Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Vocal exercises. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Oh no, it's a mess. Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Hi.
I was giggling because I tried to do it quietly. They're going to hear it. I'm going to leave that in. Oh, you're going to leave that in. Okay. Today's episode is someone I idolize as an actor. His name is Billy Crudup. He is a Tony and Emmy Award winning actor. He's very sparkly and magic-y. He really is. Yeah, he's very special. Almost famous watchman, big fish, sleepers.
Of course, The Morning Show. New season is currently out now on Apple Plus TV. And he is in a new movie in theaters November 4th. Now in theaters now and on Netflix on December 5th. Jay Kelly. And it's got the Clune Doctor in it. It sure does. And Adam Sandler. It's a big movie. It's a big old movie. No bomb back. Yes. Incredible. Please enjoy Billy Crudup.
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I got you guys a pumpkin spice latte if you want one. No, I don't know what that is. You did? How charming. Are they? I've never had one. This smell really puts me off. That's not a real taste. Distilled pumpkin? Pumpkin spice?
Well, no, there's pumpkin spice. That's real. All spice is real.
Okay.
These are real spices, you guys.
But how do you make pumpkin spice? That's a great question. Is it from the peel? Like you dry out the peel? That's a great question. The seeds?
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Chapter 2: How did Billy Crudup's upbringing influence his career choices?
She is in town. She's got a premiere for a show she did. And a couple of days ago, she got a star on the Walk of Fame.
Oh.
So we had a ceremony for that. Were you in attendance? I certainly was.
I didn't go to my walk. I know. That was embarrassing.
Yeah.
You were working out, I guess. I was busy lifting. Sure.
I was in the middle of a sack.
Well, dude, then that's the total bro excuse. What are we going to do?
I mean, I could lift that stone. I could say goodbye to these gains. But they're temporary and that star is permanent. I'll get to it. I went to hers. You were there? That's generous. And then there were protesters there. The anti-vax community hates us. So they were in full force screaming at her. What a day to remember. I'm sad I missed it. Holy cow.
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Chapter 3: What pivotal moment made Billy realize he wanted to act?
And he came up to me and said, hey, hey, nice to meet you. I'm like, hey, nice to meet you too. And he said, I do impressions. And it turns out he did one before, and I think it was Kimmel or somebody else had forwarded it to me. And I gave him a critique back on it. Okay. Because it was him doing you. It was him doing my character on The Morning Show, Corey Ellison. Ah, specific.
So him doing Corey, played by you. Exactly, because there is no Billy here. I know that. I transform.
No, we're here for Billy. Billy only.
Yeah, Billy's boring.
Boring Billy. Oh, Boring Billy. You had Disco. Disco as a kid. That's correct.
And Boring Billy, I guess. And Boring Billy as an adult. Actually, that's a good way to be an adult, I think.
All right. So now, as you arrived here today, did you have any fear that I would tell this story that I always tell about you? You must.
I did not. It didn't even cross your mind.
Why would you do that? It's so inappropriate.
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Chapter 4: How does Billy Crudup reflect on his relationship with his father?
That reminds me of another story, but I'll save that one. So my grandfather took it upon himself to say, we're going to have lunch every week at the same restaurant.
Top of the Hill?
Yeah. It was not Top of the Hill. It was the Ratskeller, which is sort of underground and was a restaurant when he was at Chapel Hill in the 40s and was a restaurant when my dad was at Chapel Hill in the 60s. And your dad's a third. My dad's a third. My brother's the fourth. So a lot of tradition happening here. There certainly was for a while. Actually, I did Finding Your Roots with Skip.
Have you done that? I did it. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. I mean, it's a very unique experience. I confess the way that I processed it when he showed me the family tree, which dated back to Charlemagne in 700 something, whatever, France. Yeah.
which means essentially I come from a long line of bureaucrats because they all filled out the paperwork, marriage certificates, death certificates, birth certificates. That's how he can trace all that stuff. You're right. So I didn't feel any particular pride. Did he say that's the farthest back he's been able to get someone? No. And it turns out most people are descendant of Charlemagne.
Like Genghis Khan.
Yeah. I felt great about it until I looked it up. It's like, oh, you're one of 600 million. The tree of Europeans coming from Charlemagne. But because... Both of my parents were only children, didn't have aunts and uncles and cousins and stuff. There wasn't much history. You were curious. I was very curious. So I also thought it would be just a wonderful opportunity for my family to have.
And trust me, it was replete with bad stories. They're American. through and through. The first people that got here late 17th century, early 18th century, there were slave owners and there were Congress people. There were people who fought on both sides of the Civil War. People who were in POW camps. He showed me a picture of one of the POW camps.
Confederate people who were held in the Union Confederate camps. I'm thinking this is why I inherited it, but my parents and grandparents seemed to insist that civics was a part of your responsibility as an American. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I was on the student council and that kind of stuff as a Boy Scout. Not a great one. Sure, sure.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Billy Crudup share about his acting process?
And then I'd come in for rehearsal, me and George and Noah rehearsed. And George is like, yeah, I hear you're going to try some new things out. And I was like, yeah. And, you know, we wouldn't quite get to them. And I was noticing that the script wasn't changing. And like two weeks before I was like, geez, I better figure out some fucking method shit. Yeah.
So I did a quick and deep dive into whatever I could in their repertoire. And during the day's work, I said to Noah and George, I got no idea how this is going to go. So I've got a lot of backup plans, but just bear with me if you could.
Chapter 6: How does Billy reflect on his father's influence on his career?
Is that easy or hard for you to say out loud? It's okay to say now because I know that I want to be helpful. That's my baseline. Yeah.
It's not ego.
I don't want to be destructive to it. It doesn't mean I'm not passionate about, I'll have these discussions with the writers, great writers on Morning Show, Carrier in the first two seasons, then Charlotte Stout in the second two seasons and their whole team. And if something doesn't sound right to me, or I feel like it's going down a way that I don't understand, we have big creative discussions.
I don't have any problem having that kind of discussion if I don't understand the story. This one was more about accommodating my ability to tell it in a way.
Chapter 7: What experiences does Billy share about working with Tom Cruise?
Like what Noah probably wanted to say is like, I understand you work that way, but the character you're playing doesn't. It doesn't work that way. Correct.
And I'm like, but no, I'm a 57-year-old actor. I've been doing it for so long. That's great that you do that. But this character that I wrote that you're going to come play, does it different? Precisely.
This kind of life imitates art a little bit.
It was.
Chapter 8: How does the conversation shift towards personal anecdotes and humor?
It was really great. And to be asked to do something that you don't know how to do, that's a big gift. But the reason why I'm saying all of this is because that's the pretext for George's character to go on a journey of discovery. So if I don't make that work... Him going away dramaturgically doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Failure to launch, we'd call it.
It's a failure to launch.
It was a really great experience. And I had known George and wanted to work with George. But moreover, the stories about George and Adam Sandler and their partnership is...
Does Adam play his agent or something? Plays his agent. Yeah, yeah. They didn't give us the movie. Normally I would have watched. Yeah, we tried. I could only watch the trailer. So I'm piecing together who Sandler is.
Sandler is his longtime agent and Laura Dern is his publicist. I mean, there is.
a murderer's row in that cast of great actors and Noah the way that he described it he was feeling somewhat disenchanted with movie making after he made a film called White Noise and it wasn't received in the way that he imagined it would be received or the story didn't land in the way that he had hoped that it would land and felt kind of cynical about it and this is sort of a beautiful not necessarily love letter but description of the carnival life that we lead it's gilded with the George Clooney charm and also a
beautiful, heartfelt performance. And every part of it, you know, I only worked for like three or four days, but I'm at every press thing. I love being a part of this group. Oh, you guys want me to show up in Venice? Sure. I'll buy my own ticket. You know, like whatever.
Cover of Esquire magazine.
You got it. I'm up for it now. Oh, that magazine folded? Damn it. I'll do the online version. I'm riding their coattails as far as I can. It was a beautiful thing for me to be a part of and a really gorgeous film.
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