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SmartLess

"Nick Jonas"

25 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What are the hosts' initial thoughts on the weather?

5.903 - 11.851 Unknown

Good morning from both coasts. Oh, we're recording from both coasts. Jason's still in New York City.

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11.871 - 13.593 Jason Bateman

Oh, Sean, are we going to take a look at the weather first?

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13.653 - 43.643 Unknown

Yeah, we're going to take a look at the weather before we get into the feel-good piece. You know, we're going to look at the weather. Traffic on the threes. We're going to look at the weather right after this wonderful episode of Smart Less. Let's go. Welcome. Smart. Good morning, everybody.

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44.204 - 49.17 Jason Bateman

Good morning. Hi, Sean. Sorry, are you about to launch into something? No. Good morning, everybody.

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49.51 - 58.521 Will Arnett

Remember when Sean used to have a bunch of talking points prepared for the coffee chat? I always do. I have them today if you want. Do you really? Yeah. Do you have it written down on a piece of paper?

58.961 - 63.607 Unknown

I jotted down a couple things that happened. Does Nick do it? No, I do it.

64.308 - 64.648 Will Arnett

Huh.

64.949 - 66.112 Unknown

Just right before we sign on.

66.252 - 77.761 Will Arnett

Does Scotty ever recommend or suggest, hey, you know what would be fun for you guys to talk about tomorrow? Ever? No, not really, no. All right, so what are the hot topics today? Yeah, let's go for a hot topic for sure.

Chapter 2: How did Nick Jonas get his start in music and acting?

96.188 - 96.729 Will Arnett

Scotty was out.

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96.749 - 97.93 Unknown

There's nothing weird about that.

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98.331 - 103.738 Will Arnett

No, you guys were cuddling. That's fine. That's fine.

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104.419 - 106.882 Jason Bateman

You know what? We could use more cuddling in this world.

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107.562 - 132.819 Will Arnett

We could, and maybe a little less gum. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. Every shot. I know it's hard to remember because, you know, we do these like a week apart and then you forget a lot in six days. It's difficult. Is there like a nicotine cream? What about if you found like a cream you could just put on your shoulders or something?

132.839 - 137.006 Unknown

Yeah, what about, yeah. Yeah, is it like a testosterone cream?

137.807 - 138.388 Jason Bateman

Yeah.

138.808 - 139.81 Unknown

That I've read about.

140.414 - 144.08 Jason Bateman

Yeah, I've heard about that, too. Oh, no. Yeah, oh, yeah.

Chapter 3: What challenges did Nick face as a young performer?

165.532 - 167.675 Jason Bateman

It's an offshoot. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah.

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167.715 - 187.637 Will Arnett

It's wild. So, Sam Bateman. Right? Yes, that's right. I thought of you. I'll bet you did. Yeah, it's... Explain yourself, Jason. Yeah, I don't know if there's a relation there, but I would guess that there is. I mean, our family is out of Utah. So, I mean... No.

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187.717 - 189.942 Jason Bateman

That was probably your first tip, I guess, huh?

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191.393 - 193.678 Jason Bateman

Was that what kind of got you going in that direction?

193.698 - 198.908 Will Arnett

I'm not an experienced investigator, but those are two hot leads. Name and location.

198.928 - 202.134 Jason Bateman

Fuck, nothing gets past you, dude. It's unreal.

202.154 - 203.657 Will Arnett

Name and location.

207.385 - 209.048 Unknown

So how is Sam doing, Jason?

Chapter 4: How did Nick transition from child star to adult artist?

321.427 - 322.509 Will Arnett

We haven't even explored this one.

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323.009 - 324.312 Jason Bateman

Sorry we got hung up on this.

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324.332 - 325.894 Will Arnett

So there you are with Tracy.

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325.914 - 330.282 Jason Bateman

You're watching the doc. Are you worried that you just can't be yourself in the moment? Sure. Is that what it is?

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330.762 - 335.29 Unknown

No, we can totally. By the way, every day.

335.641 - 338.744 Will Arnett

Was that it? You were just going to make a recommendation for media?

338.764 - 346.572 Unknown

Yeah, and also I saw, now that we're talking about documentaries, Jay, I finally saw the Apocalypse Optimistic.

346.592 - 348.053 Will Arnett

Oh, yeah, the AI documentary.

348.394 - 348.974 Unknown

Yeah, yeah.

Chapter 5: What insights does Nick share about his latest album?

603.738 - 607.125 Sean Hayes

I know. What an intro. That was great. Nick, I just saw you.

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607.326 - 612.456 Unknown

It's so insane. I saw you at the Golden Globes. I know. That was so lovely.

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612.637 - 619.626 Nick Jonas

We were backstage at the holding room for the presenters. My wife was presenting you guys there. It's not a big room. It's not a big room.

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619.646 - 627.678 Will Arnett

That's one of the bleakest, most depressing rooms in Hollywood. Yeah. Everybody just walks in and out. It's way too small. The ceiling's low.

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627.698 - 638.112 Nick Jonas

I did enjoy listening to you guys rehearse, though. It was the master class in bit rehearsal. And you guys crushed the bit. It went viral after. It was great.

638.092 - 643.102 Will Arnett

Thank you. Do we honestly rehearse? You don't remember that? There's a little side room. No. At the monitor.

643.182 - 645.427 Nick Jonas

You ran it back like six times. It was great. We did?

646.489 - 650.437 Will Arnett

Yeah. Just for timing. And then I'll bet it was nothing like, just for timing. Just for timing.

650.457 - 656.148 Jason Bateman

You got to do it. Get familiar with the piece. Didn't you think that Jason should have spoken up? He was a little soft on that one line.

Chapter 6: What unique aspects are involved in Indian wedding ceremonies?

777.724 - 801.98 Nick Jonas

And I think because we had sort of early in our career had a big failure. Our first album did not do well. We got dropped by our first label. It took us finding a home with Disney and our partners there to kind of really... step into the next phase. And I think that resilience came from that early perceived failure.

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802.561 - 818.354 Jason Bateman

Right, right, right. Well, that's, yeah, I mean, did you have, am I right about that? First of all, I read somewhere that, and I don't know, you tell me if it's true, that you were first discovered by like a talent manager or pushed towards one when you were at... I had like a barbershop, like getting a haircut or something.

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818.374 - 830.728 Nick Jonas

I was at a hair salon with my mom. Yeah, I was six. And I was always singing, you know, before I was even talking. And she was getting her hair done. I grew up in Jersey. And so we're known for our hair salons, diners, bowling alleys.

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831.048 - 831.588 Unknown

Sure, sure.

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831.949 - 846.328 Nick Jonas

Shopping malls. And yeah, so she was getting her hair done. I was singing. The woman next to her said, hey, my son is Gavroche on Broadway. I think your son could do it. You should go see this talent manager. So we went in to go see Shirley Grant.

846.388 - 850.196 Unknown

Was it Gaten Matarazzo by any chance? Didn't he play Gavroche on Broadway?

851.639 - 873.271 Nick Jonas

No. He played Gavroche later than I did, I think. Okay. I did it in the early 2000s. Okay. But... Basically, went into this talent manager's office. Her name's Shirley Grant. Rest in peace, Shirley. She's got her walls lined with headshots of little actor kids, weird actor kids who look you in the eye and shake your hand really intense. He's looking at you, JB.

874.273 - 878.04 Jason Bateman

JB, he's looking at you. Did you notice that? He's looking at you.

878.02 - 883.806 Nick Jonas

And she started sending me on auditions, and that was kind of the start to my run doing shows.

Chapter 7: How does Nick balance his music and acting careers?

992.313 - 1011.93 Will Arnett

And then I slowly expire. And all I hear is total silence. My eyes are closed on the floor. And I just hear Michael Landon go... Okay, we're going to cut. And he walks slowly over to me. I still have my eyes closed. I'm still in it. And he whispers in my ear, okay, we're going to do another one. And this time I'm going to want you to just collapse on the floor.

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1013.152 - 1031.299 Will Arnett

I want you to just slowly just collapse and quietly expire. Here we go, everybody back to work. I was so mortified and embarrassed. I mean, I was just... You know, vibrating and throwing myself. Sure. It's fucking terrible.

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1031.319 - 1034.283 Jason Bateman

Sure. God bless you, JB. That's good.

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1034.464 - 1040.191 Unknown

I'm feeling it. So you do play this. So you were going to say, after Gabrash, you played.

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1040.211 - 1063.79 Nick Jonas

Oh, yeah. So I did my first show, I did A Christmas Carol, which is kind of a seasonal show. show so technically not a Broadway show but Annie Get Your Gun was my first show with Reba McIntyre I did it with Frank Langella actually it was pretty incredible he played Scrooge I was actual character name Scrooge at 8 And I was the understudy for Tiny Tim.

1063.83 - 1082.491 Nick Jonas

And in the eight years that this show had run, they'd never had a Tiny Tim cover have to go on. So they just didn't bother to rehearse the Tiny Tim covers. Oh, shit. And the year I did it, again, my dad gets a call and they say, hey... Nick's going to go on for Tiny Tim today. We've got to get you here an hour before the show to do a put-in.

1083.152 - 1104.945 Nick Jonas

So I rush over to the theater and basically run the five scenes that Tiny Tim has and the two songs. And, you know, I'm thrown out there for the opening kind of song, and literally my mind goes blank. Sixteen bars of just silence as the music's playing. There's really intimidating conductors there looking me in the eye.

1105.426 - 1105.566 Unknown

Mm-hmm.

1105.546 - 1112.394 Nick Jonas

It was a good entryway into live theater. You know, shit happens. You just gotta roll with it. But as an eight-year-old, I was pretty mortified.

Chapter 8: What are Nick's thoughts on the future of AI in music?

1227.096 - 1250.774 Will Arnett

And, like, is that sort of thing – now that you're an adult and you've managed to weather the transition between sort of, like, teen idol into an adult, you know, professional actor, performer, et cetera – You know, how does all that stuff kind of transition for you in your head about, you know, how much of it is real? How much of it is just part of the job?

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1250.814 - 1263.254 Will Arnett

What do you do with all that sort of like that ego surplus? And, you know, because it's all kind of junk food to a certain extent. And like, you got to figure out where to place it all. Right? I guess.

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1263.635 - 1282.197 Nick Jonas

Yeah. It's a great question. I mean, I always think it's funny when people frame an answer this way, so forgive me for doing it. But I think one of the biggest misconceptions about us, and odd to acknowledge your own preconception, but it was that because we worked with Disney and the core of our demo was

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1282.177 - 1306.227 Nick Jonas

you know, primarily teens, that, you know, there's no way this music came from an honest source or that it came from us even. Right, right, right. And it was a really bizarre thing to sort of, you know, be in a spot where at 13, 14 years old, I was experiencing all the things you're talking about. First love, first heartbreak, real big...

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1306.207 - 1326.957 Nick Jonas

you know, human emotions that I was able to put into song in a way that spoke directly to that audience. And when you ask about, like, what's something I thought went incredibly right, it would be that. The fact that our dad raised us on this great bed of classics. We discovered our own kind of sound and found our own voice creatively.

1327.378 - 1352.975 Nick Jonas

And I had this outlet that both helps me process these big feelings, but also connect it in a way that, frankly, now we play these songs 20 years later as men and dads and husbands in our 30s. it's even more resonant with the audience because they've grown with us. And tracking that over time has just been the most fascinating thing and pretty special to be, you know.

1355.299 - 1361.408 Unknown

And we will be right back. And now back to the show.

1363.632 - 1381.759 Jason Bateman

You mentioned that in your dad raising you on those classics and musically. So what was that? Who is the person? Did they discover that, oh, that you had a talent for music that kind of came from you or your parents? Were they musical in that way? Like, was that something that they came from them?

1382.887 - 1405.215 Nick Jonas

Yeah, our dad is a really gifted musician. He's a pianist, a vocalist, and he was actually a pastor when we first started. We lived in Dallas for a bit where I was born. And then we moved to Jersey, and he became a senior pastor at this church there. And music was always a part of our life.

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