know what, I gave it to them the way that I feel comfortable and they didn't choose me. Cool. That was their choice. It wasn't mine. If I did my job. I mean, that's the brutal, like that aspect of like living in LA as an actor is just of all the professions out there. I mean, like most people, how many job interviews do you go on in a life? You know, you'll go on like a ton of job interviews and get a job and then you'll just do that job. But an actor, always job interview after a fucking job interview after a fucking job interview. And these are some of these are like jobs where some part of you has got to know,
Starting point is 00:25:31 you get that job and like that's the next level. That's the fucking thing. And also, I'm sorry, like I think I'm like, just no one ever talks about the brutality of driving to Culver City in traffic, trying to like get into a mind state where you can go in front of these people and do the job you're talking about. And so it's not showing that you just drove, you know, an hour and a half through fucking traffic. It's not showing that like whatever your bank account is not maybe not doing the best. Yeah, that you saw some desperate. Yeah. And you just sat in the lobby with like a literal spectrum of views, you know, like people and like, there's a more beautiful version of me. There's a less beautiful version
Starting point is 00:26:20 of me. There's an older version of me. There's a younger version of me, this rainbow that's supposed to be you. And then they're going to pick one, one part of that spectrum. It is dehumanized. It can be so dehumanizing. How do you, how do you manage to like keep any sort of like balance and not go insane when you're doing that as an actor? Well, I think that the really important thing is that you hold on to what's yours and what makes you you because even though, like you said, there are rainbow views in that room, nobody is you, nobody. And if you hold on to that, that's why I said, like, I'm not, I guess, let me clarify what I was saying earlier about, you know, not giving it a hundred percent. I give
Starting point is 00:27:15 a hundred percent in my audition, but I give it in the way that I feel comfortable to where you take me or you don't, but this is what I have to offer you. Yeah. I'm not going to, I'm not going to do this showboat dance for you that I think you want, because then I'm going to, then I'm going to go home and think about a million different ways I could have done it differently for you in that way. Right. But I wouldn't have been happy because it wouldn't have been my performance. Right. I would have been one of the rainbow of people that you saw in the room. I got you. That's so smart. You know what I mean? I'll regret in some kind of way. But if I go in and I'm going to give you that little taste that you'll know what I can
Starting point is 00:28:00 do, but I'm not going to like, oh, I gave that thing my all, man. I gave it my all every single time, every single time you'll burn out. Right. And you got it. And it's nothing that's so precious about this business that it doesn't happen again. Like we keep thinking like, oh, man, I want to be a part of that show. I want to be a part of that movie. Oh man, that movie did history. Oh, that TV show is, that made history. But guess what? There'll be another show to make history. Right. There will be another TV, there'll be another movie that does well that people will talk about. And then one day, guess what? No one will talk about it again. Right. And then you have to go, well, you know, and one of my issues that I've had is the idea that I feel like whenever I talk
Starting point is 00:28:49 about get out, I feel like it puts me right back into 2017. It puts me right back into this place where everything felt so unsure. And, you know, am I a movie star or not? Right. I was in this huge film, but somehow this train felt like it passed me by. I felt like I was witness to so many great things. And in my own life, I couldn't see the joys and the blessings that were happening for me. Right. I was letting everyone else dictate the idea of what it must be like to be a part of this thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm really sitting here like, they're like, man, I know your phone is blowing up right now. You're like, should it be blowing up right now? Right. Should people be seeking me out? Because I was a part of this thing? Yeah. And it's like, no, man, you just
Starting point is 00:29:49 got to, you have to go through life with what makes you comfortable. There are some people who, you know, I was told the other day I did an interview the other day and the interviewer told me that I was, the host told me that I was very humble. I was too humble. And I, you know, I kind of like, you know, thought on that for a minute, like, what does she mean? What does she mean? I'm too humble. And I think that the idea of like, because I don't like to self promote. Yeah. I don't like to tell people what I do and how I do and and all this kind of like those. Right. I rather just show you. Yeah. And if I can show you without telling you, then I feel better about myself. Yes. If I have to tell you and show you, then I kind of
Starting point is 00:30:41 feel like it's suspect for sure. When someone is telling you that people do it all the time. People do it all the time. Yeah, sure. They have to in a way. Yeah. Right. Like you get on Instagram and everything is perfect on Instagram. I know. Everybody's life is perfect on Instagram. It's really fucked up. Everybody's booking something on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But real life, man, it's all sorts of fucked up things that's happening. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by feels. Feels is a premium CBD that will help to keep your head clear and feel your best. It's hassle free and it's delivered directly to your door. CBD naturally helps reduce stress, anxiety, pain and sleeplessness. There's no hangover or
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Starting point is 00:34:02 existing in the world right now. If there is a hell, you can be certain there's a fucking Instagram and how if there's a guarantee that you could take selfies, I would bet a billion dollars you could take selfies and people who see your picture of what like are like, Oh, look at him. Wow, he's really got it made. He only gets his feet chewed off by crocodiles three times a day. I'm over here getting sodomized by a giant beetle 24 seven. What the fuck? But then you know, you're taking a picture of you getting humped by the beetle and someone's like, God, look how fucking happy his beetle is. My beetle hates me. His beetle seems to really enjoy. This is like, you know what I mean? This is the this is the the torment of Instagram because yeah, you're seeing like a fucking
Starting point is 00:34:51 tiny millisecond out of these assholes lives. Yeah, that's it. Like just the right angle for a girl and like all of a sudden she's like a six waist and like a Brazilian butt and you're like, wow, man, that's amazing. But then like, yeah, what happens after that millisecond? You know, you don't see it. It's just like it's like porn, you know, porn, you don't see the beginning and the end of whatever this fucking weird thing you're looking at is you don't see if that were real what those people would have to deal with for their lives after that. Whatever the fuck they did. It's true, man. It's like this is a it's one of the it's definitely a good reason to avoid Instagram or you know what I do? I follow monks. I follow a bunch of fucking like Tibetan Buddhists. So my
Starting point is 00:35:39 Instagram has always got just I can't really understand it. Shit in like Sanskrit and someone going door into November. I don't know. You seem happy. You seem happy. You seem like you'll get me there. So why not? Yeah, man. I you know, you just gave me a thought about what hell what if hell was like this place where you could literally do the one thing you enjoyed the most, but you could do nothing else. But like, eventually you would get tired of it. Like you were like want to do something else, but then you were like a torture to keep doing it. Oh, dude, like Homer Simpson and donuts. Oh, yeah, that actually is. Hold on. You know what? Look at this. Look at this. I just got this book in the mail today. It's called The Treasury of Precious
Starting point is 00:36:27 Qualities, and it's a it's this Tibetan Buddhist text. And you know, it's so funny. Listen, I'll just read this to you. The first chapter is called the value of human existence. And it says. Let me find it. This is fucking intense. It's so funny. You're talking about this. So long enchanted in some sorrow's wilderness, tormented by the cutting of their heads and limbs with seeds of future sorrow hidden in their minds, beings long so foolishly for bliss of higher realms. From there, they fall again, their state states of mind destroying them to wander in three evil realms or as insensate gods or else in barbarous lands with false view views handicapped in places
Starting point is 00:37:23 where the Buddhas have not come on blazing iron grounds without reprieve with dreadful weapons wounded time and time again. The denizens of hell are slain but cannot die still tangled in the web webs of hatred's evil deeds. What need is there to say that hungry ghosts are wracked by one for food they find not even pus or blood or filth and streams and orchards dry before their eyes, their vitals burn in endless pain, their length of life uncertain measured by the strength of obscuration. Beasts prey on one another or each other's food and hunter's quarry they are slain by cruel means are caught and tamed they are reduced to bondage born to great misery what can they do anyway it's like just what is describing what you know the the problem with instagram is
Starting point is 00:38:16 it gives you a sense that there's this possibility you know if you believe the shit you're seeing in the shiny happy people on instagram then you get this sense of like oh i'm fucking up well i'm not in to loom i'm fucking up i'm not in a private plane i'm fucking up i'm not experiencing like whatever you know the generally no one's taking a instagram picture of their messy fucking room that they haven't cleaned in three days and obviously you can't instagram how bad you stink so it's like you're yeah it gives you a sense of oh if i had that i would be happy and it's the biggest fucking lie because it generally isn't the fucking case yeah exactly you know and i and i try it my best now and i'm a lot better with it to like just keep a steady flow of like who and what i follow
Starting point is 00:39:15 and like right you know like i don't stay following the same thing you know over and over unless like it's like constant contact you know like oh yeah i constantly contact you when we talk on a regular on instagram like then you know yeah but for the most part i don't i just don't even participate i'm like this this a voyeur really uh and when i've had enough i'm just like i'm good i'd rather play a game or something on my phone if i'm gonna be diddling like play a brain game or something challenge myself yeah sure you know what i mean but but the trick the trick really is to focus on you to really focus on you and to find those that happiness because in 2017 i couldn't find that happiness for myself you know i couldn't find i i just kept looking at
Starting point is 00:40:05 everything that was going wrong you're saying in the midst of like you know being in one of like the best the greatest horror movies of the last god knows how long you still weren't there it was like there was no uh it wasn't it wasn't soothing you or fixing something well you know you you have these dreams of making it you know or making it whatever it's supposed to mean for the individual but i i had these dreams of making it when i came out here and for me that that the idea of making is is just being of worth being a commodity in terms of like uh of in what i do you know everywhere i've gone i felt like i was of value to the community you know yeah um and and in hollywood i would like to see myself of value you know uh to the community and so i i came here with these
Starting point is 00:41:07 dreams and so the first thing i booked was was jango and chained and i felt like wow i'm working with quentin tarantino not everybody gets to do that every day no so that that's this is my way in this is the thing and that that wasn't the thing you know i mean like everything that we said and the thing got cut out and like a lot of scenes got cut out that we did we worked on it for like three weeks and i was attached to it for like a year yeah and didn't know anything wasn't aware that like nobody gives a shit like if you go do another job right if you're on schedule left contract like nobody gives a shit just go and do the job right i was like oh do i go do the job my agents are like well i don't know it's a chance you might piss off harvey winstein and
Starting point is 00:41:54 quentin tarantino and i was like oh well uh is that a bad thing because i don't know any better is that a bad thing yeah they're like i wouldn't want to do it right i'm like okay well i guess i won't do the thing and so then like i lose these jobs and this confidence in me kind of dwindles a little bit right like so i move on to go do other things and before you know it like i got a family now and and then i'm working at a hotel and i'm not doing the thing that i came here to do yeah and people that i went to grad school with are winning oscars and yeah you know like being in big top movies and i'm like what the fuck is happening right now right and i did some real soul searching man and it was just like i need a sign that i'm here for a reason or i'll just go
Starting point is 00:42:42 and a good friend of mine uh patricia mcgregor brilliant director she called me to come do a play and i went to go do the play and subsequently i had to quit my job in the quitting of my job i booked a new tv series uh commercial yeah all this stuff so things were moving i was like yeah this is it this is what i want yeah this is the thing and and it just kind of like snowballed into like a career where i was able to take care of my family and do nice things and and you know like actually be of value of my community uh but i still didn't feel like i was there yet this idea of there yeah uh and so finally get out happens and like when we were filming it it felt like it was going to be special you know right we knew like jordan was so confident and so
Starting point is 00:43:42 like he just knew it was going to be iconic he was like that's going to be iconic he's calling everything iconic that's going to be iconic that's going to be iconic and i was just like yeah man like i love that in a leader i love the idea of a leader that's confident i'll follow a confident leader over over a cliff man i promise because it's just like yeah man this makes sense like it feels right uh the trailer release so that was in february 2016 the trailer released in september 2016 and the internet lost its mind and that's when we were like whoa yeah okay that was different and then the next that in 2017 and went to sundance and it like premiered at sundance but guess who knew about it who not this guy oh you know what i mean yeah i'm a part of this thing
Starting point is 00:44:38 that was like number one that was like the first like blow i would say right okay then the movie actually premiered but they were like it's not going to be a premiere premiere it's just the screening because they didn't want to call it a premiere okay and i went and we went in these like street clothes and it was a full-on fucking premiere oh man what and like you know it was just like how did that happen i don't know man i have no idea but like it just wasn't communicated and it ended up being this like wildfire dude that just like spread like crazy and um i was doing a play at the kurt douglas at the time and like i just didn't really focus on it because i had something else i could focus on and by the time i came out of it man like
Starting point is 00:45:34 it was just like everything was just hitting me in the face people were doing the fucking run everywhere and you know people were yeah you know quoting the movie everywhere it was all sorts of tremendous artwork that came out of it um so i started catching up on all this when i finished the play and i was about a month and a half out i was like oh wow this is crazy look at all this stuff yeah and and then it was just like that's when the train left i feel like that's when i like i was just i kind of came out of it like okay well what do i do now yeah yeah you know and it was just it there was just no guidance but what i believe what i believe about this industry though is like you know it takes some sort of sponsorship you know to really to really make it
Starting point is 00:46:22 you know it takes somebody to to put their arm around you and say hey kid let me show you right you know you you learn the game you play the game you teach the game in that order wow that's cool i i feel like i have i'm in this like in between space of learning and playing and i'm playing i'm playing the game i'm i'm all out playing the game now yeah but you're here's your this is what this is what i think is so incredible about that city this is why that city will always be one of the coolest places there regardless of like whatever particular shit it's going through the reason it's always going to be one of the coolest places is because you know what you're it doesn't matter what size of fucking fish you are
Starting point is 00:47:08 that pond is so goddamn big there's fucking leviathan swimming around in there you know there's like things that are like so you know no matter you the sense of scale that you might get living in a place that's with a smaller population density fewer artists uh you know it goes out the window so i this is one of the like things that can happen to a perfect a working actor as you start thinking you you find yourself post get out feeling somehow like insecure not insecure but just a sense of like man i need i need to fucking work harder or so or somewhat insignificant because yes i i'm i'm a part of this thing and all of a sudden i'm i'm i don't feel like i'm a part of this thing in fact it got so bad dunkin let me tell you how bad it got bro it got so bad
Starting point is 00:48:02 that most places that i went people thought that i was daniel kaluya the star of the movie fuck and i couldn't believe i couldn't think to myself how is this possible it's only four black men in the movie that's brutal man and how how do you not how do you get us confused brutal and and and it happened everywhere it happened at award shows it happened on the street it happened on the job like it it was so many at this point i just call it being danieled i got danieled oh my god that sucks so bad it all it all sucked it all sucked but here's the thing man you go through that you suck it up you recognize you know the things that you would do differently if you could do it differently and blah blah blah but you you ultimately realize i gotta move
Starting point is 00:49:04 forward with this right i gotta move forward with this thing i think that's why i'm able to joke about it i mean i've been able to joke about it but it's it's just like this idea though like when when i hear somebody talk about an expectation that they might have from my experiences it makes me it just it kind of sends me in a a little wormhole of like oh you think so and then i have to remember to align with my expectations and align with my purpose right you know because expectations only are born from purpose i think you know yeah yes absolutely i like that i mean this is i think this is just a double-edged sword of the profession you've chosen it's just you know you it's there's so many sand traps for an actor like there's the sand trap of
Starting point is 00:50:04 you know fame or getting addicted to the fireworks that come after you're a show that you worked on a year ago or two years ago comes out that's another thing people don't realize is the weird spacing like you shoot a thing and all this time passes and then suddenly wait you almost forgot about it and boom there it is it's there and but you're you've already been away from those people probably in that experience for a while now yeah so that's fucking weird but then then the other that's the sand trap of success where you know or rather the perceived success which is something i think plagues like actors who are like taking off is like you know there's this insane naive judgment that people are putting on you which is that oh yeah you know my god was so like
Starting point is 00:50:55 you did it congratulations and then you have to like you know you either have to pretend yeah i did it isn't it great or like correct them to make them understand no you don't get it this is job to job to job to job it's not like one thing it never ends and i think that's a part of the actor's job too or the person in entertainment is that you're supposed to uh pretend like it's all good and it's all like i love this because people think oh what you do you sit on this cushy you know you just work for however long and you know i don't know like people people have told me that oh man i wish i could be an actor man i i have an easy and it's like it's not a easy fucking thing to do no it's not an easy thing to keep your focus for fucking 13 hours or like
Starting point is 00:51:45 if you're called in at 6 a.m you get up at five depending on the location five four four you get up at four you know you get up at four you going in you know and then all of a sudden you gotta go through the works and everything like that everything is go go go then everything is stop yeah and then it's like you don't know if it's stopping for 10 minutes 30 minutes an hour two hours week but when they call you back you better damn sure be ready oh you can't fuck up you cannot fuck up that's the thing this is like it's such a high level it's like you know it's like when you're like when you i don't again i don't remember the names of these players but you look at the people dropping the ball last night in that game number 10 that haunts them for the
Starting point is 00:52:29 number 10 drops the ball haunts them for the rest of their life but you know that's the other thing yeah i remember when i ended up on i don't remember the first time i got to see a movie being filmed i wasn't in it i was dating someone in the movie but i remember going in there with all the things that your friends were telling you like all right here we go i can't wait to see this like romantic glitzy cushy bullshit and then you realize this is like the most fucking technical like like like completely in there's no it's not like you're filming it from like point a to point b to point c yeah it's like we need to get you walking to the car and we're you need to step on this market this exact time and then get in the car and shut the door you're
Starting point is 00:53:17 going to do that 40 fucking times and you know that kind of and you can't fuck up the car is going to fuck up someone's gonna fuck up with the lighting something's gonna fuck up with an extra something's gonna but you can't fuck up because you're the fucking actor so you can't fuck up and if you do you know people not now everybody's pissed because you you've cost us time now god like if you remember did you see the uh the shining documentary when stanley cubrick's just tormenting shelly duvall i heard about it i heard about it oh god oh god she came out at the wrong time they got snowblowers you know they're doing all like it was the maze scene she comes out of the fucking wrong time cubrick just just like doesn't eviscerator reach i think he just goes like shelly
Starting point is 00:54:04 shelly shelly and it's just like oh the having stanley cubrick chastising you yeah it's a brutal job it's a technical job and it's a fucking boring job too right you're like sitting around all the time if you're sitting around and you know you're trying to do things to keep yourself occupied but also trying to keep your mind on the job you know yeah because it's it's still a job to do it and it's and it's hard you know like it's it's not easy i might say it's hard it's not it's not an easy task to do and not just anybody can do it you know what i mean it's hard man it's it's i think it's safe to say it's hard i mean it's there there's a reason it's only a few people ever ever even get a part ever it's because it's it's so hard and the people you're up against
Starting point is 00:54:55 are all incredibly good at what they do and so yeah it's a it's a brutal job i and i like i think that's a and actors you're right they have to kind of play cheerleaders for the movie that they're in or they have to you know play cheerleaders for their own career or whatever and so you yeah man then they're actors so they're fucking good at it so like because our job is to keep people in disbelief right keep people suspended in disbelief i i'll give you a good example i work with an actor and he's in one of my favorite movies of all time i won't say what it is okay who he is but my favorite movies all time and i was like and i and we were together we're about to do something and i made a reference to the movie and i like you know i thought it would be so perfect and he
Starting point is 00:55:42 looked at me and he said he looked dead in my eyes he said i hated my experience on that movie wow and now i changed the movie for me now it's like but if he would have just did his fucking job and said oh yeah man that was fucking great i would still love that movie i would still be able to look at that movie the same right because i want to be suspended in disbelief in that movie like it's fucking funny look most of the time you use the internet without a vpn you're probably gonna be fine but do you really want that feeling after you use the computer at a cafe that same feeling used to get when you had a one night stand and didn't wear a condom or use protection you know
Starting point is 00:56:36 probably be okay right you don't want that you don't want to worry if some hacker and some stall use some packet sniffer to siphon up all your data to sell it in the hell markets in the dark web express vpn creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet hackers can steal your sensitive data it would take a hacker with this super computer over a billion years to get past express vpn's encryption and you know what if they want your data that bad let them have it it's easy to use you fire up the app click one button to get protected works on all devices i love it because it's simple makes me feel safe you just press the button you can also say what country you want to be in which is pretty cool and interesting the way it changes what kind
Starting point is 00:57:26 of news you get get a vpn protect yourself we're not living in the 80s anymore people are just sucking up data like spaceships flying over just sucking innocent people up and flying them off and to to to meteor mines secure your online data today by visiting express vpn.com slash dunkin that's ex press vpn.com slash dunkin and you can get an extra three months free express vpn.com slash dunkin because i want to be suspended in disbelief in that movie like it's like a funny yeah yeah god that's so true that's so true some people they during the course of filming a movie they are living in fucking hell that they can't get out of it is horrible they feel they might feel like the opposite of how you felt you can get out which is like you're in a movie and you start getting the sense this
Starting point is 00:58:43 isn't gonna be good you're like i'm gonna be in a shitty fucking movie like i'm about to be in a garbage fucking movie because the this just sucks and yeah that's brutal too i mean yeah acting is a brutal fucking job psychologically it's a it's a it's a torturous when we played when i played a slave in jango there was a moment where i was literally like you know i was behind jamie fox in the movie um i played a character named big seed and i had to pee really bad one like this is like one of the first takes that we were doing of the shoot and i had to pee so bad because we had took so long and it had us in these chains just sitting there waiting like you know because the camera could be ready at any moment right but still nonetheless i'm sitting here this black man
Starting point is 00:59:41 in chains in 2011 thinking to myself like what the fuck man what am i doing you know psychologically i'm like fucking going through it because i'm thinking to myself like why am i doing this man like this is and i chalked it up to pan dudes but even that like don't even feel like pan dudes it just felt like you know what i mean like because i i i i can see how it uh you know how one thing led to the next thing kind of like so i see why i did jango like i understand why i did it like i'm all for it but i can tell you the feeling i had when i was there and i had to pee and i had to ask somebody permission to like unlock my chains so i could go and still kind of pissed on myself trying to get to the woods because there was no bathroom like
Starting point is 01:00:37 who wants to go through that who actually wants to go through that yeah who actually is thinking themselves oh man acting is fucking great man i'm so glad i went to yell for this yeah yeah you know i mean like it's it's it's so it's it's it's it's this thing man and i'm not trying to you know take anybody's you know suspending disbelief out of no i don't i don't think you know i i don't think you i mean i think anyone who's like you know a fan of film and is like looked into it a little deeper knows exactly what you're talking about i mean that's a part of why we love actors we don't just love y'all because you're so good at being other people i think there's the like we sort of at least in there's an intuition that like oh the magic that you all are capable of working
Starting point is 01:01:32 it comes at a price it's like a very yeah it's a very difficult form of of magic i mean um it's so like my friends who are actors the amount of preparation that goes into you know even the smallest roles the amount they just pour their lives into it it's just yeah so do you do you do you think part of the what makes it so difficult is that you know most really good actors like you have had experience in theater where there isn't someone like cutting every few seconds where you have to go through yeah all the way and so you get to fully become the role without having to try to be this role while you're sitting for like 10 seconds at a time yeah yeah yeah absolutely i think that being able to uh being able to to find the character i mean
Starting point is 01:02:32 something that's interesting about theater at least to me the most interesting thing about theater is the idea that like you're not the only one that's going to play this role you're not the only person that's going to touch and say these words right so now you have to make it uniquely you you know uh you know in in tv and film i mean like it's rare but there are remakes there are you know so you get to like but there are new words there's a new script nobody like does a script for word for word remake you know i've i've not seen that before or maybe i i don't know but you know the idea is that in theater you literally just get to do it the way you would do it right because it's it's got to be you yeah uh if you do it if you're trying to do it like if
Starting point is 01:03:22 i'm trying to do othello like paul roberson then you know that that's going to be me doing paul roberson it's not going to be me being othello right you know and that's what i think i did the first time i did othello it's like i was trying to be paul roberson i was like oh there's demota but i like try to talk all deep and i tell you what i wish i wish i could say the first time i did othello that's what i wish now it necessarily be the role they pick for me but you know what i mean i wish i could say the oh you know the first time i did hamlet i you know and also i don't know who the person you just mentioned is i mean like this is to me this is the this is the problem that this that happens when you become um a professional is that you're always you're around
Starting point is 01:04:07 professionals a lot and you're around other people who probably went to Yale uh you're around other people who and so it's easy to forget this is the same with like spiritual teachers you know sometimes i'll be talking to like right this is some of these ramdas teachers and i realize like these people i don't know if they would call themselves enlightened or if it's fair to call anyone that necessarily but these people have literally found a way to be peaceful for years at a time where if i can go a day without falling into some neurotic vortex that's a good fucking day you know what i mean and i think sometimes they it's not like they forget but they just you know i that's what i think it's cool about getting to talk to like professionals
Starting point is 01:04:53 is to like you don't realize how fucking cool that is to be like you know the first time i played othello yeah you know what an accomplishment that is like what a you know all those things but really doesn't matter does it it's over that's not happening anymore that's all gone there's just right now everything after this and that's it so all that stuff who cares nothing's there it's you got to keep going and you have to keep getting better and that's it if you want to if you want to you know be an actor yeah yeah and i think that you know like we were saying earlier living in your experience fully really does feed you out in your acting you know when i was uh one of the things i had to deal with especially during covid and things like that was the idea
Starting point is 01:05:43 that sometimes you're just not working like yeah you know i told you like 2014 things kind of took off i hadn't had really that much time off since 2014 uh you know given the amount of projects and stuff yeah so now i have a little more time on my hands and i have to live fully in what i have and i have two beautiful children and a loving wife yes and you know like this in three dogs now like three yeah dude yeah dude it's it's a whole thing you got a covid dog we got two covid dogs oh my god i don't know what that my erin and i were talking about that a lot of our friends are getting dogs like pandemic dogs i don't know what happened man it's like who let the dogs out literally like but they are all over the streets and they need homes yeah and that's
Starting point is 01:06:35 beautiful good for you and you've been also man you've got a beautiful house and like you know yeah i know like that to me that's that can actually be a little challenging sometimes because challenging in a good way but you you know what i'm talking about when you hit those moments of bliss with your family and it's like the whatever the universe is resonating in the most simple way around you and your kids and your wife and you realize this is you can't do better than this no matter what i don't care what the fuck it is nothing will nothing will ever be this this nothing will ever feel this good as far as accolades or getting better at a thing or whatever nothing beats this and so then that's where i sometimes am faced with a strange sense of like
Starting point is 01:07:29 and what the what am i doing you know what i mean like is yeah the the desire to just be with your family live a simple life you know and and and and make that your fundamental practice you know pops into my head sometimes but i love creating stuff and i love making the pockets i love getting to have conversations like this but exactly and i don't want to hierarchize the experience in the world or anything like that but there does seem to be a little bit of a i don't know an accidental kind of trickery happening in the world where people are being shown via instagram or you know lifestyles of the rich and famous or their own fantasies this version of reality where you've made it when and and and it's trickery because some people who are crazy enough
Starting point is 01:08:24 to be called into that lifestyle they make it and then they realize that they nothing nothing really has changed emotionally for them nothing but then and whereas if you're just hanging out with your kids and your wife somehow you've made it but what did you do you didn't do a you didn't go to Yale you like yeah you came inside of someone cool yeah and we're was able and was able to build something with that person yeah i'm sorry i didn't mean to reduce our like fatherhood to to you know the way no no no it happened out clearly you gotta work your way through the other shit you don't just get to come and then retire would that would that be a sweet gig though it's called a sperm donor yeah that's true but you gotta it's a lot of requirements so
Starting point is 01:09:19 i thought like maybe you just like go and do it and then be done but no it's like a whole thing you gotta bring paperwork really gotta prove who you are because that makes sense iq gotta be a certain level or something like that i you know because i when i got cancer i had to like put my jizz on ice and they now i'm still connected to that sperm bank and i get updates when they've got new sperm it's the funniest thing in these emails like we gotta oh we've got a professor we've got professor jizz i would love it if it was like emojis that came with that like the little like emoji with glasses like look what we got you guys it's basically like that like and i i if you i was too lazy to like sign up like i wanted to get jizz but the you you know i think you can go to
Starting point is 01:10:08 videos of them being like hello i love music i know how to play the cello oh my god of course of course i think that like you know just to hop on what you were saying earlier you know about balance the balance you know i have this thought that life when we look at it um it's sort of like the process of of growing a plant right or or planting the seed we water it we make sure it gets sunlight we make sure that you know when it grows it grows and we take care of it as it grows but then it bears fruit and we enjoy the fruit yeah right we enjoy the labor of our work to get to that fruit yes and i think that for me the planting the seeds part is really enjoyable when i'm with my kids and my wife and we're
Starting point is 01:11:11 building memories that we'll think about in 10 20 years and that will be the fruit of the labor that we put in yeah when it comes to work and the balance of work i'm still figuring it out i'm still like thinking you know but when i'm playing the seed at work i'm playing the seeds of like when i'm auditioning when i'm putting things on tape when i'm meeting somebody new for the first time like i'm really trying to make an impression so that 10 20 years down the line you know whatever i've been doing that is watering the seeds whatever my past work is shedding light on the things that i put seeds on so that something can grow beautifully yeah uh you know so like in my friendships in my family you know i'm
Starting point is 01:12:05 i'm really just trying to create moments so that you know years down the line you know i am a value to my community you know right uh in the in the in memoriam section of the Oscars man i want them to play a video clip of me man i don't want to i want to just be a picture you want the fucking clip i want the clip oh yeah oh yeah i get it showing the clip of me and not just a running dude you know what i mean like i want a real fucking moment like where i'm like whipping around taking my glasses off and saying we we want we want the whole truth you know what probably by the time you die it's not going to be a video of you it's going to be a you in a hologram with an ai that's replicated your personality because you signed some fucking contract yeah
Starting point is 01:13:02 in a movie and you didn't pay enough attention to it warner brothers literally owns the ai representation of you which it will probably say hey i just want everyone to know did my meat vehicle die yes but i'm still here i'm fine and i'm doing i i'm going to keep acting for infinity because i've become a drone owned by warner brothers i think a lot of you actors that's what you is going to happen to you i think that like that's one of the the real uh scary things about what's happening right now with some of the deep fake shit everyone's like people just don't realize how that's going to decimate uh the industry not now but i'd say in 10 10 years 15 years from now that's going to like be apocalyptic for actors it's going to be apocalyptic apocalyptic for a lot
Starting point is 01:14:00 of things because i mean i don't know about you but i've gotten at least three or four messages from friends who have you know sent videos and i thought it was them it was their voice it was it was their faces it was their bodies and they were like yo sign up with this girl give her invest ten dollars and she'll turn it into a thousand like stuff like that and it was like whoa wait a minute whoa whoa whoa whoa what's going on here you know like to a point where it's like wait what you're you'd wait the deep fakes of your friends were trying to get you into some kind of scam yeah what yeah dude like just regular people it's not even like they're famous just regular people i've not gotten one of those that is terrifying yeah dude yeah what it's
Starting point is 01:14:59 and they're out there man they're out there oh my god yeah that's that's so crazy to me i mean that's the that's just that's the end of everything dude do you realize the best thing you can do for yourself is is to literally hang on to the real relationships you have with people like literally the people that you can call on the phone and say hey how you doing let's meet for lunch like those people because it's just going to get to a point man between deep fakes and the metaverse and you know freaking covid like stay at home orders man we gotta we gotta hold on to one another man because pretty soon they're gonna have us all in these fucking pods and we're just gonna see each alone the internet oh my god i mean yeah fake fucking bodies and shit live in the lie that we
Starting point is 01:15:50 see on instagram every day in the actual world yeah yeah i know what you mean i i yeah that was one of my like paranoid moments during the pandemic early on i don't think anymore but early on i thought oh maybe this is just what happens when you die you know like you die the world seems exactly the same way but all of a sudden you could only communicate to people mostly in 2d space and you know the way that you're you're seeing it as technology or whatever but you're dead you're in the bardo and this none of this is real and but then you know i just realized that's just why am i fucking letting my mind tell me this shit you know like why am i listening to that part of my mind i have a very very like powerfully poetic manipulative shadow side that if i let
Starting point is 01:16:39 it you start talking i'll be like under the bed scared to death but i know what you mean it's like you know what what is after all this bullshit that we're going through what do we have that is stable or what do we have that is at least more stable than the week to week you know drama and chaos that keeps appearing and shaking the fabric of society and i think that yeah it's your friends it's your community it seems obvious but somehow it's easy to forget that yeah man yeah no you you you you it's easy to forget because again when we look at instagram everything is so fucking perfect that we don't even decide we've decided already that that person has a perfect life and i'm not even a part of it so therefore you know i'm not a part of what i'm
Starting point is 01:17:39 seeing on instagram so therefore i'm not a part of this person's fucking perfect life right but what it really takes is a phone call to say hey how are you you'll learn that things aren't so perfect right you know yeah you'll learn that oh i actually am a value because i actually care yeah you know yeah you're saying like if you fall prey to the instagram i mean actually if you're fucking instagram is making you seem too happy you you you're really like that's a self-destructive instagram like you know i i don't know the details of what happened to the young lady recently who jumped out of her window oh right who worked for one of those outlets but you know everything one of the conversations that i saw around it was like you don't know with somebody everything can
Starting point is 01:18:32 look so perfect everything can look so perfect she was miss usa she was a lawyer yeah she was a correspondent who got to interview stars yeah 30 years old healthy hanging out with lady gaga hanging out with lady gaga one of zendaya's favorite like people to interview her yeah so you know like that that all doesn't sound good that yeah that fills up about 10 minutes of space in my brain and then i think about the rest of the fucked up stuff in the world yeah right and now i can't take it so that's why you gotta that's why it's important man no matter what it's looking like no matter if you think that oh i haven't talked to this person in years or i haven't seen this person in so long if you think about them check on them you know what i love that man i i'm gonna start
Starting point is 01:19:28 doing that because sometimes i'll think about somebody and i'll think i'm gonna check on them and in fact once a few years ago that did happen to me man not to give some morality fucking story here i did have that impulse it popped into my head i haven't talked to them in a while i wonder how they're doing didn't follow through on that they it like the then they were dead in like six days you know what i mean like you know they like they like and you know that's something i like get to live with is that weird haunting like whoa man yeah was i sensing something shit what the fuck why didn't i do that it'd be so easy to call them i guess sometimes though we feel intrusive like if you haven't talked to someone in a while even though you
Starting point is 01:20:19 might be friends even though you love them sometimes you feel like i don't want to fucking just call them out of the blue but dunking being from the south you know just as much as i do that everybody appreciates a nice how you're doing you know everybody at least in the south where where i know the south everybody appreciates a nice stop by a nice like you know catch up because they it's not like anybody's rushing to get anywhere or do anything it's just a hey man you know just a nice little stopping chat people love that you know when i was in alabama when i was growing up in st louis man people love people sitting out on their porch you're just walking by you're just like hey how you doing and it's just a quick little something
Starting point is 01:21:06 in me older people will keep you there longer but you know for the most part it's nice it's a good feeling that somebody's saying hey i'm thinking about you enough to take my time out to check up on you yeah you know because as you get older i noticed too and i noticed this when i was younger too older people always appreciated it because at the older you get man like you just kind of get pushed out of that loop unless you jay-z you know what i mean like you just get kind of pushed out of the fold and nobody's thinking about you yeah because they want the new shiny thing that's in front of you you're invisible you're invisible yeah you get older you get invisible you get set in your ways you don't want to go out you don't want to do new things no so you get older
Starting point is 01:21:51 so when somebody calls you and says hey i'm thinking about you it's the best how how much do you appreciate that it's the best it's the best it's the best i don't know it's so true i it's so it's so true i it's like i don't i never it's always cool when someone does that to me it's always cool no matter what you're like whoa holy shit yeah that's so nice i'm so fucking busy trying to be busy and all of a sudden somebody's like hey man take a minute out i'm thinking about you oh shit okay thank you yeah what's up and i can do the same it's people who i think about my journey and the people i think about man i probably haven't talked to in 20 years and you know and it depends some some people you don't need to talk to again you know you can just
Starting point is 01:22:39 kind of think i'm from afar and put good energy out there for them you know but if some people it would probably make their day if i would just call and say hey i'm thinking about you yeah totally accept your ex-girlfriends accept my ex-girl you cannot call not when you're married not when you're married dude like it's just not it's just not fair i i used to be of a different mind man but you know i've grown to understand and learn that it's just just don't do it man it just keeps things peaceful yeah right but you know one thing i do now that you taught me this is like this is what's cool about having friends is they give you things that stick with you for the rest of your life but you know the thing you're telling me you touch a tree
Starting point is 01:23:28 oh yeah i now when i touch trees i think of people i love can you tell people about that because it's the coolest fucking thing ever so i have this theory about trees and i'm pretty sure it's probably something out there on it but uh trees are like rooted into the earth right they are rooted into like the roots touch each other man it's like electricity the water and all the stuff they they have to do it to live so when these roots they're channels they communicate with each other so if i'm at a tree here in los angeles then i can communicate with a tree that's back in st louis i can communicate with a tree that's in new york yeah you know like because the roots are all connected they're all in the earth yeah you know so the next time you're out i challenge
Starting point is 01:24:20 you all to go and touch a tree think about somebody send them a message see if that person contacts you in the next like however long it takes for for me it took four days for each person that i've like done that for and i'm not somebody who's out there doing it all the time but the times that i have done it it's taken four days at the most for a person to contact me that i've thought about that is so cool yeah it works it really does man it's crazy it's crazy it it so i just a few days ago interviewed this like a llama um you know a tibetan teacher and tibetan buddhist she wasn't tibetan but she was telling me the exact same thing except through meditation so the idea being that when you meditate it when in tibetan buddhism time and space aren't linear
Starting point is 01:25:20 they're like everything's happening at the same time i guess so it's the same idea except you could do the same thing for like buddhas you could do the same thing for because when you're when you're when you're meditating and you drop in whatever the place is there's a lot of words for it you are in the same you become the same thing as everyone who's ever lived and is going to live in the future and so in that moment you're like part of this network where you can send ping people basically you know you can like you know ask for help prayer is what they you know it's generally called this prayer but it's an interesting uh concept with the i like the trees because it's a little easier to touch a tree than to meditate yeah yeah yeah you know i got this uh
Starting point is 01:26:11 i got a gift from uh uh warner for christmas this year and it's called a core have you ever heard of this thing nope okay so it's just like this little like oblong ball looking thing with these sensors on the top of it and it connects to an app and the app does guided meditations and you put your thumbs on it and it starts the the core this little oblong ball and it starts to vibrate and what basically is doing is it's giving you a focal point to concentrate on and it's kind of like uh what your mom was talking about in midnight gospel right about feel your fingertips oh yeah do you feel your fingertips like can you feel it it but it's in the form of this vibrating machine and you don't lose your concentration you're listening to what they're
Starting point is 01:27:02 saying but like anytime your mind tries to travel the ball is vibrating and it's like teaching you uh these breathing techniques so you know it's one called the box breath where you breathe in for you hold it oh yeah let go for you hold it then you breathe back in for you know so box breathe in they do the reset breath where you breathe in for you let go eight you know it's like all these different things and they're guiding you in the meditation it's so like I never thought I would be in a meditation like that uh I meditate but never like this man to a point where I'm like awake by the end of it and actually energized and I'm focusing on my breath it's never I've never had that type of experience before so have you you've been doing
Starting point is 01:27:53 this regularly with this thing yes yes wow that's great man that's great yeah man yeah it may yeah that kind of stuff I've I'm I have a book on it I think it's called pranayama it's it's it's you know it's like various weird methods of breathing breathing through your nose very important um that there's a great book I wish I could remember the name I was reading on breath it was saying like people who breathe through their nose who have formerly been mouth breathers when you start breathing through your nose it'll literally change the shape of your face like the the effect of just breathing in through your mouth is causing you know a certain type of facial characteristic and that if you start breathing through your nose it changes everything like the breath is the
Starting point is 01:28:45 fundamental thing that keeps us here outside of our you know our mother's bringing us here and our father bringing us here breath is what keeps you alive and it's the most overlooked fucking thing do you don't think about it you breathe all day long you pay no attention you assume you're breathing the right way because it's how it's you're alive but yeah when like people start altering their breathing patterns then a lot of diseases go away some like allergies that people have really awful allergies that can go away it's a cool book that's interesting man I'm gonna look up this core thing I want one yeah dude it's it I would say it's worth it man I I want to get you know Sarah really isn't into like the technology and stuff so she can you know
Starting point is 01:29:29 she's like crazy with the healing stuff now too so like she can do all that stuff man she can get her hands so hot so hot yeah Christ yeah Marcus's wife is a healer um like super advanced person yeah in general yeah that stuff's bizarre they can heat their hands up what the fuck is that that's that's one of the things they I think it's called tomo or something like the monks can like heat their body up so much that it melts snow around them uh it's so weird Marcus hey wow we're gonna be in town um we're flying in on sunday and we're in town for a week can we hang out yes awesome okay cool yes great awesome oh my goodness man I'm so glad you just dropped that on me just now like that just like I'm let's just start this whole thing all over again man
Starting point is 01:30:24 I got a whole new wind no man no that's this was a this was fantastic I really appreciate you being honest about acting and a career out there because I just think it's a good thing for all of us to hear it's a reminder to all of us that you know not to pay too much attention to Instagram uh not to get too caught up in like this fantasy that there's any kind of place in the world where there isn't like suffering you know I I'm so glad you but also it's like you're such a good you're such a good actor man like you don't even realize it all my friends are you don't realize that y'all don't realize how magical you are because you you do you realize it I think but just when you were talking about uh raising and just raising in the sun the you didn't see your face I mean the you became
Starting point is 01:31:14 that person just in that second you were like it's the weirdest thing to watch from those of us who that's not our path it's just such a bizarre thing to watch so I hope you never stop doing it never now I will never stop can you tell people where to find you Marcus oh man you can find me on instagram at Marcus Henderson 314 uh and you can also find me on twitter at Marcus acts 314 uh you know uh I haven't done the tiktok thing yet don't I'm not don't fuck with tiktok I mean no no offense anybody out there but that did I've never found a more manipulative satanic technology in my life man it's almost thrilling how evil it is but I'm I'm like I'm really looking forward like if it gives a lot of people jobs and stuff I don't want to see people lose their jobs but I
Starting point is 01:32:05 just want to see like what's gonna bring tiktok down like what's the next thing somebody's gonna come up with that's what I'm excited about I'm excited for the next thing yeah me too I mean yeah the next tiktok the next something that's just gonna like bring tiktok down the level Jesus it's gonna be facebook was there and then instagram or you know instagram and vine and stuff and twitter came and like not instagram uh not facebook down and not she was like uh we don't need you anymore facebook then tiktok came and it's just like instagram whatever yeah I know my well yeah Erin makes fun of me because I look at instagram reels and she'll be like oh you're looking at reels oh please you're so old like this shit's still new what are you talking about
Starting point is 01:32:53 oh reels yeah what are you no it's tiktok but I went on tiktok and I found myself like looking up after like an hour and a half and just you know like this is like some kind of shitting harry potter it's like a cursed mirror or something stay away it's the worst man it's the worst all right marcus thank you so much it's very nice catching up with you on here thank you i'll see you soon harry christina that was marcus hinderson everybody you can find all the links to marcus at dougatrustle.com big thank you to our sponsors and god bless you for listening i love y'all so much and i will see you next week with a conversation with dr drew and his daughter pauline they just wrote a book together until then harry christina a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop
Starting point is 01:33:49 jc penny family get-togethers to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed up with brands like lis clayborne worthington stafford and jay furar oh and thereabouts for kids super cute and extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at jcp.com all dressed up everywhere to go jc penny a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny family get-togethers to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed up with brands like lis clayborne worthington stafford and jay furar oh and thereabouts for kids super cute and extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're never short on options
Starting point is 01:34:39 at jcp.com all dressed up everywhere to go jc penny

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