Once We Scared Aunt Jeannie | Episode 31

Summary

Once We Were Spacemen – Episode 31

“Once We Scared Aunt Jeannie” (June 10, 2026)

Hosts: Nathan Fillion & Alan Tudyk
Main Theme: A delightfully rambling conversation between two longtime friends covering everything from stage improvisation and awkward childhood campfires to bizarre travel stories and the emotional impact of acting.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Nathan and Alan dive into personal stories, both hilarious and heartfelt. They discuss the bravado and vulnerability of live stage improv, the emotional residue of difficult roles, strange travel adventures, and the small but memorable moments that shape relationships. The episode is peppered with playful banter, mutual admiration, and plenty of comic self-deprecation. The titular story—Nathan’s dad terrifying Aunt Jeannie on a family camping trip—anchors a set of stories about childhood, fear, and friendship.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bravery on Stage & Improv Admiration

[02:31–06:21]

• Nathan recounts attending Edie Patterson’s one-woman improv show, marveling at her courage and improvisational prowess.
• Alan jokes about the courage needed for such performances, riffing on the literal translation of “cojones.”
  • Quote – Alan Tudyk [03:31]: “Ah, low hanging courage.”
  • Nathan Fillion [03:33]: “Exactly.”
• They agree improv skills, especially solo, are rare and admirable.
• Edie’s willingness to enter “weird, terrible old folks home sex session” scenes is particularly noted.
  • Quote – Nathan Fillion [05:47]: “The lighting improviser brought the lights down and she said, oh no, bring them back up, we’re not done with this scene. And she followed through.”

2. Birdwatching, Big TVs, and Life's Simple Pleasures

[06:33–11:07]

• Nathan shares his growing interest in birds, specifically spotting a California quail.
  • Alan Tudyk [07:45]: “They are. There’s a little thing coming off its head. It looks like almost like an angler fish. ... but it’s just more like a flower or something.”
• Alan discusses buying his largest TV yet and laments motion sickness from too-large screens and playing video games.
• Alan confesses to having an addictive personality, so he’s moved away from games, settling on simple phone games.
  • Alan Tudyk [10:06]: “It’s a little—it’s like dots, and you try to knock out squares... It’s called Easy Brain, which was my nickname in college.”

3. Showbiz: Upfronts, Networking, and Accent Adventures

[11:22–15:05]

• Nathan discusses upcoming network upfronts and the tradition of media promotion. Alan jokes about “Resident Alien” being “bargain bin.”
• They share stories of mistaken identities, with Alan being mistaken for British and a casting director’s confusion.
  • Alan Tudyk [13:52]: “I had a casting director one time say, is your visa in order?... She thought I was putting on an American accent.”
• Alan talks about working hard on accents, preferring productions with dialect coaches.

4. Scripts, Show Pitches & Writing Advice

[16:23–22:41]

• The duo reminisce about their unaired show concept “Repo Bros” and the pitfalls of sharing creative work with producers who suggest changing everything.
• Alan describes an old script about competitive dog shows (“Show of Shows”) and recalls Bernie Brillstein’s tough note: “It’s called the Moving Pictures, kid, not the Talking Pictures. Cut half of it.” [19:47]
• Alan shares Amy Sedaris & Stephen Colbert’s writing mantra:
  • Alan Tudyk [21:29]: “Wouldn’t that be cool if…? Write it up.”

5. Technological Woes & Teamwork in Marriage

[22:51–26:05]

• Alan admits to being overwhelmed by technology and chords, praising his wife Carissa’s tech savviness.
  • Alan Tudyk [25:44]: “When stuff went wrong at Bank of America… she ran a company.”
• Discussion on relationship strengths: Nathan probes Alan on his own contributions (“I make jokes about it. ...I’ll go buy it.” [26:22])

6. Watching TV with Actor-Judgment

[27:20–30:15]

• Alan and Nathan reveal the “actor problem” of watching films, noting they can sometimes spot acting shortcuts or tricks.
  • Nathan Fillion [27:48]: “One of us will say, ‘OK,’ and that’s the cue... now we’re talking about something.”
• Alan tries not to spoil viewing for his wife by commenting on performances: “If I weigh in and say, this person needs to stop doing what they're doing....I don't want to spoil the experience for her.”

7. The Art of Containing Emotion Onscreen

[30:15–34:42]

• Nathan singles out Alan’s performance in “Premature” for being funny and emotionally layered.
  • Nathan Fillion [31:37]: “It’s far more entertaining to see someone try not to cry than to see them cry.”
• Alan shares how filming “42” as a virulent racist left him emotionally raw—channeling that pain into “Premature.”
  • Alan Tudyk [34:43]: “If you have to, if you’re an actor out there, you’re like, how do I cry? Be racist. All right, moving on.”

8. The Legendary "Aunt Jeannie Camping Prank”

[35:01–43:22]

• Nathan launches into the titular story: during a family camping trip, his prankster dad terrifies Aunt Jeannie at night, pretending to be a bear or monster, scratching the tent and growling—only to “attack” with a sudden zip of the tent.
  • Nathan Fillion [42:53]: “My dad popped his head in and goes, hey—slipped out for a midnight pee. Came back, decided to scare his sister Jeannie.”
• The emotional whiplash and family fallout provide much laughter.

9. Childhood, Camp Organizations & Cultural Reflection

[44:04–45:26]

• Alan shares memories of being in "Indian Guides," the faux-Native camp club for kids (“Kickapoo Santi tribe”), reflecting on its cultural insensitivities and how it blended merit-badges with moral lessons.

10. Travel Tales: Surviving Vietnam by Train

[45:42–51:58]

• Alan details a near-disastrous train trip in Northern Vietnam, recounting terrifying journeys, questionable safety, and the chaos of mismatched tickets.
  • Alan Tudyk [48:40]: “We get on this train... This thing was a death trap. ... We were almost on our entire side. It was tilted.”
  • Alan Tudyk [50:59]: “I like the part about the train... where we almost died.”
• Despite the danger, he recalls the uniqueness of Hanoi—soup culture, street haircuts, the collision of old tradition and modern snack foods.

11. Hidden Paris: The Eiffel Tower’s Basement

[52:09–55:38]

• Nathan enthuses about discovering the hydrodynamic elevator systems beneath the Eiffel Tower, meeting an engineer who fabricates spare parts by hand.
  • Nathan Fillion [53:12]: “When you go under... there are the mechanisms that operate the elevators... it’s like a steampunk dreamland.”

12. Languages, Duolingo, & Subscriptions that Linger

[56:09–58:58]

• Both lament their lack of language proficiency.
  • Alan Tudyk [56:13]: “‘No’—that is Spanish for no, I don’t [speak another language].”
• Alan jokes about signing up for Duolingo, but only making “automatic payments.”
  • Alan Tudyk [58:43]: “I was paying for, I wasn’t doing. I have a lot of those. ...just draining credit cards.”

13. Show & Tell: Belt Buckles, Taxidermy, and Squeezing Cats

[59:17–66:48]

• Alan’s “Get to Know You” tale: embarrassing himself explaining rodeo belt buckles to an actual rodeo champ kid.
  • Alan Tudyk [60:50]: “The kid goes, I know, I won it at a rodeo.”
• Nathan’s cat, Dirty Cat, survives being paralyzed, ingeniously aided by a harness devised by Nathan—plus a story about nearly gifting Alan the (stuffed) remains.
  • Nathan Fillion [63:32]: “I said, hey, listen, my cat’s not long for this world. ...I’m gonna have her stuffed. ...I’m gonna give her to you.”
  • Alan Tudyk [66:21]: “I hope I never get to the point where Carissa has to squeeze me so I poop.”

14. Astrology: Wisdom and Warnings from the Cosmos

[69:38–73:29]

• Alan recounts an astrologer’s advice to fight his natural tendency to “go with the flow” and references his “double Scorpio” issues.
  • Alan Tudyk [70:34]: “She said, as a Pisces... you got to fight that stream... And a Scorpio gets to stinging people when they don’t get their way. ...But the problem is you just sting yourself...”
• Both are skeptical, but recognize uncanny coincidences and enjoy reading fake horoscopes to friends.
  • Nathan Fillion [74:30]: “I’ll read a different horoscope. Let them go on about, oh my god, that’s so exactly me. Oh really? Because I was reading Gemini.”

15. Music Recommendation Segment

[76:07–79:50]

• Alan spotlights “Graceland” by Paul Simon, focusing on the poignancy of grief and heartbreak in the lyrics:
  • Alan Tudyk [77:10]: “She comes back to tell me she’s gone as if I didn’t know that...”
  • Alan Tudyk [77:36]: “Losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you’re blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow... That’s just beautiful, man.”
• Alan plans to curate a Spotify playlist (“Alan’s List”) for listeners, especially Patreons.

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Notable Quotes

• Alan Tudyk [04:24]: “You improv’d with her, basically... Of the little bit of improv there is with someone else, she takes a couple of suggestions.”
• Nathan Fillion [31:37]: “It’s far more entertaining to see someone try not to cry than to see them cry.”
• Alan Tudyk [21:29]: “Write it up.”
• Nathan Fillion [42:53]: “My dad popped his head in and goes, hey—slipped out for a midnight pee. Came back, decided to scare his sister Jeannie.”
• Alan Tudyk [70:34]: “As a Pisces, you got to fight that stream... your scorpio gets to stinging people when they don’t get their way. But the problem is you just sting yourself.”
• Nathan Fillion [77:36]: “Losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you’re blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:31–05:10] – Edie Patterson’s improv show and courage on stage
• [07:09–08:18] – Birdwatching: identifying the California quail
• [11:22–12:24] – TV upfronts explained
• [16:23–19:47] – Writing “Repo Bros” and “Show of Shows”; getting notes
• [25:44–26:05] – Carissa’s techie past
• [27:20–30:15] – Watching TV with “actor’s eyes”
• [35:01–43:22] – Camping story: “Once We Scared Aunt Jeannie”
• [45:42–51:58] – Vietnam train trip near-disaster
• [52:09–55:38] – Finding the Eiffel Tower’s hydrodynamic elevator engines
• [59:17–61:33] – The real meaning of rodeo belt buckles
• [63:32–66:48] – Dirty Cat and the joys (?) of animal care
• [69:44–72:56] – Astrology and questionable compatibility
• [77:10–79:50] – “Graceland” (Paul Simon) lyric appreciation & playlist plans

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Memorable Moments

• Alan’s earnest belt buckle explanation to a real cowboy kid backfires:
  • Alan Tudyk [60:50]: “‘I know, I won it at a rodeo,’ [the kid said].”
• Nathan retelling his dad’s elaborate camping prank on Aunt Jeannie
• Mutual compliments about performance craft, with Nathan lauding Alan’s subtlety in “Premature”
• Alan’s joke acting advice: “How do I cry? Be racist.”
• Alan and Nathan both deciding there’s a strange, real value in “Write it up.”

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Tone & Style

As always, Nathan and Alan’s rapport is goofy, honest, and endearingly self-mocking. Conversations are relaxed and unscripted, frequently looping back to earlier jokes or warm compliments. They shift easily from comic absurdity (taxidermy offers, “poop squeezing” device ideas) to sincere reflection on art, love, and aging. The tone throughout is playful, slightly irreverent, but always affectionate.

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Episode Takeaways

• Bravery is in the showing up (on stage, in life, or in writing), even when you—and sometimes only you—see the effort behind it.
• The fun of childhood, the pain and magic of performance, and the endurance of friendship all mingle in the “spaceship” of life.
• Sometimes, the best podcast episodes are just two lifelong friends sharing the silly, scary, embarrassing, and strangely moving stories that make them who they are.

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For the full story—including all the jokes about underwear, rodents, resident aliens, or riding the rails in Vietnam—listen to the complete episode of “Once We Were Spacemen: Once We Scared Aunt Jeannie.”

Transcript

[Alan Tudyk]

He's got cowboy gear on and he's got this cowboy hat and cowboy boots and he's got a belt buckle. And I said, hey, buddy, how you doing? I'm from Texas, and I don't know if you know this, but that belt buckle you have there in Texas, you'll see those a lot. He's like, yeah. I said, yeah. The bigger the belt buckle, the bigger the badass of cowboy. Because those are not just clothing except accessories. They're trophies. If you are in a rodeo or a ropen and you win, that's the prize. You get a big belt buckle. So they're. You're showing off how your skills when you're wearing that. And so you got a big belt buckle. You're a really good cowboy. And you got a pretty big one there. And the kid goes, I know. I wanted it. A rodeo

[Nathan Fillion]

dummy.

[Alan Tudyk]

Once we were spacemen. Spacemen. I tend to play weird people. Usually aliens and robots and things that don't have romance.

[Nathan Fillion]

I once didn't get a job where they were looking for a Nathan Fillion type. Once we were spacemen.

[Alan Tudyk]

Once we were spacemen.

[Nathan Fillion]

I'm pointing at you.

[Alan Tudyk]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Once We Were Spacemen. Because once we were spacemen and still we are spacemen. And so you. Because this big ball of dirt and water called Earth is itself a spaceship. And we're all flying through this crazy space alone together in a group, feeling alone. But still we are in space. And we're men and women also and whatever else you want to identify as.

[Nathan Fillion]

Alone Together.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yep, that's the name of my album. It's. That was this. That was the non hit single. But you know, I just. I like to recycle it and remind myself that I put out that album Alone Together.

[Nathan Fillion]

Finally not finished.

[Alan Tudyk]

How you doing, buddy?

[Nathan Fillion]

We had Edie Patterson as a guest on our last episode. I don't know what order these are going to come out in, but we've already recorded an episode with Edie Patterson and she talked about doing a show. I went to the show.

[Alan Tudyk]

How was it?

[Nathan Fillion]

It was very rewarding. First of all, she's just the cajones you have to have to go up and I'm going to do an entire play for y' all right now based on some suggestions from the audience. And I'm gonna do all these characters. And as uncomfortable as every scene, any scene gets. You're all you're. It's all you. It's all. There's just no one to rely on.

[Alan Tudyk]

And and when you say cojones, are you referring to eggs or something else? Because that, I think that is the. Isn't that the literal translation? Eggs?

[Nathan Fillion]

Courage.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, it's courage. Oh. The Spanish word for eggs is huevos, though both huevos and cojones may refer to testicles in colloquial Spanish.

[Nathan Fillion]

It's the, the courage you have to have.

[Alan Tudyk]

Ah, low hanging courage.

[Nathan Fillion]

Exactly.

[Alan Tudyk]

Pendulous, heavy courage.

[Nathan Fillion]

So she's lower with age.

[Alan Tudyk]

Swinging low. So you said you saw her, she

[Nathan Fillion]

was asking for a title for the play and, and I, and I was going to come up with like, don't count your chickens before they hatch. And I thought that's too long. So I was going to say, you know, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. And. And then I said, don't count your horses. And I don't. I got nervous. And she said, what was that? I was way at the back. I was very, at the very back row. I said, don't count your horses. All right, let's go with that. And she. I felt terrible because it was that mean. I have no idea. But she used it and she made it work.

[Alan Tudyk]

You, you, you improv with her, basically. I mean, of the little bit of, of improv there is with someone else, she takes a couple of suggestions. Is there anything else she takes?

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She had like names of characters, a place where it was going to happen. There was like a. There was like. Yeah, there was like four suggestions that came out there. And she did like a play in three, introduced a bunch of characters.

[Alan Tudyk]

Wow.

[Nathan Fillion]

And then tied them all in together at the end. The end was so rewarding because all the elements that she had put into play lined up and at the end. And it was very, it was admirable. I was just, I was floored. That's such a skill.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, that's a diff. That's. It's a skill to pull it off and just like you said, walk on stage. It takes eggs.

[Nathan Fillion]

That takes eggs.

[Alan Tudyk]

It's so. That is. I can't. The only other time I've seen something like that was in Edmonton, your hometown, at the, at the fringe when you and I went so long ago. And that was. So that was when I, I dubbed it. The best improvs in the world were there. Yes.

[Nathan Fillion]

I have seen some incredible improv and in Edmonton I have some of the most talented people I've ever seen doing improv has been my hometown.

[Alan Tudyk]

Did she have weird sex and say. Yes. Things that are in like, the gross even Though she's such a sweet woman, you don't expect her to say things

[Nathan Fillion]

like, yes, she got into a very odd, terrible old folks home sex session and the lighting improviser brought the lights down and she said, oh no, bring them back up, we're not done with this scene. And she followed through. She followed through with that one.

[Alan Tudyk]

And this is her husband Dan.

[Nathan Fillion]

I don't think Dan was there that night because she didn't say Dan. It was another, it was another fellow on lights. But I was hoping Dan was working the camera. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think for her weird. But sex scene. Wow. Yeah, that. But I emailed her and apologized about that don't count your horses thing.

[Alan Tudyk]

She didn't know it was you.

[Nathan Fillion]

She had no idea. She. Yeah, she responded to the email. She goes, that was you. Yeah. So

[Alan Tudyk]

how cool. How very cool. Yeah, she's.

[Nathan Fillion]

I sent you a video this morning, Alan.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at there.

[Nathan Fillion]

You were looking at a California quail. Now we're going back to I dig birds.

[Alan Tudyk]

You dig birds?

[Nathan Fillion]

I.

[Alan Tudyk]

Not in the English sense where it's like, oh, let's go get some birds.

[Nathan Fillion]

Right.

[Alan Tudyk]

Snog.

[Nathan Fillion]

Right.

[Alan Tudyk]

But more like that bird just on my carriage.

[Nathan Fillion]

That's exactly right. That's. That's exactly what. And I heard a. I'm in my little kitchen area having a coffee in the morning and I heard a, a bird call that I'm not familiar with.

[Alan Tudyk]

You can you distinguish it's not just like a blanket of sounds for you you're hearing. Oh, that's Roy.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah. Not a skill I thought I had. But if you're just, you know, you're just listening to birds outside. You're always listening to birds. Like, oh, that's such a pleasant sound. You start to get to know and all of a sudden you hear one, you go, what was that? The heck is that? And that's happened a couple of times. And I'll use the Merlin app to see what kind of bird it is. But if you can't see it but you can hear it, it's a lot of fun. And. But yeah, sure enough there's a. It's California quail. Boy, they're cute little Disney fied looking little birds.

[Alan Tudyk]

They are. There's a little thing coming off its head. It sort of like looks like a. Almost like an angler fish. How they have a thing that's like baits you. Yes. Come here and then they chomp them but there's just more like a flower or something.

[Nathan Fillion]

A little dangly thing.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, it's a feather, but yeah. Cool. Yeah, that was a neat. That's. I've never seen one of those.

[Nathan Fillion]

I. I think I've seen. I can't remember seeing that. I just. It was just. It was a new bird. I just wanted to share it with you.

[Alan Tudyk]

The Texan in me looked at that and said, good eating. But then the artist in me said, I'm gonna cry myself to sleep if I kill that thing. Thing.

[Nathan Fillion]

So that's the dichotomy that lives within you.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. Yeah. What are you looking forward to getting a new TV today? Nothing really extraordinary. Getting. Getting. Getting the TV that's going to go in our. Our. I guess it would be a media room. It's not really a. A media. It's not like a house that has a media room in it. It's just where we're going to watch TV. But the TV's large.

[Nathan Fillion]

It's a big one.

[Alan Tudyk]

It's going to be the biggest one I've ever owned.

[Nathan Fillion]

It's not.

[Alan Tudyk]

It's going to be. It's so big.

[Nathan Fillion]

How big is it?

[Alan Tudyk]

Well, you can't play video games on it because you'll vomit, because you get

[Nathan Fillion]

the motion sickness of the shifting because you're too.

[Alan Tudyk]

I've. I've had that before. I went to a media room and I saw somebody's media room. I was like, oh, my God, they had a PlayStation set up. I was like, this is going to be the greatest experience ever. I put in Halo. I went for just a couple of minutes and then I almost tossed my cookies. Because you're too. It's. You can't differentiate. It's moving around and you feel like you're moving and. Yeah, so I'm not going to do that. But we're going to watch. We're going to watch things on it.

[Nathan Fillion]

And when that happens, Alan, and you're playing video games on too big a screen and you start getting motion sickness, it's important to just push through.

[Alan Tudyk]

I. I've stopped, buddy. Have you noticed I've stopped playing video games?

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, you don't. You're not on anymore.

[Alan Tudyk]

I stopped. I decided I have better thing. I should use my time differently. That's. I love. I. And also I am aware of my own addictive personality that I can just. I just want to play. I want to play and play and play.

[Nathan Fillion]

Do you play video games games on games on your phone at all?

[Alan Tudyk]

Yes, I will do that. And they're the dumbest games you could play.

[Nathan Fillion]

What's your. What's your top one right now?

[Alan Tudyk]

It's a little. It's like dots, and you. You try to knock out squares. It's not like a Pong, or. It's like. And each square has a number on. So you have to hit that square so many times, and it's just about ricocheting dots and just kind of Pong version of Pong. Yeah, it's a. It's a version of Pog. But I can. Like, if I have a. I'm on a. On a plane or something like that, I can get lost in that game. It's called. It's called Easy Brain, which is. Was my nickname in college. Brick Blast. Brick Blast. I mean, they didn't even spend much time on thinking out the title.

[Nathan Fillion]

That sounds like a soap opera star.

[Alan Tudyk]

Brick Blast.

[Nathan Fillion]

Come down to the shopping mall. At the Green Garden Valley Shopping Mall. You'll meet Brick Blast.

[Alan Tudyk]

He's a lover. He's a fighter. What are you looking forward to, Nathan Fillion?

[Nathan Fillion]

I have. I. I have even that quail you

[Alan Tudyk]

caught early this morning. Besides that.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, yeah. I didn't. Oh, I. I didn't catch him. I just. I. Well, I. I caught his action on camera. I caught him on film. I'm looking forward to. I got a couple trips coming up. We have. We're going to the upfronts in New York.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, they still do that?

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, yeah. That's the thing. So if. When you have a television program, you know, the way the networks and facilities that the distributors make money is by selling advertising space. And so what they do every year is they have what they call the upfronts, little dog and pony show. To say, here's our fall lineup, everybody. Here's our. And they're showing the media buyers, here's what we have in store for you.

[Alan Tudyk]

They didn't do that with Resident Alien. That was like a bargain bin thing. No, no, no. They would. They would just set up a stall in different flea markets around the country.

[Nathan Fillion]

Do they have a big sign with numbers on it saying we're dropping our prices and the numbers keep flipping? Yeah.

[Alan Tudyk]

Offer us anything. That's great, man. I live in New York now, you know, so you'll be here where I live.

[Nathan Fillion]

We have actually been in touch with. There's a. There's a dinner. There's a wonderful dinner we're having. There's a lovely. A bunch of lovely guests, and it's a super fancy restaurant. And we have been in touch with Carissa. To see if she'll join us.

[Alan Tudyk]

This my wife? Yeah, I did. Nathan. I. I. You know, I mean, I. I usually do things with her. I mean, we could do things different. We got separate things. Do do them. But you could. I mean, I could come. When is it. When I'm pretty sure I'm free. I'm just tinkering around the house.

[Nathan Fillion]

I'm wondering if we have. I think there was just, like, the one seat appealing.

[Alan Tudyk]

One of those fancy places. It has too few chairs.

[Nathan Fillion]

Well, cool.

[Alan Tudyk]

If it works out, I look forward to seeing you.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, yeah, we have. I think. Yeah, I think it's. I think it's being arranged right now that I think we're having a dinner and I think you're gonna join us. But. So, yeah, so there's that. And then I have a trip to. There's a con in London that you and I are gonna do.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, we're gonna do that. Yeah. And. And when we do that, I won't do a crappy English accent like the one I did earlier where I was saying, that bird just on my bonnet, or whatever. I said, I think that would be

[Nathan Fillion]

the perfect venue to try out your English accent and see how it fares against other English accent people.

[Alan Tudyk]

I can tell you right now, it will not fare well. I think, you know, that's something that would get a solid. A boo. You think I'm. I do. I. I do. I do. I think it's just an opportunity for people to. There's. There's. You can't just ask a whole room, you know.

[Nathan Fillion]

Alan, you are often mistaken for being English people. People meet you and are surprised that you are not English.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, that is. That has happened. I had a casting director one time say, is your visa in order? After I auditioned, I was like, my visa. I think I have a MasterCard.

[Nathan Fillion]

I don't know what.

[Alan Tudyk]

What are you talking about? And she was embarrassed. She thought I was putting on an American accent for the audition and was doing a whole thing. That was a long time ago, but

[Nathan Fillion]

that's got a booster your.

[Alan Tudyk]

It is, yes. It's quite a compliment. I do best with accents. And like most actors, when there is a dialect coach hired for the production and they're able to go through your dialogue and go, here's what you do. Here's gonna be your trouble spots. Listening to your voice and listening to your accent. This sound is a tough one for you. So make sure you do these exercises before you come to work. And you work hard.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, you work hard.

[Alan Tudyk]

Coloring inside the lines, you know, within the thing that I have, I can do. I can, I can do. Well, just winging it. Although I have. I've wong it well, I've wong it more than once and it's, it's come out okay, I guess, but I prefer. Yeah, a dialect coach. It's always the best.

[Nathan Fillion]

You do work very hard, Alan, and I. And I think that. I think people see what you do and see the ease with which you do it and don't understand how much has gone into getting to where you are.

[Alan Tudyk]

Maybe, I don't know. Sure, I guess. I don't know. You know, it's one of those things. You never know what people think about you. You know, you. Because in this, in this business of show, people will say very nice things a lot. And there's even people you pay who say nice things who are on the. You know, your, Your success is. Benefits them and so it's best for them. They, they, they do the equation. They're like, I'm not going to tell you you're not good. Like, I, I even asked my agents one time, I sent him on audition because, you know, you do things on tape now I send them the audition. I was like, hey, I don't know. I can't really get a beat on this character. Give me some notes. And they're like, whoa, hands off. We are not going to tell you how to act. That is not our job. We're not doing.

[Nathan Fillion]

That's interesting.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. Like, that is. Talk about ending a relationship. Because they could be like, I think you should do this. You'd be like, is that what you think you're, you know, nothing.

[Nathan Fillion]

It was a trap.

[Alan Tudyk]

That's a trap. I testing you. How dare you say that?

[Nathan Fillion]

I once had a manager and I had. I. Alan, I wrote a. I wrote a TV show for you and me.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yes, I remember. We were. What, was there a title to it?

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, Repo Bros. Repo Bros.

[Alan Tudyk]

It was still. That was. That was the working title. We'll call it the working title. Yeah, Repo Bros.

[Nathan Fillion]

But it was two brothers who were repo men. But usually repo men are like big fellas who come and take your stuff. Kind of like intimidate you. And we weren't that those guys, but you. I was like the straight and narrow business guy who lost everything. And then you were like a ne' er do well con man kind of guy. And I said, you're coming with me and we're going to open a new business and we're going to con People out of their things to repossess them. And you had all these cons that you would run to, to steal things from people, right? And I gave it to my, my manager at the, at the time. I said, yeah, I'll let you have a read. And he goes, I said, so, did you read it? He goes, yeah. He goes, what if they were criminals but the police forced them to work for the police? And I said, what if you write your own pilot? Here's a little advice. If your client says, what do you think of the pilot I just wrote? Do not pitch an entirely different show for your notes.

[Alan Tudyk]

You son of a. I had a movie. I wrote. I wrote a. I wrote a. Oh, buddy, I don't think you'd know about this. I wrote a movie when I first moved to la. So I first. I did move to LA before I moved with Firefly, which I consider when I moved to la. But I moved. I was doing this. I was so frustrated with theater in New York. And one of the. Ruth Williamson who was in a play with me, a fantastic, fantastic, wonderful actress, she said, hey, my friend, remember Brian Frank? She said, he's been around. Big tall guy, he's now like 75. You can't miss him when he walks in a room. He's like, hey. He's like. Volume turned up to 100. She said, My. My friend Brian has a place, he's managing an apartment complex and there's a one bedroom apartment that just opened up next, next door to him. And I said, sign me up, I'm moving. And I came out and Brian and I became friends and we. He pitched an idea to me. It was before Best in Show came out. So Best in Show came out while we were writing it, which was unfortunate. It was about dog shows. It was about this guy who's the top of. Of agility dog shows. And he has an accident and then he has to. He falls from grace and he has to come back and to. To win. It was called the show of Shows. I don't remember what it was called. Anyway, we wrote this whole big script and it is. I found it the other day. It's not great. I gave it to Bernie Brillstein, who was my manager at the time, and I asked him to read it and he read it and he said his only note was, it's called the Moving Pictures, kid, not the Talking Pictures. Cut half of it. I don't which half. I. Howdy. What

[Nathan Fillion]

was it a long movie.

[Alan Tudyk]

I'm sure it felt long for anyone reading it. It Was. It was maybe. Yeah, it was probably about 20 pages too long. Like most script first drafts. It was a crazy. It was a crazy script. It was a crazy script. It had some funny stuff in it, but it was. It was insane.

[Nathan Fillion]

I would love to see Alan Tudic now taking that script and punching it up and seeing, like, doing another pass.

[Alan Tudyk]

Nope. No, thanks. I'd rather write a whole new. I'd write a whole new one. Man, this thing's got structural problems. I. I don't even know. Like, it ended up like, oh, it was bad. Anyway. I. I wish I could give you an example of something that was good in it, but I cannot.

[Nathan Fillion]

The fact that it ended there was.

[Alan Tudyk]

I can tell you this about it. There was. Yeah. The fact that it was over there was the lead character, played by me, has come back and saved the family fortune, which was the butter bacon balls, which were the high. The best dog food at the time. And suddenly everybody wanted nutritional dog food. And so they were on the outs and they were losing all their. And he has to come back to enter the contest and get back on top to promote butter bacon balls again. There was a brother, a jealous brother, who was going to do it in my character's stead, but he was allergic to dogs. And he was a boy in the bubble, but he had made a bubble suit. And he was always. He just walked around like a boy in the bubble. And that was one of the main characters. Like, when you cut. When you're cutting half of it, maybe cut. The kid within the bubble

[Nathan Fillion]

kid, you're

[Alan Tudyk]

gonna offend everyone who knows someone in a bubble. It was. It was wild. He and I had some great ideas. Well, maybe they were Brian's ideas. And I was just like, those are good ideas. I just had every. There's so many people out there right now who are like, I've got a movie idea. You've got a movie idea. I've got a movie idea. We've all got great movie ideas, but do we write them? No, because you know what? Writing's hard. And even if it starts off easy, it's gonna get hard. And you had to get this crunch place. And then you get all these doubts and all this stuff, and. Yeah, you just. It's so. It's. It's impressive to. To do the writing. I used to know Amy Sedaris. We did a lot of plays together back in New York, and she was Stephen Colbert. They were writing a show, and they were always around, and they would always have a thing that they said, which is Write it up. Whenever you'd be like, you know, wouldn't that be cool if this happened? And this is a good idea, if we did this and they go, yeah, write it up. Just then write it up. Like, don't talk to me. Shut up. Write it up. Because you're not going to. Or if you do, then bring that to me. It was always. I still. It still hits in my head when I go, oh, wouldn't that be a good idea? Write it up.

[Nathan Fillion]

I like that.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah.

[Nathan Fillion]

Going back because you. I don't want to go too far past it. You. You're getting. You're getting a new tv.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, yeah.

[Nathan Fillion]

How technologically adept are you? What would you. What would you rate your technological experience? Skills?

[Alan Tudyk]

Right. Well, I. I told you, I play that Bach, that Blockbuster thing, so that's pretty technically. I, I just, this morning was, like, looking at. At my wife. We were looking at this stuff online, and I was like, why does it say dot co. Is it dot Colorado? And then she just went space over spaceover dot com.

[Nathan Fillion]

Oh, so crack the code.

[Alan Tudyk]

Dot Colorado. Oh, God. Does every state have their own.

[Nathan Fillion]

So, I mean, so that's computer stuff. I mean, what about connecting cables and making sure you're, you know this.

[Alan Tudyk]

Nathan, I don't. I wish you could see what's in front of me right now with all of these cords and for what we're doing currently. There's so many chords that I don't need, and it's all. It was a happier. It was a happier place when there were less. When you just had less wires. I. I resent. I resent, like most people in the world, Apple, who introduced way too many chords way too many times and just. And just drained us of our money just so they. Because they could. Until Europe said, you have to stop.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah. Lightning cables are gone now. Yeah.

[Alan Tudyk]

There have been so many great cables. It's like, what's wrong with that one? And I. I, I'm. I suffer from my phone. Like, why did you change it? It's. It was. The button was here, and I updated, and now the button's over here. Button does the same thing. He just moved it to the other side. Why'd you move to the other side? I have it over here in my head. I don't want this. I want that. Why. Why change it? Why change it? Thank you, everyone out there who's saying, exactly, I don't need it. And then so many times they. Yeah, anyway, so you.

[Nathan Fillion]

You're saying your technological skills are jabbing at dots on your Phone game.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. It's garbage. Luckily, Carissa, that woman you're going to have dinner with soon, is your dinner date in a couple of weeks, is really good at that stuff. She worked. She was, she was a tech person. She, like, she danced and then she was a tech person. Not to make this about her, but she, she, like, she was running, like, when stuff went wrong at bank of America. She was, she got a call at like 2 in the morning. We need to fix bank of America stuff. Like, she ran a company. She had her own little shingle and she had employees under her. And she was just doing that for a while.

[Nathan Fillion]

What. When was this?

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, she. Well, like, when she hit 30, she's like, you know, I can't dance forever. And somebody had said, you know, this tech is where it's going. And she's like, cool. And went to Columbia, got into Colombia, took some classes. Wow. She's better than me. Yeah, she's better than. She's better.

[Nathan Fillion]

Well, listen, we all know you married up.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. So she, like, when, like downstairs we have a surround sound. That is because of Clarissa Barton. Doesn't share my last name. It's cool. It's not a thing that she's hooked it up and. Yeah, she, she knows how all that stuff works. I have no idea.

[Nathan Fillion]

I think it's important, though, when there's like a, a couple, when you, when you, you have a significant other, that you both have strengths and, and skills that you bring to the relationship and you both handle things. What's something that you figure that you handle that Carissa does not?

[Alan Tudyk]

I make jokes about it.

[Nathan Fillion]

O.

[Alan Tudyk]

I'll, I mean, I do. Like, if she goes, this is the sound system we need. I'll go buy it. That's a good thing. That's like, as a partner, I was like, what you want? Go get it.

[Nathan Fillion]

So your, your contribution is weighing in

[Alan Tudyk]

or just get, just going, here, go get the money.

[Nathan Fillion]

Sounds good.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, buy it. Like, here's the money for it. Go get it.

[Nathan Fillion]

Okay. All right. This is good.

[Alan Tudyk]

I mean, that is. I, I, I mean, that's one that isn't. That isn't much. That's. I mean, that is. Okay. Money's a pain in the ass, so it's a big thing, but it's, you know, if that's your only contribution, again and again, it kind of gets a little tired. I don't know. When the things come on the tv, I'm fun to watch it with, although I will interrupt it constantly. So I don't know. I don't know, do you pause to

[Nathan Fillion]

interrupt or you just talk over the show?

[Alan Tudyk]

Talk right over that. Some bitch. And then sometimes she'll pause and go, okay, what's what? Because. Which is my indication that she really doesn't need me chiming in. But as you know, as a actor and someone who has been on set for a long time, you can't help but even if you just say, that's a beautiful shot. Oh, I love that shot. Oh, that's great. I love how they did that.

[Nathan Fillion]

When my girlfriend and I are watching television, one of us will say, okay. And then that's the cue to whoever's got the remote, hit pause. And now we're talking about something, and we engage in conversation for a while, wrap it up, and then we continue the show.

[Alan Tudyk]

Is it the kind of thing where you're like, hold on a second. That character said this last time, and now he came in, he said, this time. Am I supposed to buy this type of thing?

[Nathan Fillion]

It can be that. It can be. We talk a lot about acting and performance stuff. A lot about. Yeah, we talk a lot about that. She's also a very capable actor. Really, really good. So we talk about those things. And. Yeah, but we. Of course.

[Alan Tudyk]

I knew that.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah. I love that the entertainment we watch stimulates conversation. And then in. In being entertained together, we also get to know each other.

[Alan Tudyk]

I. Yeah, with Carissa, I tend to. I think that's good, too. I think, because you guys are both actors. So with. Carissa's not an actor, and I try to withhold my opinion of if somebody is doing a bad acting job. And it's just like, I can tell it's my own personal thing. I will not. I won't weigh in because I. I love her, and she. She values my opinion, I think. And if I weigh in and say, I. This. This. This person needs to stop doing what they're doing. They're. They've got a trick, and they keep pulling a trick, and they're doing this trick, and it's not. They're. They're. They're cheating the scene of. Of what they should be doing. Like, I'll have an. I'll have an acting opinion, and I don't want to. I don't want to spoil the experience for her. So I do.

[Nathan Fillion]

You don't want to sour anything for her with your knowledge base.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, she would probably. If she were here, she'd say, you can tell when I don't like somebody, because I'll probably go just in a moment. That wasn't I love it when actors, you know, I mean, there's. Those are the best actors that you watch, and there are many, many, many, many of these actors where I just can't see how they did it. It's almost like. It's almost like magic, you know, it's kind of. Because it is a. It is a craft acting. So, you know, like any woodworker who comes up, they're like, man, I don't even see, you know, where you joined this wood together or whatever. How.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes.

[Alan Tudyk]

All the process that you put on this to get that look. Yeah. So I really enjoy seeing people. They're just like, you don't. You can't even. You're not watching because you're just caught up in there in them being that person.

[Nathan Fillion]

I love that. I'm going to add to that watching someone on screen that I know is extremely distracting. I'm going to use, for example, my good friend Alan Tudyk.

[Alan Tudyk]

He distracts me as well. He distracts me so much.

[Nathan Fillion]

So watching Alan Tudyk is very difficult because the lens I have, I see someone I know very, very well. So in order to be suspended in my escape, to be suspended in a story, to be. I wonder where this character is going to believe the character. It has to be of such extreme quality to pull me out of. There's Alan and there's. You do it consistently for me. And I'm going to bring up one scene there was, and I've mentioned this one before, you do an appearance in a little show called Premature. It's one of. It's. It's. It's not like you're plastered all over the movie. You have one role to play. You have this one function. Alan, that performance was so. Yes. Funny, but layered, really contained. I always say, and this is in drama. It's far more entertaining to see someone try not to cry than to see them cry. I watched a lot of actors, you know, let me show you how hard I can cry. Let me show you how hard I can act.

[Alan Tudyk]

Right, right.

[Nathan Fillion]

When really people don't do that. In reality, people don't cry openly. No, they. They fight it. They try to do anything else other than cry. They'll laugh through things they'll try to do. Your attempts at containing true tragic sadness are so funny. And I. And I'll watch it and I'll think, like what? Like if I were making notes saying, okay, this is what I'll do, and this is the level I'll bring it to. And this is just trying to computate the formula that you put this fella, your character through.

[Alan Tudyk]

Ken, thank you, man. Thank you very much. I let me just to bring people up who don't know which is. 90% of the population don't know the movie Premature. It is. John Carter was the lead. He was young, young man when we were working. He's now, I don't know, a man or something. And it was, it was kind of a groundhog's day. Like you start the day over, you start the day over, but the trigger that starts the day over is. Is he prematurely ejaculates. So that's actually an idea that somebody had. And he went, I'm writing it up and wrote it and then got it made. And it's so it's. It. It is funny. It takes place in high school and I was a. I was somebody whose wife had passed away. And he just keeps tripping over his. His sadness while he's trying to do his job of recruiting for a college. He's recruiting this kid who prematurely ejaculates for a college.

[Nathan Fillion]

And it's been years since his wife passed away. But he's clearly still very sad about. Yes, but everything this kid says brings him to memories of his wife and. Yeah. Now and his loss.

[Alan Tudyk]

Here's the benefit that you can't know like when you watch that. And I was very sad when we made that movie. I was, I was going through a. Not a depression, but I had a lot of emotion pent up in me because I had just done 42. The movie about Jackie Robinson.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes.

[Alan Tudyk]

And I played a racist who was in a movie full of racists. I was the biggest racist. And I had to say the worst things to Chadwick Boseman. I had to yell them in front of stands full of black people. And it was a real guy computer. Who was I? Who did I play again? Philly's manager, Ben Chapman. Oh, Ben Chapman. Thank you. Ben Chapman. A real guy. And he said all these things. And so I was in Atlanta, this movie shot in Atlanta. And I think I maybe had a week off where it just blended one right into the other. Or maybe I stacked both of them. I was sort of doing both at one time. So saying those awful words. It was weird. It was like violence. It really affected me inside. It made me put me in a terrible mood. Made my stomach hurt. I couldn't eat the same. It was a. It really affected me cuz I'm sensitive. And so that movie premature gave me an opportunity just to bleed all that anguish to release it about A premature ejaculation movie, which was very nice.

[Nathan Fillion]

Well, that worked, man. It worked.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, it just sort of worked out that. So if you have to, if you're an actor out there, you're like, how do I cry? Be racist. All right, moving on. I'm writing up an acting book. I just need to write. Jot these things down. Yes. You in the front row, I see your hands up.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes, Yes. I have a question for you, Alan.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yes.

[Nathan Fillion]

My question is, when you were a lad, did you and your friends or family trade in ghost stories?

[Alan Tudyk]

No. Did yours?

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, yeah, we told ghost stories. Here's the thing. We call them ghost stories, but usually they're about, like, maniacal killers or something. There's the one about the couple who was making out and in the car, and there's something comes over the radio and they. And they leave, but there's a hook stuck in the handle of the door because the killer had a hook and they were trying to get in, and he drove away and pulled his hook off like that. Those kinds of stories.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yes. I mean, I, I, I had. Yes, I remember campfire stories. Different. Various campfires throughout my, my youth.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah. And there was, like, the theme. There was always the, the have you. There was one psycho killer called Fingernails. And I never really understood how. But he would kill people with his fingernails and then leave them hanging so that the husband would say, hey, we're stranded in the car, honey. You stay here for help. And she would wake up to a strange scraping sound. It was her husband dangling from the tree above. And his fingernails were. Yes, but I don't understand how the killer had killer fingernails, but it was the fingernails of the husband that was the scary part. I don't know. I don't, I don't know.

[Alan Tudyk]

I kind of heard a version of that one. Yeah, I got a version of that one.

[Nathan Fillion]

It was all. They all had a different story, but they all ended the exact same way.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah.

[Nathan Fillion]

And I don't know, it was, like, scary. But here's one. We used to go camping.

[Alan Tudyk]

Can we start a campfire, please?

[Nathan Fillion]

Campfire. We used to go camping. And is that an hour every once in a while? That's right.

[Alan Tudyk]

That's a California quail. I'm sorry, I keep interrupting. It's the quail that. Okay, go on, go on.

[Nathan Fillion]

My dad would, you know, we'd be sitting around the fire and he'd say, you know, in these woods, there was. There used to be this group of family. He'd start a story about how people got stranded in These woods over the winter and there's not enough food, and they got so hungry that they would bite their own lips off. He's just going to show you how they. And they'd chew and they'd eat their own lips and they can at you. And he'd pull his lips back and go. And then you see them coming at you out of the woods like that. And I'm like, what? I'm sure this isn't true, but now I'm looking over my shoulder into the darkened woods, you know. Yeah, my dad would go, yeah, it was these woods right here. Like that kind of stuff. He would.

[Alan Tudyk]

Jesus. Yeah, that would scare you. That'd be scary. That's great.

[Nathan Fillion]

It was quite an image. Like lipless people.

[Alan Tudyk]

If. If. I wish people could see what I just saw, which was Nathan pulling his lips back and going, kill that. Can we kill that owl, please? Thank you. Yeah, that was scary. We. I had. We had a thing when I was a kid, but, yeah, we told like, lame stories because I was a really. A little kid. We had something in Texas called the Indian Guides. Did you have this up in Canada?

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, I think so. Yes. Yeah, Indian Guides and Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts and all those types of things. Yeah, I think.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, the Boy Scouts and the Eagle Scouts is more legit. I feel like it's. But before you're even that old, you were Indian Guides and you had tribe names and you had. You had Native American names and you. Yeah, we would go camping and then the. And the. Our dads would just do wolf howls in the middle of the night and scare us. But they were all just wasted. That like, once looking back, it's like, oh, it's just the dad's excuse to get away from their wives. With the kids, we all sleep in tents and they just got wasted and ate bacon. You know, that's what camping's all about.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, it really is. That's the kind of the quality of life you're looking for out there. One of the. One of the scariest things that happened when we were camping as children, there was one. My father has a half sister. She passed. She passed. So this is, you know, with all respect, which half the.

[Alan Tudyk]

I can't imagine she lived long.

[Nathan Fillion]

Just.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, this is by Mar.

[Nathan Fillion]

This is his half sister. So his father passed away and his mother remarried and had two more kids. And so there's a half sister.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, I see. So this is.

[Nathan Fillion]

This is Aunt Jeannie. She had gone through a divorce and I think she was a little down. I Think to kind of cheer her up and to kind of get her out of her funk. She. My parents invited her on our. One of our camping trips. We have a tent trailer. You know, those things, those devices, like a big metal box with a plastic roof, and you pop it up and you flip out the sides, and there's a bed on that side and a bed on this side, and it's up off the ground. It's very comfortable camping. It's really nice. Well, Aunt Jeannie, God bless her, was pretty persnickety and didn't like my brother and I doing all the things we love to do while camping, like, you know, poking sticks in the fire and lighting them up and then waving them around in the air to have the sparks and the smoke and.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, that goes. That goes under camping.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, that's all those types of things. Like, my dad used to soak cattails. You know what cattails are?

[Alan Tudyk]

They are attached to, like, a reed

[Nathan Fillion]

with what looks like a hot dog. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fibrous thing. You don't want to explode it because it'd get everywhere, all over. But he would soak those in like a. Like some kind of kerosene or barbecue starter. I'm not sure what it was. Came out of the square. Can get fire started. He would soak him in that, and those would be, like. We'd have torches. We'd go for a little hike with a torch. Like, we loved it. We were playing with fire. Literally playing with fire.

[Alan Tudyk]

We're having fun.

[Nathan Fillion]

Well, Jeannie didn't like any of that. So he's like, don't touch that. Put that stick down, bitch. And that. And my brother and I were kind of going, jeez, man, this is what we do. Well, this particular night, this scary thing happened. I'm sharing. My brother and I are sharing one of the sides, the beds of the tent trailer with my Aunt Jeannie. So she's on the inside. My brother's in the middle. And I'm on the far edge where the canvas goes. And I wake up to something brushing up against the canvas on the other side. And it's heavy. It rocks the tent trailer. I wake up and I hear, Jeannie, what's the point? What's happening? And. And. And then I hear this, like, a snuffling, like a. Like some. Something kind of growling at me, right? Something kind of snuffling, growling, snorting out there. And. And it's walking along the edge of the tent trailer, coming around the corner, coming around to the front and Brushing up. And now it's rocking up against the tent trailer and pushing. It's getting a little louder. And Jenny's getting into more of a panic. And all of a sudden, something starts to claw at the door of the tent trailer. It's fingernails.

[Alan Tudyk]

It's the fingernail guy.

[Nathan Fillion]

It was a fingernails guy from the other story. And a. A low, horrifying growl. Now, I'm a kid. I don't know what to do in this situation. I'm going. Do we panic? What's happening? But what's. I don't know what the response is, but Genie was, like, full on panic mode. And something starts to claw. And you can see the sharp, pointy something like, scratching against the canvas of the. Of the zippered front door. And she lets out a scream. She's screaming. And all of a sudden, the zipper opens up and boop. My dad popped his head in and goes, hey. Slipped out for a midnight pee. Came back, decided to scare his sister Jeannie. She was livid, really. She was li.

[Alan Tudyk]

Bobby, you son of a bitch.

[Nathan Fillion]

I'm gonna swear to God. And my mom went, oh, bop. Why would you do that? And my dad laughing. My brother and I are dead. Dying. And we're going now. You're having about as much fun on this camping trip as we are. God bless her, Antj. We love her. We miss her. She's lovely.

[Alan Tudyk]

She's still around.

[Nathan Fillion]

No, no, no. We miss her.

[Alan Tudyk]

I thought you missed her because you didn't talk to her anymore after that. You're like,

[Nathan Fillion]

what was our last camping trip together?

[Alan Tudyk]

I bet. Wow.

[Nathan Fillion]

I don't know why I just didn't want to come behind you to cabin trips with my dad.

[Alan Tudyk]

I love camping. My dad didn't play around like that as much.

[Nathan Fillion]

That was your job.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, Yeah. I was the one who was. We. We all had pocket knives, and we'd run around in the woods and pocket knife things. Just whatever you could get a pocket knife on and whittle or whatever. It was very dangerous. When I look back, we were hiking in places that you're like, we should not have been hiking on these cliffs and stuff, just on our own. And dads were just.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah. Probably the smartest thing to hand kids a blade. Go. Go. Knock yourself out. Yeah.

[Alan Tudyk]

Kickapoo Santi tribe. That was the name of us. And my. My Indian. Indian name.

[Nathan Fillion]

Sorry.

[Alan Tudyk]

Kickapoo Santi.

[Nathan Fillion]

There's a joke there somewhere.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, we were the Kickapoo Santees. Better than the Tetons, which were the best tribe. Obviously, they. They won Things. Whatever there was to win. Just, you know, different skill sets. We didn't have those. We were the Kickapoo Santi tribe. My. My. Do I say Native American name. We were Indian Guides. I don't know if it's racially insensitive. It's kind of like. It's definitely like we're pretending to be this. This native population that was wiped out. But I was bloody arrow and my dad was broken bow. So, you know, we were definitely attempting the. The positive thing that it was borrowing from the native cultures was. Were feathers. And you had to. You earned these feathers by. In a. In a coup stick, the tradition of the Native Americans. You earned them by memorizing moral code that you would live by and bravery and things outside that you would do. Sort of like when you become a boy scout and you get your. Your patches and badges and stuff. But I'm sure we were insulting many ways. There was never any, like, face paint or anything like that.

[Nathan Fillion]

Alan, when it comes to travel, what is. You are. You are widely traveled. You've done a lot of wonderful, incredible travel. What is something. What is one of the more bizarre or interesting or, like, something. A place that left a real impression on you?

[Alan Tudyk]

Well, we went to Vietnam. We went to. But we didn't go where everybody else goes. It was like we had. We were looking. It was. I think this was our first trip together. Chris is my first trip. First of all, I never took vacations when it was just me. Never did it. Ah, that's not true. Let me back that up. I rarely took vacations when it was just me. I would go a lot of times by myself. I went to Australia. I go to Australia a lot. I liked Australia and. But when Carissa and I started dating, she's like, let's go to Vietnam and Thailand, and let's go for three weeks. This was very hard for me. I did not like it. I was like, we should be working. I don't know what we're doing. Why are we not working? I need to work. I need to get back home. It was a difficult. It was hard for me to push through and just try to relax for three weeks.

[Nathan Fillion]

You couldn't make that adjustment to kind of wind down.

[Alan Tudyk]

And it was very. It was hard on this vacation. We went to North Vietnam, where all of the.

[Nathan Fillion]

All of.

[Alan Tudyk]

When you think of Vietnam and the bombings and things like that, and like, that city was decimated, and then they've built it up since, and it was. It. The South Vietnam is where a lot of people go and it's supposedly very lovely. So we went to North Vietnam. Hanoi. Yeah, I believe Hanoi. Hey, computer. Did I go to Hanoi? Yes, you did. Yeah. We went to the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. And that was. We were just there for a couple of days. It was great. A lot of eat a lot of soup, but people, like make food out on the street and it's. You're like looking at dead animal bits. And they put them in soups, but they're soups that. They've been passed down from generation to generation. Generation. So you kind of do soup all the time. You have their soup, have their soup, have their soup. And it's really great. And you sit on little chairs. For some reason, everybody sits on little chairs. I also like. I like that they did in. In Hanoi. You people do haircuts. They just put a chair out on the street and they just cut people's hair. And there's like a pile of hair around it. People just come in, new haircut, no mirror in front of you, no salon, no anything. Just. There's your haircut. So we were going north to go see some of the tribes and like, you look at it online, it's like, oh, they're, you know, they're. You see, they're. They're still doing things the way that they did before, and they're still, you know, these, these ancient ways of making food. And you can. You can go stay in a village. And it all looked very cool. And so we went. And to get there, you had to go on a train. And this was. This was the thing that was a kind of shocking. We get to the train, there's the platform, and it's like, you're on track six. It's like, okay, well, this. There's the one. This is track one. How do we get to track six? They're like, just point across all these tracks and it's. You just drag your suitcase over one track, two tracks, three tracks, four tracks. Yeah, you just get to six. The sixth track, that's going to be your track. And so you're in.

[Nathan Fillion]

You get on it, Stand next to it.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, we get on this train. There's obviously been some nefarious stuff going on because there aren't enough seats. We had to take it out there and back, and there were never enough seats. People were like, I bought this seat and other people bought the same seat, and we bought a little. A little room, a birth. And we just locked the door because they were arguing outside about whose birth it was, but it was ours. This Thing was a death trap. We are lucky we got. We lived. I looked afterwards online. People die on this thing all the time. I woke up. So it's a, it's a nighttime train. You wake up at your. Your destination. And we were almost on our entire side. It was tilted. We were moving at just inches, inching along. And it was because the tracks were so jacked up and so they have to go real slow so they don't fall off. But because it's such a long train, it could go on these jacked up tracks because it would stay on. But just. You had to go over these. I mean, I can only imagine because I was like being like sliding to one side of the room. God, it was scary. And then you get there and it's amazing. You know, you see, you see all these people on mopeds that have like a family of nine on the moped with like a cord of, of wood and two geese in a cage. It's just like, what. And then when we went to all of these different tribes, there was a lot of, a lot of Cheetos. It wasn't like they were making food. They were like, there's just a lot of fast food, like just Fritos, Cheetos, soft drinks, like junk food. There's a lot of, a lot of junk food. And they would kind of put on a show that they were for the tourists. Hey, this is how we used to do things.

[Nathan Fillion]

And this is what you loved. You loved it.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, no, that was just weird. I didn't like it at all. It was awful.

[Nathan Fillion]

Where's the interesting part of like, hey, you won't believe this part of my travel.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, I like the part about the train.

[Nathan Fillion]

Oh, where you almost died.

[Alan Tudyk]

Where we almost died. I mean, that's the kind of thing that you're like, oh, wow, I did that. I like that. I had the experience of six. I had to. I had to walk in the dark over six tracks. That's something I wouldn't have thought of ever having to do from our modern American safety regulations. Safety out the, out the door.

[Nathan Fillion]

It's.

[Alan Tudyk]

And. And there were roaches in our, in our little thing. Carissa is afraid of these things. But like, you know, once you're out in, in it and it's kind of. You kind of get that feeling of like, wow, this is. There's a different level of survival feel here. She killed it with her hand back right on the wall. Killed the, killed the roach because she didn't want it crawling on her when we were asleep. Yeah.

[Nathan Fillion]

Like, we were extremely capable. I'm not gonna lie. She's. When I met Karissa, the very first time, full on intimidated.

[Alan Tudyk]

Really.

[Nathan Fillion]

And the more I. Yeah. Yeah. The more I learned about her, the more intimidating she became. She was It.

[Alan Tudyk]

The guns. I tell her to leave those at home.

[Nathan Fillion]

She has the. I'm pointing at the biceps. She does. She had guns. She had. She was svelte. She. She's got. She's got. She's athletic, she's sharp, she's clever, she's funny, she's fearless. She's. Yeah, she's talented. And then the more you learn about all her capabilities. Yeah, she's wildly intimidating. I. I admitted that to her face.

[Alan Tudyk]

She. She took that as a weakness in you. So you should be careful. Yeah, you shouldn't. You shouldn't. Where have you gone that you like that? You're like, oh, wow. This was wild and awesome. And I got to see this. They're.

[Nathan Fillion]

Here's something I love. I think about this a lot, too, because Paris is an amazing city. And there's.

[Alan Tudyk]

I've been there.

[Nathan Fillion]

Exactly. There's a. You know, it's a wonderful. It's a city of lights. It's incredible history and few bras.

[Alan Tudyk]

Have you noticed this? Carissa and I both noticed when we were there, and I don't know if it was because there was a. A cool wind that was blowing through and it, like, suddenly rained, but very few.

[Nathan Fillion]

Not the undergarments.

[Alan Tudyk]

If you didn't want to wear a bra, ain't no thing. Women. Women were not embracing the bra, which I. As I understand from women, I know one, and maybe even more than one. They're uncomfortable anyway. If you're thinking of making. If you're going to Paris and you're like, I don't have room in my suitcase, maybe throw out a couple of bras. Make. Make some room for whatever else you need. Go on, Nathan.

[Nathan Fillion]

Thank you. When you think of Paris, you think of some landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower. Did you know, Alan, that the Eiffel Tower has a basement?

[Alan Tudyk]

No. What?

[Nathan Fillion]

Everybody goes to Paris and they're going to see the Eiffel Tower. And they go on up to the top and they look out, and it's phenomenal. And for the time. And the technology that they were using to build that thing, it was like oxen carriage. Like, it was. There's no. There wasn't like, heavy machinery to do this stuff. They. They made it with animals pulling cables. Like, it was some of the first uses of steel wow. You know, there's a fellow who sold the Eiffel Tower twice. Anyway, when I look at the Eiffel Tower, I know that there is a basement because I went there.

[Alan Tudyk]

What do they do? Why did you. Some people go to the top. You went under it. That seems maybe at less thrilling. I mean, it's novel.

[Nathan Fillion]

Certainly I had been to the top, so it's not like I was missing out. But when you go under, there's elevators that will take you up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Underneath the Eiffel Tower are the mechanisms that operate the elevators. They're pulling water from the river and they're using water and counterweights. And those elevators are powered by hydrodynamic systems underneath the Eiffel Tower itself. And I went down there for a little tour and it's very small. The doors are very small. There's not a lot of headroom. And the guy down there, there was a maintenance guy who reminded me, body type of Stephen Merchant. He had to be 6 foot 6 and slender and wearing these coveralls and very nice man, very French. And. And you're looking around, it's like a steampunk dreamland down there because there's all these pipes and, and big turning wheels and gears and. And pneumatic pistons and stuff, and it's, it's. It's wild down there. And I said to him, what happens if, like, pointed something? And I said, what happens if this thing breaks? This thing right here? What do you do? And he goes, oh, well, the Eiffel Tower repair part shop closed down a long time ago, so we have to make a new one. If something breaks, we have to just fabricate an entirely new piece. And he was just such a nice man and just explained to us how everything works and how they're bringing in the water from the river to power the thing and it pushes the thing up and pulls that down.

[Alan Tudyk]

Wow.

[Nathan Fillion]

It was just. I loved it because I had no idea it existed. It's just the underworkings of this incredible monument. The unsung hero of the elevators of

[Alan Tudyk]

the Eiffel Tower and Stephen Merchant. You'd think he'd have money, but he's working in the basement of the Eiffel Tower. He put all his money in French bras and no one bought them. I, I just, I just want you to know real quick, just a little side note, I wasn't all pervy looking at women's, you know, with that, the bras. It's just. It had rained and it was the breeze. I. My wife noticed, too. She brought it up. I'm sorry. There's someone there with their hand up. Nathan.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Nathan Fillion]

I just wanted to know, Alan, do you speak another language?

[Alan Tudyk]

No, that's. I. That is Spanish for no, I don't. I wish I did. I do not. I said that. I said that cojones was eggs a minute ago. I can't. I can't pretend that I know anything. I kind of know a little French. I learned French. I learned some French in high school, but I did it all wrong. I Learned. Learned French 1, and I didn't have a good counselor. 9th grade French 1 and then 12th grade French 2. What the heck? I mean, there was the dumbest. So when I go to Paris or go to France, as they say in France, I will pick up on a few words and I say things that seem to amuse people when I try to speak their language. They're like.

[Nathan Fillion]

It's that sound that you make when you see bad acting.

[Alan Tudyk]

Exactly. Now, do you speak. You don't. You speak Canadian? I know, but that sounds a lot like English.

[Nathan Fillion]

It's pretty darn close. Yes, it's very, very close. It's a form of English, I think most of it say we pronounce words differently, and some might say more correctly, but.

[Alan Tudyk]

What, like hosts? Anyway, I'm not gonna get into the.

[Nathan Fillion]

I do speak a little tiny bit of French. I do have a little bit of French that I learned in school. I wish I spoke Spanish then.

[Alan Tudyk]

It's that Quebecois French. Is it the Quebec?

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I have a. I have a. If I was to speak French, it would probably be with a Canadian accent that would make the French people of France say,

[Alan Tudyk]

yeah, I try. I got that duolingo. When we went to Mexico City and I signed up for duolingo, I'm like, I'm going to learn this language because I loved Mexico City so much, and I love spring Spanish. I love the music. I love how the language is. Has a rhythm to it and the musicality of it. I was like, I'm gonna learn. Learn this language. I'm from Texas, for Christ's sake. I should know Spanish. All. I grew up in a place called Plano, which is Plano, which is plains. I mean, all the. I was born in El Paso. I. I should learn it. And I. I didn't. But I paid for duolingo for a long time, so that was at least that.

[Nathan Fillion]

Did you get all those text messages? Hey, man, you haven't done A duolingo in a long time. It's like an ex girlfriend trying to get back into your life.

[Alan Tudyk]

I did a different thing where I somehow set up for like automatic payments. And so they kept real quiet because they were just making money.

[Nathan Fillion]

Notice.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah, I was paying for. I wasn't doing. I have a lot of those. It's. It's like a. It's like having a child. It's like having someone just. All of the things I've signed up for that I don't know where they are now that are just draining. Credit cards.

[Nathan Fillion]

I like knowing this about you. Which reminds me. Oh, Alan, let's get to know you better.

[Alan Tudyk]

I know you and you know me.

[Nathan Fillion]

Let us get to know you better. What do you got for me?

[Alan Tudyk]

I don't know if I told you, this was a while ago. Okay. It was for a charity thing.

[Nathan Fillion]

Oh, boy.

[Alan Tudyk]

It was a long time ago when I was doing Suburgatory and it was for. It was this interesting things like haircuts. Haircuts for kids and young. Young people. And I guess other people were there too, but this young man was there and. And I was there as an actor on Suburgatory to be part of the. Hey, this afternoon, people are getting their hair cut. We're all just meeting, we're having snacks and we're just hanging out in LA at a fancy haircut place. And I see this young man with his mother because he's like, I said, like a 12. 12 years old. And he's got a. He's got cowboy gear on and he's got this cowboy hat and cowboy boots and he's got a belt buckle. And I said, hey, buddy, how you doing? I'm from Texas, and I don't know if you know this, but that belt buckle you have there in Texas, you'll see those a lot. He's like, yeah. I said, yeah. You know, the. The bigger the belt buckle, the bigger the badass of cowboy. Because those are not just clothing accessories, they're trophies. If you are in a rodeo or. Or a Ropen and you win, that's the prize. You get a big belt buckle. So they're. You're showing off how your skills when you're wearing that. And so you got a big belt buckle. You're a really good cowboy. And you got a pretty big one there.

[Nathan Fillion]

I didn't know this, that. I'm fascinated. Okay, keep going.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. And the kid goes, I know I wanted it. A rodeo

[Nathan Fillion]

dummy.

[Alan Tudyk]

And he looked so, like, don't look down at me. And his mom said. Yeah, he does rodeos. He's really good. Well, that's. That's great. What's.

[Nathan Fillion]

What's over there?

[Alan Tudyk]

What could you. Did you get a haircutter? What's under that hat? I gotta get a. Freshen this up. Little sarsaparilla. I'm out.

[Nathan Fillion]

Excuse myself.

[Alan Tudyk]

I know I wanted. At a rodeo like you idiot. Was the. Because he was very sweet. Nice.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes.

[Alan Tudyk]

Young man. He didn't tell me you're an idiot, but it was implied as a badass rodeo person does. Yeah.

[Nathan Fillion]

Before you go on. He really let you step in it.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. There, buckaroo. You sure are a good old roping, rooting, tootin cowboy. You're embarrassing yourself. I heard actors were stupid, but I didn't realize they were this stupid.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah. Wow. That was a. That was a good one. I like that one.

[Alan Tudyk]

But that is how. That is how buckles. That's. That is how that was.

[Nathan Fillion]

I just learned that. I didn't know that. I think I kind of. Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense. I like this. I like that. Yeah. All right. Mine is something I think you. I know you already know this.

[Alan Tudyk]

This is something I don't know.

[Nathan Fillion]

Well, hang on. I want other people to know. I want. Oh, okay. I want people to know that. That we had this experience.

[Alan Tudyk]

I'm gonna find. I'm gonna find this. I'm gonna try to find something here. I didn't know.

[Nathan Fillion]

Many years ago, I rented a house and they said it comes with a cat. And I was not into cats. And this cat was a pain in my ass. And eventually down and became my best friend. And her name was Dirty Cat. And she was like a seal. Point Siamese. She lived a very, very long time. Seal point, Seal Point Siamese. I was told it basically like a dark face, dark paws, dark tail, kind of creamy colored with a little bit of stripe in there. Like a faded stripe in there. She was very pretty cat. And again, you know, she turned me around on cats. She really. She really earned my respect and we became best buddies when she finally passed. I had her for 10 years when she finally passed. Alan, this is back in the time when you were into taxidermy and I

[Alan Tudyk]

had said to you.

[Nathan Fillion]

I said, hey, listen, my cat's not long for this world. And when she goes, I'm going to have her stuffed. But I don't think I have the heart to keep her around my house. So I'm gonna give her to you. And your face. When I told you this, you lit up like. And then you Went, wait, no. And then you had this kind of crisis of consciousness, and. And you kind of went, oh, I can't do that. But it would be so like, you kept going back and forth between, like, oh, this. No, no, no, that's wrong. But it's all. But at the same time. And I said, yeah, and I'm gonna have her kind of in a little position where she's kind of curled up, and I'll have a little machine in her that makes her breathe so it looks like she's alive. And you. You said, no, because this is this terrible. I don't know that I could do that, Nathan. No, I know. And you pulled out of the whole idea. And then eventually, you know, my cat passed away. And when I was actually honestly kind of finished feeling sad about it, not even finished, but, you know, when I was over it a little bit, I could. I could learn to laugh. I bought a little.

[Alan Tudyk]

Didn't learn to laugh about it.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes. Yeah. When I bought a little stuffed cat doll that it is in a sleeping position and has a battery and a motor in it, and it breathes so it looks like there's a little cat sleeping there. And I took some Sharpies and whatnot, and I marked it up to make it look kind of like dirty cat. And you came over one day, and I said, hey, I have something for you. And I went to the back of the house, and as I started coming out with this, you know, kind of. It's like on a little pillow, I kind of started bringing it out, and from a distance, you look at it, and you went. Your face. You didn't know how to react and what to do. And because you'd already pulled out of this, you'd already said no, and you can't. You, like. You couldn't believe it was happening. But as I got to about five feet away, you saw that it was like. It was clearly like some sort of stuffed animal toy that I painted up. And do you remember this whole.

[Alan Tudyk]

God, no. I don't remember things anymore. That's great. Any of that. I remember the Dirty cat. What I remember most about Dirty Cat was when she suddenly. When she was getting older and she was very old, that she was paralyzed suddenly one day from, like, her front two paws back. And you create. You built a thing to carry her around so she could walk on her front two paws and you could walk her outside, and she was having trouble having bowel movements, and you just squeeze her like a tube of toothpaste. And it worked. I was like, that can't work. It doesn't work like that. Cats don't work like toothpaste. There's a very different mechanism inside, I'm pretty sure, than crest, that it worked. And then she got better after that, I think.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes. I came home one day, my cat was paralyzed, and my God. I mean, like, your back leg's not working. Nothing. She's looking at me, and she'd drag herself around. She's peeing where she is, like, poor girl. And so, yeah, I concocted a kind of like a diaper harness thing with a handle on it that I could walk her around to her food, to her water, to her litter box. But, yeah, she couldn't go. And that was straight from the vet said, yeah, like, squeeze it out of her, and it's gotta go.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, he told you how to do that?

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah, yeah. What you do for the love of your animal, what you will do. And I, for a couple of weeks, managed with this. I couldn't go very far because I just wouldn't want to be away from my cat because she was, you know, stuck in one spot all the time.

[Alan Tudyk]

Right.

[Nathan Fillion]

And then the vet said, you know, we can give her this pill, but it's kind of hard on her kidneys sometimes. I said, there's a pill that'll fix this. I mean, I think if we could ask her, she'd say, yeah, give my kidneys a kick, and let's just see if this. If I can walk again. There's a pill. Two weeks I've been. I gave her this pill. She pops up, she's jumping around, and she's fine.

[Alan Tudyk]

Now, what the hell was this pill walk you saw?

[Nathan Fillion]

I think it was just a steroid. I think she had, like, a pinched nerve in her back. There was something going on, and they just gave her a steroid and she was fine.

[Alan Tudyk]

Wow.

[Nathan Fillion]

She's fine. You could have done that two weeks ago. I was pretty upset with my vet.

[Alan Tudyk]

I'm getting on steroids. That's great, because she lasted years past that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope I never get to the point where Carissa has to squeeze me so I poop. That would just be the ins. It's insulting. a certain point, I. I would hope

[Nathan Fillion]

that you would hire somebody to take care of that to keep the magic alive between you and your wife.

[Alan Tudyk]

Well, no, man.

[Nathan Fillion]

A device like the way they make a tube of toothpaste device that you roll and it squeezes it out.

[Alan Tudyk]

Right.

[Nathan Fillion]

We could have, like, a little roller on you.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yes. I think, you know, you're married, you get older. Like we're getting. We married just 10 years ago. So we're, we're through our 40s and now into our 50s. And, you know, you start getting older, you're like, this doesn't work anymore and this isn't doing anything anymore.

[Nathan Fillion]

Do you look at each other and go, who's, who's gonna have to wipe whose butt here when it comes to it? Like, we're kind of.

[Alan Tudyk]

We're not quite there yet. But I don't think we'll care.

[Nathan Fillion]

Start thinking about it, man.

[Alan Tudyk]

I mean, we don't care.

[Nathan Fillion]

You don't care who's going to be first? You gotta, you gotta know who's gonna be. Maybe just to put a bet on it.

[Alan Tudyk]

Well, if I plan it right, I'll be able to take her and I'll. And I'll. She'll go first. No, I don't know. I, you know, everybody argues that. I feel like, you know, I want to be the one to go first. I want to be. Want to go first. Who cares? It's meant to be. Whatever happens, I think we're all going to go together. Did I mention that according to scientists, we don't have much time?

[Nathan Fillion]

No, you haven't mentioned that.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I have a feeling it's all gonna, it's gonna be like in a blink. It's just gonna happen.

[Nathan Fillion]

I wish you would have told me sooner. I made more plans.

[Alan Tudyk]

It is a sad thing to say, oh, sorry, honey, I scared my dog. It's a sad thing to say, but it. I think you can use that knowledge to enjoy your life and make the most of it. That's what I'm doing.

[Nathan Fillion]

When it comes to the making the most out of your life, I'm going to leave you with this question. This will be. We'll wrap up with this little topic here.

[Alan Tudyk]

Okay?

[Nathan Fillion]

How much does astrology play into your life? What's your sign?

[Alan Tudyk]

My sign is not good. I'm a Pisces. Which is, which is good. I went to this woman and. Oh, it was in Harlem where I live now. I think about it now. It's. Wow, it's wild because it was such a long time ago in a different. The way I thought about it was different. But I went and had my chart done and this woman smoked cigarettes. She's like chain smoked cigarettes while she talked to me. And she did my chart and it took a little while and she brought it, went to go visit her and this is so long ago. She would cassette tape her Talk to me, like, about it.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah. She's like, I remember. I remember cassette tapes.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. She goes, you're Pisces, but you're scorpion rising. Scorpio. And your scorpion. Your moon is in scorpion. Scorpio. And I was dating this girl at

[Nathan Fillion]

the time, I believe, really the correct term is scorpio.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, what was I say scorpion. Oh, yeah. Scorpio.

[Nathan Fillion]

Scorpio, yeah.

[Alan Tudyk]

Scorpions. The band.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yes.

[Alan Tudyk]

Also the insect arachnid. She said, as a Pisces, you got to be. Oh, and I used this later. It was so great. She goes, like, as a Pisces, as a fish, you're going to want to lay back. You don't want to lay back, honey. And lay back and just flow down the stream. But you can't. You got to fight that stream. You can't just lay back and get lazy and enjoy yourself. And you gotta. You gotta swim upstream. Now, here's the problem is your scorpio, too. And a scorpio gets to stinging people when they don't get their way. But the problem is you just sting yourself and you got two Scorpios, so you're really gonna be trying to sting people and you're just gonna hurt yourself. So don't do it. And then she did say, and this will lead into me recommending some more music. She goes, and you're into music. What instrument do you play? I said, I don't play any instruments. She said, oh, I'm sorry. Well, hold on a second. She looks at the thing and she goes, because it's just that you're. No, you're into music. I don't know what to tell you. I like music. I don't. And at that time, I owned a guitar and I owned a xylophone. I can't explain or I can, but I won't. I own some conga drums. I owned a lot of instruments, but I didn't play any of them. And she's like, baby, you need to start learning to play one of those instruments anyway. That was my thing. But if you look up those birthday books, look up your birthday in that book. I am. It's not a good. Oh, but that's. That's tarot cards. It's not. I'm a bad day. It's not good.

[Nathan Fillion]

Do you cotton to astrology?

[Alan Tudyk]

Do you.

[Nathan Fillion]

Do you put any weight into. Into it?

[Alan Tudyk]

Not. I don't. I don't seek it out. No, I. I mean, the one. The one thing that woman did say that day was because she did. My girlfriend's at the time, her. Her astrology thing too. And we got done, and the. This girl, it was Jessica, she goes, so are. Are we compatible? Is this a good match, the two of us? And she looks at her chart and she looks at my chart, and she's like, no, there's a lot of energy there.

[Nathan Fillion]

So you wrapped it up.

[Alan Tudyk]

I don't now. That's just a lot of energy there.

[Nathan Fillion]

And he said, well, honey, it's been great.

[Alan Tudyk]

It's been great. Get out. And she was right. It was way too much. We were not right.

[Nathan Fillion]

Too much energy.

[Alan Tudyk]

We. We enjoyed each other's company, but it was too much. It was too much.

[Nathan Fillion]

It was there in the stars the whole time.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yeah. And if only had I'd learned to play an instrument, I would.

[Nathan Fillion]

So you keep telling me that you're not cotton. You don't. You don't put a lot of cotton into astrology, but at the same time, you're telling me, but you are into music. You did learn to play a guitar eventually. And she was right about your girlfriend. What does that mean?

[Alan Tudyk]

I guess I. You know, I think, sure, it can be true somehow. I don't know. I don't give a. I think there's no way we know. And if we, you know, somehow this kind of works. I think that there's. There are people who can. Who can tell you your future and stuff.

[Nathan Fillion]

I had my charts done one time.

[Alan Tudyk]

Okay.

[Nathan Fillion]

By a friend's mom.

[Alan Tudyk]

Okay.

[Nathan Fillion]

Was it.

[Alan Tudyk]

And Jules Mom.

[Nathan Fillion]

No, no, this is Jules years before

[Alan Tudyk]

Jules State from Firefly. Her mom is really good with the cards.

[Nathan Fillion]

Okay. So. But this lady did something and. And I was kind of. She said, let's talk about your past, let's talk about your present. Let's talk about your future. And the past and present was some kind of. On the money that it lends credence to the future part. So it was kind of interesting in that way. And. But at the same time, I. I'm an Aries. I think my rising house is Pisces. If I. If I remember these things, if I. Or my moon, I don't know what it's. Do I, cotton? Do I. Do I. Do I put any credence to the. No. One of my favorite things to do when someone says, oh, read my horoscope, I'll read a different horoscope. And then let them go on about, oh, my God, that's so exactly me. That's so totally me. Oh, really? Because I was reading Gemini. I'll do that.

[Alan Tudyk]

And everyone out There listening. Feel free to do that as well. I think it's good bit. Good bit. Well, I. I think, you know, you never know, man. What these things. What do you think about people who can tell your future when you talk to them and they're like, I don't

[Nathan Fillion]

know that I've ever had a future. Teller, tell me my future. Tell fortune.

[Alan Tudyk]

I bet you can ask your friend Michelle.

[Nathan Fillion]

Oh, she's producing mediums and stuff. Yeah.

[Alan Tudyk]

Your producing partner knows some. Know some people, and she could hook you up.

[Nathan Fillion]

She gave me for Michelle Chapman, the lovely and talented, who's responsible for this entire podcast. She gave me for Christmas, a session with an animal psychic.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh.

[Nathan Fillion]

So I'm going to finally get to the bottom of what's. What's going on with my cat Bowie. Oh, good.

[Alan Tudyk]

Do that. I want this. I kind of want this.

[Nathan Fillion]

I will report back with my results.

[Alan Tudyk]

Okay, good.

[Nathan Fillion]

Oh, good.

[Alan Tudyk]

Okay, so everybody, he said he's gonna report back. We gotta hold him to that.

[Nathan Fillion]

Yeah.

[Alan Tudyk]

Okay. Speaking of holding to that, I said that I was gonna do music, and I. And I just. I haven't. I haven't continued it.

[Nathan Fillion]

Oh, yeah. What's Alan listening to?

[Alan Tudyk]

What you listen to? I want to. The last two that I gave were sort of a. They had a techno kind of feel to them. So I don't want to. I don't want to do that. I want to. Can I highlight. I'm tossed between two things. First of all, I'm somebody who listens to music, who listens to the words a lot, and I listen to the words. I like novelty in my music, which is. Can. Can lead me to some weird songs. And I like. I like the po. I like. I like all kinds of music, but I like the poetry. I think I'm saying that the same thing two different ways. So I'm annoying. I'm the guy that you listen to a song and he goes, listen. No, listen. Did you hear when he said this and this and this? Isn't that annoying? I'm that guy. I'm that guy. Like, where I'll go listen. You have to. You have to listen to the words, though.

[Nathan Fillion]

Okay, so what is the song that you are recommending that we have to listen to the words to?

[Alan Tudyk]

Okay, I'm gonna go with one that probably people know. So this will be for people who don't listen to music and maybe know this song and haven't heard what it says. I'm not gonna say all the lyrics. I'm just gonna use a sample of it. The song Is Graceland by Paul Simon. Paul Simon, my all time favorite. Yeah, this is a great song. So. And I've loved this song and haven't because it's like a cheery song. So it kind of has like a Graceland, Graceland, Memphis. It's kind of. It's kind of fun. But it's about this breakup. It's about him and a kid. It's about him and a child. So, I mean, these all songs have stories. So this is one little section of the song. He says, she comes back to tell me she's gone as if I didn't know that. I love that line now. There's more. There's more to it. But come on, a woman like this is a relationship. Somebody in the relationship comes back to tell you she's gone. I've had that. Where somebody goes, didn't you see I left? And then he says, as if I didn't know that. As if I didn't know my own bed. As if I'd never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead. Come on. Like that beautiful thing that he's been missing about her. And she said, losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you're blown apart Everybody sees the wind blow oh, my God. That is just. That's just beautiful, man. That's just so next level beautiful. Everybody can see you're blown apart and if you've had your heart broken Everybody can see it Everybody can see the wind blow Ooh, we're bounding in the Gracelander. Whatever the next line is. Who cares about the next lines? I'm talking about those lines. Anyway, I want to. I want to. And. And I feel like I need to be putting these on Spotify, even though Spotify doesn't pay their artists. But it's an easy place that everybody can go to that I can. I can be adding to this and creating an Alan's List. Or maybe we'll make that available to the people who sign up. You get all. You'll get our Patreons. You mean our Patreon folk. You. You'll get. You'll get these songs, plus others that are equally novel and. And beautiful. And I'll. I'll reference them throughout when. Mainly when Nathan and I do it, it was just Nathan in my podcast, when we have a guest, I don't want to bother them too much with my music.

[Nathan Fillion]

We can always have them prepare a song. What are you listening to? We can always have them do that for the segment.

[Alan Tudyk]

Oh, I would love that. Because let's do that.

[Nathan Fillion]

I mean, what's our oyster? Buddy?

[Alan Tudyk]

I've got so. I've got so many. Man. I've got so many songs. I've got so many songs that are just. And novel songs, novelty songs. Songs that are just. That are fun and stupid and funny.

[Nathan Fillion]

Buddy, I look forward to these chats. What a lovely time I had with you today. Thank you very much for joining me again, as we always do.

[Alan Tudyk]

Yes, brother. Take care. Let's land this spaceship or let's reentry. Re entry. Thank you for listening to Once We Were Spaceman. If you haven't yet, head over to our Patreon to get bonus content, longer episodes and the chance to take home some incredible crap. The most amazing crap. The kind that does not smell. And if you love this show, please, like for said review and tell your friends. Once We Were spaceman is a collision 33 production, whatever the hell that is. The show is produced by Michelle Chapman, Siobhan Holman and Josh Levy of Collision 33. There that is again. I'm sick of it. Production services are done by Rabbit Grin Productions. Why is the rabbit grinning? I don't like it. Our theme music is from the minds of Carlos Sosa and Joshua Moore and the playing of Fernie and also Rallo. And the artwork is created by Louis Jensen. Until next time, Kill that owl, please.