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Chapter 1: What experiences did Matt Rogers have at the new Universal theme park?
Bowen and I went down to Epic Universe, the new Universal theme park. They wanted us to ride a roller coaster with the GoPro on it, and they were gonna put it on social. Leah remembers, because I called her after it. So it was so hot in Orlando, and we had just done Hot Ones. That's another food talk show. Our bodies were full of chicken wing. It was so hot. We were exhausted.
They put us on the roller coaster, strapped the GoPro on. It was very intense. My body was breaking. The person comes over and goes, okay, amazing. So we're going to go again. And then I realized, oh right, it's a shoot. They need like takes of it. I look at Bowen, his eyes are crossed. I was like, come on.
And they go, and remember, like you did lift your arms and we can't actually have you lift your arms. Like remember to keep for the video, like, you know, just keep, I was like, okay, we can do this one more time. And then we do have to go because we're going to be sick and the content won't be good and we'll be ill. And they go, okay, cool. Yeah. One more time. So we do it.
I guess my hands came off the bar for a second. We parked and they were like, could you do it again? I was like, I cannot. I cannot. Then they showed us the footage. Bowen was somehow turning the performance of Lifetime, smiling, laughing. I am like melting from the inside. So now I know it's going to look like that. I got back to the hotel.
I called Leah, my publicist, and started crying because it was too early in the year to be this tired. It's breaking bread. For the culture awards, we got an opportunity to do a show at Lincoln Center. It had like an outdoor space. They do like a summer concert series, summer free shows. And they were like, would you want the space for one night in the summer during Pride? We did it.
A ton of our listeners came out and followed that up the next year. We were well beyond capacity. And so then it's over time became this thing.
So when you did Lincoln Center, was it, we're just gonna give you the space and you said, oh, let's do the award thing.
Yeah, they said, would you want to have the space for anything you wanted to do? And we were like, oh, why don't we do the awards? So great. And so we did it. Just really just got a bunch of our friends from New York to come do it. Somehow got legit celebrities to send in a video. I think the real game changer was Taylor Swift. sent in two videos to accept culture awards.
And just hearing her say the words in the video, hi Bowen, hi Matt. I was like, okay, maybe this is something that people would actually want to play with us on. And that's proven to be true. I mean... the cast that we assembled is kind of like an Avengers of celebrities relevant to really anyone because there's something for everyone in the show.
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Chapter 2: How did Matt Rogers and his team prepare for the Culture Awards?
Every day. Like, you know what I mean? Right.
Like people are going to start to want to win this. Well, yeah. So once it becomes a real thing where people are upset about being excluded or like that they feel snubbed for nominations in a real way. Yeah. Then we'll know it's gone too far.
But then you, but then you have the, you have the, power of being comedians, then you can take that and twist it and be like, now here's a new category of the people who are taking this too seriously. Right, exactly.
I think we even said in one of our pre-roll audios, it's like, y'all are taking this more seriously than we are at this point. It'll just run over the commercials. But really, it's just so fun because every single second of it is satirizing the All different forms of award shows. We follow the sort of process of the Oscars, but also there's a little bit of Grammys thrown in there.
There's definitely a lot of VMA. There's Tony stuff. There's really all different kinds of award shows. If there's a stock thing that happens, we're ripping the piss out of it on the culture awards. That's so great. Not to say that we don't want an Emmy for the Culture Awards. I'll sell out real quick. And don't think this isn't airing right in the FYC window. I'm not brand new.
It's so fantastic. It really is. I mean, there really is. The thing about being comics that you can just literally walk in to any situation and just call bullshit on it all.
Yeah, I mean, I think that that is just something I always breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief when I look around and I go, we all know this is crazy, right? Like, we all know this is funny.
Yeah.
Because the truth is, you know, even booking the show last year, it was really hard to sell a lot of people on the idea of it's an award show, but it's really a comedy special.
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Chapter 3: What unique categories are included in the Culture Awards?
Like, I think that that's something that, you know, ties the fabric of culture together. But that being said, in a world where you have, you know, I guess a niche culture like this one, it's kind of nice to at least bring all of that commonality to at least our audience.
To your thing.
You get your audience excited and that excitement hopefully is contagious to other people instead of trying to
shoehorn in like let's try to get Brad Pitt in here you know what I mean like it's like kind of you know play to an audience you know you'll never talk to so I think with the culture awards like our honorary awards this year are going to Will Ferrell and Lisa Kudrow so those are two A plus listers that everyone knows but then a lot of our other awards are very much for our Bravo audience right
very much for our gay audience or very much for, you know, insert whoever we're targeting here. It's I think the only award show where you're gonna see Sierra and Mia from Summer House and also the Bene Gesserit of Dune show up. You know what I mean? And Will Ferrell in there randomly.
Right, exactly. So yeah, there's like a lot of... That's a cool kind of concept. I mean, not to get ahead of ourselves, but that you could actually grow it It starts as a little, not little, but a club of people. But then as it kind of starts to expand and become bigger, and you have these other people like Will's audience or Lisa Kudrow.
Well, that's kind of always been the podcast, to be honest with you. I think that one of the things that... I think brings our audience a lot of happiness and a lot of access is the fact that it's very high-low. We'll talk about whatever's going on in film, music, whatever, and we'll mix the prestige with the frivolous or whatever has been called throwaway entertainment.
Because to be honest with you, everything really at the end of the day serves the same purpose, which is to entertain, distract, inform, whatever it is. But there's something fun about the podcast and the culture awards, which treats everything equally. So that's, I think... Yeah. The permission to be like, yeah, I know about what's going on in politics, but I also watch reality television.
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How did Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang start their careers in comedy?
Yeah, I grew up in Suffolk County on Long Island. By the time I got to high school, I was doing track all year round, and I was pretty fast. I ran a mile in 4.36. Whoa. Yeah, I went to- 4.36? Yeah, which wasn't even really one of the better times. I know it sounds crazy, but it was good. This is me being hard on myself. But it wasn't like, some of these guys were doing sub four.
I did get to NYU and ran track for a week and decided I have to stop and try to focus entirely on trying to make the dream happen. So I was coming out of the closet and trying to do the entertainment industry.
So was the entertainment part in the closet too? Were you not telling people that when you were in?
Well, I don't think anyone was surprised that when I was in college, they were like, oh, he's, you know, wanting to pursue this. But the way that I sort of got into it so that I could soften the blow for people was like, I'm going to do sketch comedy.
Right.
You know, because I still felt like there was something masc about it, I guess.
Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can get away with that. Exactly.
And so I still had that sort of internalized homophobia of not wanting to say out loud that I wanted to be a singer or a comedian.
Right.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Matt face as a public figure in the entertainment industry?
There's something about the energy of this I have to be around. And so I kept going. Every week, I wouldn't hang out with my college friends. I would go. If they wanted to come, that was fine, but I would wait on the standby line, and sometimes it would be cold, and I'd wait all night, and I wouldn't get in. Through the night? Four o'clock in the morning, you're still standing up?
Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Well, I would bring a tent. I'd bring a little sleeping bag, and you'd sleep on the street. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd think it was like an encampment, but it literally was just a bunch of freaks waiting on the street for this opportunity, which by the way, they still do this. They do. Yeah. And so I had gotten in about like eight or nine times. Eight or nine? Yeah.
And then I was so inspired in particular one day. I saw an episode that was Anne Hathaway and the Killers. And this was the first episode that Kristen Wiig ever did the Lawrence Welk show with the tiny baby hands. And I was, and I remember Seth Meyers came out and he gave everyone high fives that were the interns and he did Weekend Update. I saw Tina do Sarah Palin.
I was there one time when I think McCain came and was guesting. It was wild. And just being there energetically around that was such a moment. And to say nothing of when Obama won. And the energy in the city, it just felt like anything was possible. And I was like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to start being a version of myself now.
And I came out of the closet that summer, auditioned for the sketch comedy group and willed myself onto it. And basically I had just Googled Wikipedia Amy Poehler. It was just because she was the person I respected the most. And I just followed, tried to emulate what she had done in college.
What's her path. Yeah.
And she had been on the improv group and she had, I had found out she had started UCB.
Right.
So I signed up for a class that summer and I got in my sketch group and
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Chapter 6: How does Matt Rogers feel about the current state of romantic comedies?
It's so base the way that the guys in the locker room would mock things because it's so just base. But the way gay men will mock you is so cutting and filled with wit. It's so much more devastating what they could say to you than what these dudes could say to you. But this one's more threatening, of course.
Yeah, because it's existential. This is the community you actually do belong to. And that's scary when that community can feel tough on you. And we are tough on each other. We've always been tough on each other. It's very hard, I think, for gay men to really and wholly be like, I am going to support enthusiastically these other gay people. We've just always had a hard time with that.
I hope it's getting better because I hope we're just having that conversation more. But I can also say it's often tough.
Yeah. Why?
What is the heart of that?
Hmm.
I think when you see someone, I think this is really what I think it is. When you see, when you are an underrepresented group and then there's representatives for your group, it's almost like an anxiety about how that person is gonna represent you because other people are watching. You know, we've not previously had a lot of diverse representation in the world. I know it seems like.
you know, the GOP would have us believe that it's, you know, gotten totally out of control with the diversity, but, you know, historically that's not been the case, and I do think that that causes some anxiety on the part of people in a minority group when they're finally being perceived. And so,
I don't ā while I have my frustrations and I get my feelings hurt sometimes, I understand where it comes from. Right. Because I do know what it's like to be a very online person who's trying to connect in community in discourse or trying to connect in community in sometimes cruel discourse. Yeah. you know, pop culture, one second you're having fun talking about it.
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Chapter 7: What insights does Matt share about being part of the LGBTQ+ community?
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The underwear of legends. Thanks to Sheath for sponsoring this episode. Get some for your dad. And now, back to the show. Yeah, it's an interesting thing, especially when it's a smaller group because you also feel like there's a limited number of slots. Yeah. Well, that was true. Right?
So it's hard to root for everybody when everyone's clamoring for X amount of spots where it's like you can kind of root for people if you think, well, they're making it, but I'll make it over here.
Yeah, I mean... I understand sometimes why it might be harder to root for me than someone else. You know what I mean? When someone sees, when there's a perception that you are really crushing it, or you're busy, or you're doing a lot of stuff, I completely get that. I completely get getting dunked on.
Yeah, because you're at a certain level of success. He's all good. Let's root for the people that are still rising. Exactly. Of course I understand that.
But I guess I just try to focus now less on the perception out there and more on what I'm doing because that's what really makes me happy. And I really do feel like even if things are positive. Yeah. Like, for example, today, like a friend of mine sent me a review for Stop That Train, the movie that I'm in coming out with RuPaul. Right. And it was a really positive review. Yeah.
But I did remind myself, like, remember that they won't all be positive and they can't all be positive. Right. It's funny. I, when I first, when I first was, was working with, um, my publicist, they would send me reviews and I was like, Oh, maybe I don't want to be sent the reviews. You know what I mean? It's like, it's sometimes it's, and that was totally fine.
And I, but I do get now why people say I don't read them. I try not to look at anything because if it's good or it's bad, it's, it's, it's,
Like it's nice to hear that people are enjoying things, but once it starts to get granular and qualitative and it starts to feel statistic in terms of who likes things and who doesn't, like the rotten tomatoes of it all, it's just kind of like, it'll all spin you out. And then there you are doing that thing I hate, which is taking things too seriously.
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Chapter 8: What are Matt's thoughts on the future of the entertainment industry?
So that'll be one year. One year? Yeah. Is this long? Is that long for me? I've run the gamut. I've done a relationship for two and a half years. I did one for... Two and a half hard months. There was one in there that was a year, and this one's almost a year. So I guess he's in third place right now. Did snoring end all of them? No, because I think it's become an issue in the past 18 months.
yeah I just turned 36 so it's something new yeah it's it's your mid-30s really surprises you bodily oh yeah you know what I mean yeah yeah I do know what you mean it's really buckle up well you know what's funny I I started working with uh with the with like a trainer for the first time like right as I turned 35 and he goes to me yeah it's really good you started now man because 35 is when your bone density starts to go and by 40 you're gonna lose any metabolism you ever had and I was like
It's just... You know, those lies that they tell you from the Hollywood A-list that, like, you can get ripped after 40. It's like, fuck off. No, no, exactly.
It's... Yeah.
If you absolutely, you know, punish yourself.
Yeah. No, I had a joke in my act... about old people. It's like with muscles. Yeah. And it's like, work out all you want, get the muscles you want, but basically it's chicken cutlets and saran wrap. 100%.
Yeah.
The skin is not going to change. They don't look right.
No. And so that's why I'm kind of like, you know, I'm going to do what I can now. Yeah. But I'm not going to turn into something pointable at on the street.
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