The Big Flop - Listen now: The Great Creators

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Become a more inventive, imaginative you. Every week, Guy Raz (creator of How I Built This) leads a deep dive conversation with someone at the top of their game. From conquering stage fright to learning to be more present and focused, you'll learn how each guest mastered their craft and ultimately became more successful in life. The result? An arsenal of tools and techniques you can apply to your own life and work, allowing you to harness your talent and become a better version of yourself.Listen to the newest season of The Great Creators on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts: Wondery.fm/TGC_IPSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Do you ever feel like there's a more creative version of you somewhere in there, just searching for the right inspiration? Or maybe you're curious about how some of your favorite movies, TV shows, or albums were made. I'm Guy Raz, and if you answered yes to any of those questions, I think you're going to love the great creators. Each week, I sit down with a world-class actor, musician, or performer for an in-depth conversation about their life, their craft, and where they find their ideas. I've spoken with Tom Hanks, Stephen Colbert, Bjork, Ron Howard, Kelly Clarkson, just to name a few.

And when I recently saw that Ted Lasso will be coming back for a fourth season, I thought back to my conversation with the star of that show, Jason Sudeikis. He was incredibly open about the impact that character has had on his own life and vice versa. I'm about to play a clip from our episode with Jason Sudeikis on The Great Creators. And while you're listening to the show, follow The Great Creators on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, watching that first season and the story line behind it, you can't help but identify

with what's going on in that character's life and obviously your public figure. And you've been through very public turmoil because we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture where, you know, normally if somebody has marital strife or challenges, it's, you know, maybe their co-workers would know or it's private, but when you're a public figure, it's in the newspapers. Obviously, this character was written before all that happened, but you've been through this in a public way, you know, before. How do you do comedy and do your public work and make people laugh when things are kind of falling apart in your personal life? How do you compartmentalize those things?

Yeah, I mean, it depends. Your definition of falling apart, sometimes things need to fall apart so they can be rebuilt in a better way. It's like a bone breaking. Up to a certain age, it heals stronger, right? So one has nothing to do with the other. The storylines were just, were always there. And maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that wasn't intentional either. And one thing that you know when you live long enough, and if you're smart enough, I think,

to listen to enough people, that we're all going through a lot of the same stuff. Parallel thinking is one thing, but parallel existing is alive and well. And that's really all we were, I know I personally was tapping into. It was like anything that's gone on for me personally is probably still in the gestation period.

And that Ted Lasso is like the destination that I arrived at through the journey that I'd had up to that point in my life. With the exception of being able to play a parent more realistically, more authentically, the majority of it is all based on things that existed as much of them prior to even having the good fortune of Olivia being a part of my life, you know what I mean? And yet at the same time, to your question, all of us on camera have received these, when we get approached, people will say to us,

the show saved me, you know? And I've said this in the press, but it's the truth, man. It's like, I will say back, me too. And people will laugh. And yet I mean it. I mean it just like they mean it. They're like, I mean it. I go, I like they mean it They're like I mean it I go I know you know or if they have something to say I go You know like some kind words is like I'm being I'm being serious. It's like me too like and

One of the neat things about the show is the quite is the quality of the questions that we get and the questions we get about this show man the stories are tremendous and and they're And they're tremendous in their size and scope whether it be someone that's decided not to take their own life because they're tremendous in their size and scope, whether it be someone that's decided not to take their own life because they're a parent and they're thinking about what Ted's gone through

and what the father's gone through, or people just being like, I'm gonna be nicer at work. You know, people in hospital rooms putting up belief posters, like all that stuff is like, that, like my personal life, who gives a shit? Like, you know, it's like, that's, like, that's, it doesn't come from that. There's no, the show isn't made from anywhere but love.

You know, it is an enthusiasm. I'm curious if that was, I mean, you mentioned like the belief, I know a very good friend of mine who's like, super cynical, really successful and accomplished academic, but the show's just totally transformed him and accomplished academic, but the shows just totally transformed him. I mean, just the conversations we've had. He has a believe poster in his office. I mean, somebody you would never imagine, you know, just super.

But there's something about this show that has resonated. And at a time that is unkind, we're living in an unkind moment in human history for a variety of reasons. And I wonder if you saw this show deliberately as a vehicle to kind of do something earnest, and to basically kind of say, well, actually, the world can look like this if we, I don't know, I mean, was any of that part of your thinking? We didn't sit down and say, this is gonna be this, this is gonna be that.

But every time a joke would come up that was rooted in sarcasm or cynicism or apathy towards someone else's story, just cut. Oh, you couldn't even, we didn't, they wouldn't even get typed. I remember there being a joke at Higgins's expense, like season one, and it got as far as a script that we were doing it in rehearsal,

and it was just like, what is that? What is that? It's like, you know, like, I can't even think of a good metaphor. It's like, you know, hearing a vibra slap in like, you know, Mozart, it's like, wait, that doesn't, he didn't write that song, that sound, like, that's not his. I know, I can tell you the pure intention of the character

was, by the time we were talking about doing it as a narrative, was to not play an energy of, I didn't think, how could I improve on, if you just use David Brent and Michael Scott, which the energy of the first commercial would probably fall under that archetype. How was I gonna, those guys are geniuses. Those things are iconic and they're from the same DNA.

It's bonkers, but then also on the dramatic side, we had had all these anti-heroes of Tony Soprano and Don Draper and we'd fallen in love with all these quote unquote bad guys. Walter White. But nobody wants to be like any of those people. But I disagree. I think there, it doesn't, it may not been the intention, but like, Banana Republic and coming out with a Mad Men, you know, fashion line would, would, would say that you're probably wrong.

Well, I mean, elements of that, but, but who they were, their character, like you don't aspire to. Well, you pick out what you want. I mean, yes, you know, some people wanted to be, you know, like get back at people like Tony Soprano or have away with women, you know, like Don Draper, you know, or be able to hold his liquor like Don Draper. But I understand your point, yes. But I knew I just didn't want to do that and we couldn't add to that conversation. Like I wanted to play something different. And I also wanted to play something where I didn't swear. Those are like the two leons and that lent itself. But those were all in harmony with this overall vibe that yeah, I just didn't want to like snark out anymore.

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