Chapter 1: How did Max Greenfield transition from struggling student to successful actor?
Kings Network. Usually I look at this camera and I welcome people into South Beach Sessions, but Max Greenfield has requested that this be more intimate. So tell me how you want to do this so that there can be a maximum intimate conversation.
I would have liked for you to have recorded everything we said for the last 20 minutes.
Well, you're asking me a lot of questions. You're a sports dork. You are asking me a lot of questions. I should tell the people when I'm introducing you that a man on the inside is what you're doing now with our friend Mike Schur on Netflix.
Friend of the show.
Yeah, but you're not just here because, you know, you want to hang out. We're plugging something, so I've done my part here. Now we can go intimate?
Yes, Man on the Inside Season 2 from creator Mike Schur starring Ted Danson. And you're in the mix. I'm in the mix. We'll get there.
Well, but they've welcomed you into their family. They seem like really decent people. It seems very un-Hollywood, whatever Ted Danson and Mike Schur and their significant others have going on.
It's incredible. Mike Schur is the greatest. I've known him for a very long time. We've been friendly for ages, and he finally invited me to come work with him, and it was spectacular, as you would imagine.
Okay, well, I want to hear more about it. Should I introduce you as New Girl, The Neighborhood?
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Chapter 2: What impact did fatherhood have on Max Greenfield's career and life perspective?
what can we do with this? And I was like, I don't know if we're doing anything.
So wait, so the agent did jazz hands, all the whole thing, like I've arrived here. Wait, you've got a sweet, pure thing. How do we commercialize it? And so you're like, no, it's got a better soul than that. It shouldn't be quite that quick and dirty.
Yes. And I said, we're not doing anything. He goes, well, what if it's like, first he said, what if it was a podcast? And I said, I don't want to hear myself talk that long. I haven't done a podcast in a really long time. I'm like, I love you and I love Mike. And I was like, this is, I really want to be here. But I'm so sick of hearing myself talk.
That's not usually the way that one goes in acting. I thought you were supposed to be really enraptured with the way that you talk.
I did a podcast a while ago, and it was one I listened to and wanted to be on, and as soon as I said yes to it and then was in the moment of participating in it, I thought... Oh my God, I'm like the last person I want to hear on this show. And this is this was such a bad idea.
This is such a good sales job, by the way, on the idea of you're going to find all of this interesting. I promise you, it's just he's not going to find it interesting because he's bored by the sound of his own voice. This, though, is an interesting playground for you. So you made something pure in collaboration with your daughter. It was artistic at a scared time. Yes, it created community.
But on top of that, I found that a lot of actors, creative types like I've talked to a number of people in this setting. Let me see who was I'm trying to think of. Oh, Louis Black is home for a day alone in the pandemic and starts looking at his life and doesn't like what it is that he's seeing and needs to start creating immediately because creatives have to create.
So you do this with your daughter, though, but it's organic, very organic.
And also we were receiving all of this really positive feedback from people who were on the front lines of something that was happening that felt, that was very, very intense. So community, the power of community, the power of not alone. And we thought if we could continue to bring joy to people's lives through Instagram, like
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Chapter 3: Why was Max Greenfield intimidated by working with Ted Danson and Mike Schur?
And Maya Angelou came and spoke, LeVar Burton. And I go, wow, you really...
Yeah, they exhausted all of the good guests.
I'm like, I'm so sorry.
That's good company.
You're keeping good company. I know. It has been a wild, wild experience.
All right, well take me back to why are you dropping out of school and why don't you believe in school and how does that go over with the family?
I shouldn't say that I don't believe in school. I just, I couldn't do it. You know, there was a part of me. You said you don't understand school. Yeah, I think there was a part of me for a really long time that thought, you know, probably in my 20s and 30s, like if I wanted to go back and I really tried, I could probably do it.
And at some point I got to a place where I realized I actually don't think I, I think there's... requirements for graduating a university or college that I really think I'm incapable of doing.
What is it? It's not a lack of discipline? What is it, scatter mind? Your brain works differently than the customized ways of learning?
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Chapter 4: How did the pandemic inspire Max Greenfield to write children's books?
who's having this intense conversation with my father, but a good one, turns around and then immediately realizes, oh, this kid knows my music a little bit, and then gives me a few bars from some song, and I was just like, oh my God. And my dad was like, okay, please, can we continue this?
But so he had experience with artists and that side of what we do and being, but I also think he was very aware of how difficult it was. And you just, I think you don't want to see, as a parent myself, you don't want to see your children in harm's way or struggle or anything, but it takes a lot of love on, and it did on his part and my mother's part, for them to sort of put that aside and
at least understand that they really didn't have a choice in this.
So what did the climb look like after that though? Because you came to success pretty early, didn't you?
No, no, there was 10 years of, there was 10, actually it was more than that. It was about 12 years of really just slamming my head into a wall. Um, probably both literally and figuratively. It was a tough run. It was a really challenging run.
So hold on. So give it up. So you've got these dreams that everyone here has, right? And you don't have any of the disciplines that would be learned traditionally in school, but you don't necessarily need them for what it is that you're trying to do. But you also don't know very much about what you're doing.
Right, right. But I had some wonderful teachers who were able to show me how to do this, showed me who to look at, who did this best, and really started to study what it is I feel like I do now. And by the way, I was attracted to all the people who are nowhere near doing the things that I ended up doing.
Um, and, uh, and, but I felt like I was, I was on a path and learning and, and just totally inspired and, and had moments. Cause you don't always have these, like, and especially with acting, it's like, you know, you're up on, it's always like this, this didn't go well or that, that felt weird.
And every once in a while you get a moment where you, especially early on where like it drops in and it works and you go, whoa, this is why I'm doing it.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Max Greenfield face during his 12 years of auditions?
It was a box and I would take that. It may not have been opioids. I don't know what it was. Okay, you don't know.
It was a box and that's the end of your liabilities.
I worked for the delivery service. Oh man, you'd end up in these. God.
Tell me, I want to hear about the retirement home. So you're drifting, you're dreaming of acting and you're drifting through retirement homes with a box of pills.
Well, so most actors get jobs as waiters, but I was too scared to be a waiter because I didn't think I could remember people's orders. And I just thought the environment was too stressful for me and I needed to just be on my own. And so I had gotten a job and I was like, I can drive.
And so I got this job delivering pharmaceuticals to old age homes and you would go to like, you know, some warehouse where they go, okay, this is going to such and such. And they give you the boxes, you put them in your car and then you drive them out to like, you know, Oxnard or whatever, where there's an old age home and you would deliver these forms and they'd have signed for it or whatever.
But some of these homes, it was a really eyeopening experience. Yeah.
I mean, that's going to be sad. Sure, it's going to be hard. You're going to be surrounded by mortality and age and sickness. No, this sounds like not a great job.
It was so awful. And then at some point, I was like, this is too intense for me. I can't go into another old age home. But the same company referred me then to a different company, which was at that time called The Go-Between, which doesn't exist anymore. But it was like for... everybody in the business.
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Chapter 6: How did becoming a father change Max Greenfield's priorities?
I think it's the best book I've ever read. And I'm not very good at reading. But she did this beautiful job on the book. But so she had lost ā she was at the WB, the original WB for forever and was a casting executive there. And then eventually moved ā and then when the WB exploded or the CW or whatever it was, it took her a while to get back on her feet.
and find a new job, and it was sort of around the same time I was looking for work.
Oh shit, so this is real turmoil. You've got the fear of responsibility in a child when both of you are in total career upheaval.
Yes, yes, yes. Tess was pregnant, and we both didn't really have work. And it was only a few literally within within the same week.
That's gallows humor. You laughing at that, right?
Yes.
You're laughing at how how terrifying it would be to be bringing a child into the world with neither one of you having real work or feeling like feeling you're lost at sea occupationally.
Yes. I remember going to I remember going to a doctor's appointment with her And having to pay for the doctor. And this is while we were trying to figure out if we were going to try to have a child. And I remember thinking like paying the bill and going. And I didn't tell her. We were married at the time, but I was like, I think I have about $240 left in my bank account. Oh, wow, that's lonely.
I was like, man, maybe we put the kid thing off.
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Chapter 7: What was the process behind Max Greenfield's big break in 'New Girl'?
Because being a dad changed you that much instantaneously?
Yeah, I was kind of embarrassed. I sort of had a look at this. I was like, I don't want to be doing this anymore. I don't want to be running. It felt selfish to me.
Small and selfish comparatively.
Yeah, yeah. And I didn't want to participate in that anymore. I was like, let me find a way to... And again... not only as a parent, but as a husband to my wife who was doing so well, I was like, I can be of service to our family in a much different way and more effective way than running around and doing this thing.
So you don't then graduate to what many people graduate to with what is perceived as success, which is you neglect family in pursuit of fame, glory, money, and vanity.
That was not my experience. I did not choose that.
But I'm saying that many people in this field have to choose themselves selfishly, often with an imbalance that neglects family. Right. And the the conquering hunt of like this is a cutthroat business. Like it's really it's really hard to succeed.
Right.
It's it's very it's very hard. And I think people are put in that position to make really challenging. You know, if you're lucky enough to have those challenging decisions to make, where am I? And I think you always have them. But it's it's really some of them are to a great extent. Am I going to leave my family and go run after this thing?
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Chapter 8: How does Max Greenfield maintain a balance between career and family life?
Well, where have you felt it the most? Like if I say to you, and I will tell you that I feel those moments all the time. I'm not kidding you that I can say I felt it walking over here. Just the idea. So lucky. My parents are Cuban exiles who would have had no access to the idea of creating things artfully as an expression of freedom.
To walk down the Sunset Strip in order to come over here so that I could be brought interesting people who are stimulating from the world of entertainment. Like what fills me with every step is gratitude because I didn't plan this. Like this is something that just grew out of what I kept feeding, like a cauldron that I kept feeding where I could follow my interests.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's so beautiful that you can have those moments that you're aware enough to be able to sort of do. You're aware enough of what's happening and within yourself to understand that, like, oh, I'm really feeling this. And let me not like throw it away and just disregard it.
Well, you can walk past joy.
You can walk right past it without noticing it. I know it. You can walk past gratitude. You can walk past anything. And it's being able to stop and really experience it and let it pass through you so you are able to experience the next thing. That's the place I try to live in.
Well, but where did you learn the idea of listening to the pull? Like what you were doing physically there is you turned a pull into a claw and then sort of made it. I didn't have a choice. I got yanked in this direction by the nose. I don't even know enough to have my fear not follow it. Like I just clearly have to go there. I feel it in my innards.
Yeah, yeah, and that's sort of where I've, that's been, since I started working and since my wife and I started our family, that's been... For the most part, when that pull comes, it's been pretty clear. And it's when I start to pull myself that I get myself in a lot of trouble.
Things you think you want?
Yeah, yeah. I have some ideas that are really... They immediately get you.
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