Transcript
Jon Stewart (0:00)
Jon Stewart is back in the host chair at the Daily show, which means he's also back in our ears on the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend Jon Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now, this is the second term we can all get behind. Listen to the Daily Show Ears edition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Emilia (0:27)
I'm Emila, host of the podcast Crumbs. For years, I had to rely on other people to tell me my story, and what I heard wasn't good.
Unknown (0:36)
You really.
Emilia (0:37)
Last night, it felt like I lived most of my life in a blackout. I was trapped in addiction. I had to grab the lamp and smashed it against the walls. And then I decided I wanted to tell my own story. Listen to crumbs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Michael Rapaport (0:59)
Happy holidays from me, Michael Rappaport, and my gift to you is a free subscription to the I Am Rappaport Stereo podcast where I discuss entertainment, sports, politics, and anything and everything that catches my attention. I am here to call it as I see it, and there's a whole lot of things catching my eyes these days. Listen to the I Am Rappaport Stereo podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast and wherever you get your podcast.
Katherine Legge (1:27)
Hey, you guys, I'm Kathryn Legge. I'm a racing driver who's literally driven everything with four wheels across the planet. And I've got a new podcast. It's called Throttle Therapy. This season, I'm competing in some of the world's most notorious racing events. Tune in to my new podcast, Throttle Therapy with Katherine Legge, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Kristen Davis (1:53)
Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, and I wanna know, are you a Charlotte? Hi. Hi, everyone. We are back. This is Are youe a Charlotte? And we are now looking at season one, Episode two. It's called Models and Mortals. Oh, my goodness me. I watched this last night. I'm still in shock. I have more questions than I have answers. There's a lot to dig into here. I honestly just don't even really. I really am not sure what to say about this episode. It's super fascinating, though, so let me just kind of go back in time a little bit. I Charlotte only has one scene in this episode. And it's a really fun and funny scene that I do have a. And someone asked me, oh, did you remember that you only had one scene? And I didn't remember. And part of the reason that I didn't remember is that one of the things, and I don't really know if we're the only show who does this, we probably aren't. But one of the interesting things about how we film and this is still true to this day on and just like that, is that we cross board two episodes at a time. So we're always filming two episodes simultaneously. And part of the reason for that is that locations in New York City are so expensive. So let's say you get a restaurant for the day that takes, you know, a lot of money. You have to get into all kinds of arrangements. You have to arrange with the mayor's office of location management for parking and for all the trucks. And it's a whole big to do, right? So if you get a location, you would divide it up. Like, let's say you got a restaurant. You might film in front of the restaurant. And then you might also film a different scene from a different episode inside the restaurant. So, you know, you're kind of cross purposing those actual locations. So when you're filming, you're filming two episodes at once. Now, sometimes it gets out of hand. Like, I remember one time, maybe season three of Sex and the City, towards the end, we had all these unfinished scenes and we had, I think four units filming and we had to make T shirts, different colored T shirts for the different crews on the different units and all the actors. We just had to run from soundstage to soundstage to do the different things that we needed to do to finish the episode. That was crazy times. And then just this past year on, and just like that, I think there was a time when the call sheet had six different episodes listed for Charlotte of things that I had to finish. So this particular episode, I have a different storyline for the next episode that I was also doing. So it's not like I was just sitting around the whole time. But I also didn't really remember that I only had the one, the one episode. And my thoughts on that, which, you know, I don't know if we're ever gonna find out, you guys, why they tried to demote me. As one of our current writers said, because, you know, the funny thing about the reaction, I mean, there's many funny things about the reaction to the first two podcasts. One is that a lot of my closest friends don't even know the stories that I told you guys. They're like, what? You know. And some of our current, you know, very beloved crew members and writers and directors and everybody don't know that story. So everyone's just like, why? What happened? What happened? I don't know if we'll ever know. I really don't know. I don't know the answer to it. I feel when I look back on it now from the perspective of 27 years later or whatever, having read Candace's book, which was based on Candace's column. And the thing that's important for this particular episode to remember is that Candace's column in the observer called Sex and the City was, I believe, based in true stories that she was hearing and. Or participating in, but also hearing around town that were true stories. Right? So she wouldn't use the names. She might imply who they were. So that if you were like, you know, ran in this circle of friends in New York, you might know who the stories were, but you might also not know and just, you know, read it for some interesting, like, social. Social archeology. I guess maybe I'm going to try not to say like so much. Because I did see the comment from one of our listeners that I say, like, too much. So I just said, like, I'm really sorry. I'm going to do my best. It's not gonna be easy. Cause I'm just sitting here by myself, yakking. Okay. But thank you for being with me and understanding. So Candace is writing this column in the nineties in New York City, and she is writing things she's hearing happened or was there for when they happened, or both or neither, I guess. But you know, that that's the genesis of all of this. So when I watched this episode, episode two, which was the first episode we filmed once the show had been picked up, I'm assuming that this really insane storyline about this character that Gabriel Macht plays, Barclay, filming these models. I'm just going to go with the fact that this is something Candace heard about that happened and put in her column and thus ended up in her book and thus ended up in our show because Darren Starr optioned her book Sex and the City. So that's what I'm gonna go with. I'm gonna go with the fact that they didn't just make this up or whatever for the show. I'm not sure. Because at this point, also the important thing to remember for me is that the writers were all in Los Angeles. They did not come. We did not know them. Very unlike how the show went on to develop, where the writers were with us every day. The writers were part of our lives. They were very close friends of ours. Still are. A very close friend of ours. You're going to be meeting them along the way. They're wonderful. These particular group of writers, some of them, I would not know them. If I saw them. If I ran into them and they told me I wrote an episode of Sex and the City for the first season, I would just say, like, okay, I would believe them because I don't know what they look like. We were in Los Angeles after the pilot. Darren, myself, and then, strangely, Sarah Jessica. This is a funny story. I was renting a house at the time in a little canyon in the west side of Los Angeles, not a particularly popular canyon. And one day I had gotten a puppy, and I was walking down the street, and we are in the waiting period of waiting to hear if HBO was going to pick the show up. And they had. I feel like they had 18 months to decide something like that. Maybe just a year. Whatever it was felt like eternity. And I would call my poor manager, Dave, every day and be like, did you hear anything? Did you hear anything? Did you hear anything? And then I would call my lawyer, Jason, and I would say, did you hear anything? Did you hear anything? And it just went on and on and on, the waiting. And sometimes I think I would call Darren Starr and say, like, did you hear anything? I wasn't close enough to Sarah Jessica at this point to have her number to be calling and bugging her, which is probably a good thing. But one day I'm walking down the street in this little neighborhood that I rented a house in, and I'm walking my new puppy and who drives down this empty street with Sarah Jessica Parker in a rented Lexus. And I'm like, hey, you know what I mean? And she's like, hi. What are you doing here? And I said, I just rented the house over here. What are you doing here? And she said, oh, Matthew's here doing a movie. So I'm here with him while he's filming this movie. And I said, did you hear anything? And she was like, no. And she didn't seem. She didn't seem as anxious about it as I was. And I was like, well, what do you think is happening? You know, what was going on? And she goes, oh, I don't know. You know, I don't know. And I said, well, don't you want it to be Picked up. And she said something like, yeah, but I could tell she was just trying to please me, you know what I mean? And I thought, oh, no, Sarah Jessica doesn't want to do it. I don't know. And I do think now, you know, knowing her all these many, many years, that this was back to her kind of reticence to being committed to a show. Cause as I told you before, we did have these massive seven year long contracts, which is the norm for, for any kind of pilot. So for her, she'd been kind of just this, you know, journeyman actress in a way, like doing Broadway, you know, doing movies like Honeymoon in Vegas. Most actors don't really want to be committed to one to one job forever. So anyway, Sarah Jessica, I believe her nervousness was, do I really want to be committed? Do I want to be tied down? It wasn't something that most actors like you didn't start to be an actor because you wanted to do one job for 30 years. That just wasn't even really a possibility. And obviously for us has turned into this incredible opportunity. But never, never, never, never, never, never would we have thought of that at the time. I mean, never, never. Like we were just wanting to be picked up for 13 episodes. That was our dream. Like I remember Darren and I, when we did get picked up, we used to make jokes about how maybe one day we could get nominated for a Cable Ace Award. That was the highest our hopes were. There was this thing, they're gone. They were called the Cable Ace Awards. They were just for shows on cable. Because at that point, no cable show had ever been nominated for an Emmy, much less won an Emmy. So it wasn't even in our mind that that could happen. But obviously it did later on happen, which is a miracle. There's so many miracles involved in our show. Anyway, back to this episode. So this episode to me is super fascinating for so many different reasons. So we have a different DP at this point. Her name is Maryse Alberti, She's French. And I used to butcher her name all the time. And for any French people, I'm really sorry if I have butchered it again. But she was incred. And we also have this really interesting director, Alyson McClain. Now, what I remember of the first season. Okay, wait, I didn't get to the point that they did finally pick us up, obviously. I guess that's obvious. So maybe like a year of waiting and then we get picked up finally.