Call It What It IsYou might be surprised to learn what film today's guest always gets approached about, but she's spilling....
Jess & Camilla welcome Beanie Feldstein who shares which "Grey's" character was her gay awakening and why she had a life changing experience at camp this summer.
Call it what it is with Jessica Capshaw and Camil Luddington an iHeartRadio podcast.
Well, Hello, Hello, hello in person, Hello Amberson Magic brought me on a plane from New York to LA and we're here to party.
That was just that was good.
That was really good.
Okay, Jessica and I.
Jessica is here in the Los Angeles studio. How does it feel to be back in Los Angeles, back.
In your loving arms? Great?
Great? Great?
It was you know, it was a day of travel yesterday. And I still have this very nerdy part of me that like, when I get on a plane from JFK to l A, I think, because that's such a common flight padder for people who are I don't know, in entertainment. Yeah, I always think like what am I.
Going to see?
Like?
Am I going to see somebody?
Is it going to be like there would be a celebrity on my plane?
Is there anybody?
Yeah?
Who Viola Davis?
Wait?
Really? Yes?
And here's the crazy part.
Normally I go, I go, I go a little Instagram heavy on flights, like flight days. I end up just like that's for some reason, my scroll, my divert diversion. I don't know diversion, I don't know anyways. Okay, that's what I go to when in doubt or when any boredom sneaks in. Evidently, yeah, not the two actual books that I have sitting there read me.
Yeah.
So I went on Instagram, and I love Viola Davis's account. She's so inspiring and I really I'm always picking up what she's putting down.
I love it, love love. And also for people that don't know, she's shondahland Family.
Yes she is.
Yeah, yes she is.
And I just think she's one of the most incredible actors that's ever lived. Anyways, So I she did this slide show of these quotes that I just found so inspiring, so super inspiring. So I had just been looking at them and really like moved by them, and I was going to repost and everything else. So here's what.
Were you honestly looking before she was on a flight.
Yes, I mean before the flight, and I actually took screenshots because I was going to post repost it, and so here we are Viola Davis. And one of the first ones was people who have been hurt but refused to hurt others in the same way. Please never change people who who use kindness as a way of life, not a strategy. Please never change. But they were just so beautiful and I was very moved by them. And then I got up to go to bathroom mid flight, and I came back and all of a sudden, she was there, sitting there, and I probably looked scared or panicked or I didn't know what to do. Yeah, I don't know her personally, I know, I.
Don't ever No, so I've never met her.
Yeah, but again, as we've talked about before, sometimes what happens to us is that people you think you know some one because they just look so familiar in that moment. But then I had to say to myself self, you don't know her, don't.
We've just done the boundaries, so I'm not going to cross the boundary. Yeah.
So anyways, I went back to my seat, but I couldn't contain myself and I wasn't with anyone I need. So I looked at my seat mate.
She's a poor guy, and I was like, that's why, which, of course.
It was.
He looked like he could handle it.
Look he didn't look like he.
Was going to jump out of his seat talk to her, like I love.
That you're pointing out to other people.
It was radically weird.
I feel like in that situation, because you're shawna Land family, you could say, Hi, I don't think it's a.
Can you beat me? Okay viol for shondaland family.
I'm not Shonda Shonda.
Oh my gosh, g I d no, no, no, no, no, no, no, really, but you know what me and me and be would be best friends by now. It was you missed the opportunity. What in real life you would actually do. I just want to throw that out there, like, I think, like, this is a nice little performance.
What would you really do?
I don't think you would.
No, I have to really think, like, really, I'm passing the seat, and I do continue on walking.
I continue on walking. You're right, I passed.
I do.
I do a pause, I do a side eye, and then I just keep on going.
Well, I fangirled and I and I kept it to myself and I just continued, you know, flapping my wings to fly, and then landed and then got in and went and had a little quick bite with a friend and then passed me past. Not you, not you. I'm very excited about our guest today, but I really really really love Beanie. Felstie.
You love Beanie and you haven't worked with Beanie.
No, I didn't get to work with her.
But she's a big Rais Anatomy fan about it, and she was on our show.
Oh, we have a million more things to talk to her about.
Hi.
Oh, it's so much better having a two way conversation.
Yeah, it's way more fun. It's way more fun.
Okay, Beanie Panie.
To call it what it is, Yes, thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, of course. Where are you right now? Where in the world are you?
I am in New York, and I thought you were in New York, but you just went back to La.
I came back to La for this and some other work.
And so to say what the other thing is.
I mean I can. But I for a period of time lived with my grandma Nina in Missouri, and then I would always spend you know, tons of time with her in the summers and everything. She was my beloved, beloved, and she would watch maybe thousands of hours of Wheel of Fortune and pretty much a ton of other game shows and like daytime soap operas whatever. Anyways, so I've watched at least five hundred episodes, five hundred hours of Wheel of Fortune, and Pat Sajack, who's the host of that show, is retiring and Ryan Seacrest is coming in and they're doing like a Celebrity last week with Pat Sajack. And I got this email and I was like, heck, yeah, I'll be there, and then all of a sudden it hit me that I have to play the game. And I was like, oh, I was never good. She would guess everything. I would guess nothing. So I'm actually just now like low key terrified. Yeah.
This is actually couldn't be a better segue, because that basically is exactly how I felt about being ungrazy.
Now.
I was like, this is my actual dream come true.
And then I was like, oh wait, I actually.
Have to act.
I don't want to ask.
I just want to be there. I don't I just want to sit.
I just like look at everything. And that's exactly how I And so when you.
Went out there was it were you? How did that nervousness last or did you just go.
See the entire time?
Really did.
Oh my god? I was running around like I was thinking about this this morning. I was like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, and I couldn't have been met with more love and enthusiasm from everybody that works there. I was like, can I go to Meredith's house?
Can I go to the or can I look in can?
I was like literally having an anxiety attack of joy the entire time, and everyone was so nice to me. And I was also thinking how glad I was to be on it before COVID because I was alowd to like run around and look at everything, and I wasn't like, were you before COVID right before? So it was like January twenty twenty and it was after.
I was there, so we didn't get to overlap.
I know, I remember, I wouldn't have been able to Honestly, I wouldn't have been able to emotionally.
It would have been honestly too much overlooked.
I was grateful to not have any scenes with Bailey because I just wouldn't have able to do it emotionally. And then at one point I was filming with the chief Jim and Jim and I they were like, we can't see her. Can we put her on a Bailey box?
And I'm like, You're like, can I take it a whole box.
You're called Bailey Box.
And You're like, you're like on the same box, and I was like, I get to stand up her.
Yeah, extremely short and doing scenes with a very tall, beautiful man, and it was the best moment of my whole existence. Pretty loved that.
That's how I came to the show too. I was already a fan before I came on. So I know exactly how you feel.
I know too much about both of your journeys on to you auditioned like three times, whole story, you know, the scaring you know, I am a super bad Why do you think? I mean? I love you both. Also just in the Super Bowl.
Okay, so we were catching up before you came on, and I was sharing that because you obviously are in New York LA as well, and that when you get on that flight from JFK to LA, how it's always sort of like are you going to see a celebrity because there's so many If you want to find celebrities people, they're on the flights from JFK to LA.
I don't want to like out Mark Ruffalo for being a Delta person, but like, actually, every time I'm on a flight from LA to New York, or vice versa. Mark Ruffalo is there and I've never spoken to him, but I just love him from Afar and I'm like, he's so handsome, he looks beautiful, and he's wearing like sort of a lavender scarf.
Yeah, oh my god, he's wearing a lavender scarf on a flight.
But he's similarly Delta loyal and I and I appreciate it.
I see it.
Yeah, yeah, were you on Delta. I was on Delta. I saw Viola Davis.
I mean I.
Almost passed out, so I said, I saw I came out of the bathroom and then we made eye contact, and I don't think she knew had only pretty. She did not know who I was. I knew who she was, so I looked terrified, right because I'm like, and then I just realized that I don't really know her, so I can't say anything. And we've talked a lot about that.
R Yeah.
I mean we've just done this whole episode about Boundaries, and we talked about chapol Rone coming out right and saying like, hey, I.
Need my space.
Do you know their line?
Do you know about this?
Yes, I've seen I've seen this.
Yes, I there's some discourse around it.
We were talking about how we are both fans of people, and then we also, because of the show, have a fandom, and we've talked about the boundaries.
So Jessica, in that moment.
It was it was a hard bound I forgot your boundary, but then you remembered them.
I wanted to cross a boundary. I then recognized that I should not and that I was not going to, and then I didn't. I self corrected, not that I would have done anything. By the way, it feel like I was gonna jump into her lap while she was sitting there and be like, tell me everything.
I mean, I just love a few Vodkas into the flight.
Oh no.
I always have a lot of like love and empathy for people that if people ever talk to me, because I'm like, I am also that person. Yeah, like I feel that way now with you guys, like with you feel so excited that sometimes I just have to say hi and I I So I have a lot of empathy for people that do that. It's just I guess about how you do it.
That's what we were discussed because I was also saying that I flew from Italy to New York at the end of the summer and I was with three of my kids and there were there were a bunch of people who asked for pictures, and I was like, I mean get yes, of course, okay, yes, and I just was great, meanwhile, look like hammer shit, like definitely in my travel self whatever. And every time they say to take a picture, like I guess I'd like, I just be like, yeah, okay, great. So you think because back in the day that would just be a picture that they send their mom or the person that they watch graz Anatomy with or whatever. And it's like that it just lives there. Well no, no, not anymore now. It truly like my like it pops up everywhere, yeah.
On Instagram And it's like Phoanie, what do you get when you're out in the wild?
What what do people approach you for?
The most Well, I have this running joke where like, if uh, a man approaches me, they I know just off the bat that they're going to talk about something that I was only a very very small part of part of but has a very loyal fan base and it's such a wonderful project. But it's called What We Do in the Shadows, which is like.
A credible and if a man.
Approaches me, like truly, nine and a half times out of ten, they're like Jenna from What We Are show, I eventually become a vampire. I get by Natasha's character, and I was as Wenda is obviously, and it's such a lovely time. And I learned so much doing that show because they are so funny and like absolutely brilliant improvisers. So it's just such a masterclass for me. But I was only on it, I think, for like six or seven episodes right at the beginning of the show. But if a man comes up to me, I'm like, if you want to talk about Jennel, don't you. And it's very lovely, but it's very consistent, and otherwise I would I don't know, I feel so embarrassed even talking about stuff like this, but I would probably say books.
I feel it's got to be. It's so good.
I just was.
I was just with Caitlin Deaver, who's like truly family to me, and we went on like a little girls trip, just the two of us, and it was really magical and very very special, and just we were reminiscing about all of our times together and filming and how magical it was. And I think she truly is like the Meryl Streep. She's younger than me, but I'll say my gunnery younger than me. I think she's Meryl, Like, I think she kind of can actually accomplish anything and make it believable and so human and so open and funny and just I think she's so gifted. So I learnt so much from her.
I think that everything you said is true in my opinion as well and from my perspective. But as I'm listening to say that, I think that what I hear the most is the friendship piece. Like when you're really really in such a strong relationship, when you're in such a distant friendship with someone, isn't it sort of true that you just think that they are the best? Like I look at this one all the time, and as much as I make fun of her, I'm like, she's the best she can. Yeah, every room she walks into she makes better, her laugh makes she doesn't even have to be funny for her, so she can just laugh and then I'll start laughing. See, And I think that that's just such a gift.
No, it's it makes work by the way it makes work not work.
YEA, yeah, I kind of felt. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, it was such a kind of wild risk that we did, which was that we decided to live together after meeting each other twice, and so we lived together while we were filming.
Which wow, came back.
Could have gone so wrong, but it.
Went oh so right in chemistry, right.
We were just like together truly twenty four to seven, going to work together, coming home from work together, eating pancakes in our kitchen of the apartment we were in and running lines and just really getting to know each other on like a cellular level.
The way that relationship, I'm like flashing to it because you guys were both so winning in it, and I think that maybe the biggest piece for me was that it was truly an example of vulnerability as strength. You both were such strong, strong, strong characters. You were so.
Entirely who you were and.
Let us know everything that you thought was going to go wrong or that you felt like there was something missing or that you weren't good enough or whatever, and it was just such a window into that dynamic that happens. And again both of you see each other as just the person who hung the moon.
Right, Yeah, yeah, thank you, that's so kind. Yeah, I think, you know, I relate a lot to my character. Obviously I'm so much older now, but I think like I have that and want to find control in things and that sort of need to feel in control, and really the trick of life is like we're never in control, and yeah, don't get that privileged. So I really empathized with Mollie and sort of her obsession with doing the right thing and and being in control of every situation and then learning to just kind of unravel that.
As when do you feel out of control when like what are the places where you're Oh, I I don't like to do that. I don't want to move towards that.
I don't love flying, but not for the reasons that you might think. I am like pretty severely hospital bound, hospital bound, allergic to cats, and people can bring their cats on airplanes down and it has created an anxiety in me that like truly permeates any travel experience because people can bring My wife and I have this joke that like every cat is named mister Pickles, and so we're like mister Pickles can just like come on the plane whenever whenever he wants, and I have to take like insane amounts of his to me, and I feel very out of it. And if I'm myself traveling for work, I feel very like out of control because I'm on like three benadryl and fours your tech and buy the Libra. And it's just like, wait, I have a kind if.
You're super allergic or something on a flight, can you flag it before you get on a flight? Can you say I'm alert to cats?
No?
You could just misters could be your seat mate.
Mister Pickles has more rights than I do. I've learned this over time, So like the person with the allergy has to get off the plane, not the person with the animals. Mister and miss and my wife and I was like running bit of like mister Pickles strikes again, or like one, mister Pickle zero.
Is a very good excuse to write private air travel into your contract.
Totally. Wait, I have a question. Have you been on a flight and there's been a Pickles?
So how did you know?
I I either get off if I feel like emotionally I can't do it that day, or I just take if I'm with someone I feel safe enough that I take like two Bena drills and times three, and then I have an EpiPen.
I always do this. Allergic to cats your whole life.
I'm pretty allergic to you. You're allergic.
No, I'm not really allergic to stuff. Oh yeah, there we go.
Seeven.
I know when she's perfect. I'm just not allergic.
Gad, you're not Jewish honorarily on some level. I got my I got my twenty three and me back and it was so I get it done and and you're right, it comes back and it's like all German, English, whatever, and then it gives you like little updates and I get an update, an update in my twenty three meets. So I log in and look at it. I'm one percent Jewish.
How did they wait?
I was ready for a bum mitzvah.
No, let's do that.
Jessica doesn't make any sense. I know, like, why are they updating your blood?
You know?
I mean like just run it to the machine and then it's like, wait a second, we discovered this week?
Yeah, that are updates on it.
Because there's things I don't ask questions about, and this would be one of them. Oh okay, can we talk about when you were younger for a second. Yeah, okay, so Beanie was always allergic to cats? Yes, have you always been Beanie? Is everyone always called you Beanie?
That's a great question. So I've been Beanie since I was like maybe like exclusively Beanie, probably around like six months old. But my real name is Elizabeth. I know. And my real name is Elizabeth. And this is actually quite funny because the baby nurse my mom. I'm her third kid, and by the time I was born, she had a baby nurse and the baby nurse was British and she came up with the nickname ELIZABETHI.
Oh, that's cute.
She was like, I used to I call you know, there's a million Elizabeths in England. I call all my Elizabeths Lisbani. It's a popular nickname. Then flash forward twenty five years later. I meet the person who is now my wife, who is British from Liverpool, and I'm like, yeah, Beanie, obviously it's a very popular nickname for e Lizabeth. She's like, I've never.
Like Obie.
I'm here being like, I've never.
You've never had anyone say Beanie.
I agree, your wife, Yeah you guess that was accent.
Oh oh, she's such a good accent. She's a scouse.
Oh, she's a Scouser.
Oh and does she sound smarter?
Like?
I feel like English accents make everyone seem smarter. So even if she's saying something that's not very smart, doesn't it sound smart.
She's honestly one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. Some most of what she says, it's smart, but.
Really smarter because of English sounds.
Belie, it sounds ability, instant credibility.
Okay, I have Okay, they've.
Been around longer, they know things more. I don't know.
Okay, so you said wife, you got married.
Wait, I'm still can talk.
Because I want to know this, Beanie.
We'll go back to child ahead.
Okay, but Beanie, we.
Had a whole episode about bachelorette parties and how out of control they are. So she said, I just want to know if you had a huge bachelorette party didn't last a week?
Was there like a private jet involved?
What was this is we hear about and just put it?
I didn't know because we got married a million years ago. It feels like she's a recent.
So I I'm from La. Most of my extended families from the East Coast. My wife's families from Liverpool. A lot of them live in London. Now you don't mixture. So we decided to get married on the East Coast because we felt like that was sort of a central place. But we also recognized that people were traveling like a huge distance to come celebrate us, and we really did not want to put people out for anything more than that. So neither of us had bachelorette parties because we felt like it would have been really complicated and more of an expense that anyone. You know, It just we were people were doing enough for us to come celebrate us, like they didn't need to know more. But the week of the wedding, we started the festivities on Friday. On the Wednesday night, my wife went off with her friends in the city for a dinner and I went off with my friends in the city for a dinner. But the theme of my dinner was pretty good, if I do say so myself, which is that fond. My wife, Bonnie Vaughn, is extremely speaking of allergies, allergic to nuts. She's allergic to all nuts.
You can't go anywhere.
It's honestly good that we can't procreate together because like our child would have to live in a bubble like biologically. And so Fawn's allergic to nuts. I'm allergic to dairy, gluten and cats and bond. So we decided to make yeah, I know it's a lot. Uh so in our house we can't have any nuts because she's like really allergic. And so my best friends decided to make the theme of my dinner Beanie's Last Nuts, which is also a great I got you, you got it, And so it was Beanie's Last Nuts. And my best friend Mel, who also is a huge grays anatomy ban and very excited that I'm here, she drew each one of us as different nuts. So it was like bean nut and like my friend like cat chew. My wife Joe sometimes calls me like the Jewish nun. She's like, you were the most like rude, little anxious, little like pathetic.
Well you know what, let me just tell you. Let me just tell you, because I'm a bit older than you, that there's there's there's hope or if you want it to be. I too used to be quite like proper and and now look at me, you're not.
Now you're a mess.
Can't I'm a mess. I'm talking, I mean not a mess. I consider myself evolved.
My mom didn't drink till she was fifty. Like she was kind of similar to me, where she was kind of like some my thing is not for me. And then how'd that go?
At?
Great? I was a little.
Okay, so again so going so just going back, so so so baby being then you grow up in Los Angeles and then because I'm just getting to a little cross section that you share, I know you are.
I was waiting. I was like, oh, I went to elementary school in West Hollywood and then I went to Harvard bust Lake, which is.
Both of our alma maters.
A lot about and I I feel that I had looking back, like it's so privileged. In general, the whole experience there is privilege, but like it's such a privilege to find your people at such a young age, and sometimes it can feel just like a given if you're in the moment of it, of like, yeah, you make friends in high school and you stay friends with them forever, and that's kind of the expectation. But to actually now in our thirties be living that day to day and like come in to that and We just had my best friend one of my best friend's weddings two weekends ago, and just looking around, we were like, it's still us, Like we could be fifteen in someone's parents' house sneaking alcohol right now, Like it's just us. We've been the same for like, you know, almost seventeen eighteen years now, and.
It's so And how big was the us the group of friends at Horror Westlike it's.
Like about maybe of the people that went to Harvard Westlake maybe like nine or ten.
Are you now performers? Did you?
I mean, was that your bond at first?
Most of us are performers, definitely, all of us are very like creative, so some like two of my best friends are performers, but they once a graphic designer ones and music supervisor, like extremely creative and just very talented in their own way, just not not on stage people at all.
But you know, and were you performing at Harvard westlike, like were you doing all the plays and the musicals and all that? My god?
Yeah, And mister Walt, like I feel like we have to.
Did you have the same teacher asking? So I'm quite jealous because I happened upon So we're talking about mister Walsh, Ted Walch, who is like a Ted go way back. She feels left out. This is what she does when she feels left out.
The old t bones, the old He's looking down on you, and he'd be like.
He's passed way to God memory. She would love that we're talking about her.
This is the best ever.
Yeah, oh my gosh. She would always give it to me. Really honest too, I would anyways. I'm but that that's part of it, which was I was actually not in the performing arts, kid gang. I was more do not get in? Probably not? Yeah, no, I think I sort of came to it late. It's not about me, but I was.
I didn't do any shows.
Well it's okay, So the auditioned, but they didn't audition.
He actually didn't. I actually did. I did my senior year I auditioned for. It was like such a I mean again, I mean okay, so let me just let me let's back track furce again. I clearly had a family that was in the in the performing arts, and there was sort of this I think that I fought it. I was like, that's too predictable. Of course, I'll want to be an actress. Blah, blah blah blah. Who needs that? And then also the perfectionist and the do gooder and the people pleaser, and me was like.
What if I suck?
Like that would be terrible? Right then I was really bad at it, so let's just not even find out. And then right around fourteen fifteen, after I had like just been in my bathroom talking to myself in the mirror and doing monologues and all this stuff, I was like, Okay, you clearly want to do this, so you should probably just try. So I went, I had to go away from my community. I went to a summer camp and I did it. And at the end of the summer camp, you get like your evaluations and fucking Jessica cap I just goes in there and everyone else is just wanting to get you know, how did I do it my monologue and how was my last song or whatever? And I looked at these people squarely in the eye and they were all lined up on the stage, three of them, and I was like, I don't even need my notes. Can I make it? Will I be able to do this as a professional who.
Just went I'm fifteen straight to it because these people would know, can I make it in Hollywood.
Will my dreams be a reality? They're like whatever, kid, Anyways, they must have. They gave me enough to go on. So when I came back to Harvard West like must have been my sophomore year, I signed up for an acting class and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna do this. And that's what I met Ted Walch and Ted Walsh was for me, one of the most inspiring teachers I've ever ever ever had, and he did so much to help me and grow my confidence and taught me and I just got an incredible education from him, and we remained friends. And when COVID happened, when everything locked down, he lived in an apartment right around the corner from Harvard Westlake and nobody was touching anybody or going out or anything. And I reached out to him and I said, how are you doing? And he said I'm doing good. And I said, well, do you want to go for a walk? That seems safe right? And that walk turned into a weekly walk that I had with him. I would walk around his neighborhood and he would come to mind sometimes when he would get bored. But those walks were incredible, and of course he talked about, you know, all of his students, some of whom you would have heard of and some you would not. But he spoke about you and how special you are. And then he also was like, you know, he's also very matter of fact, right, Like that's what you actually really love and respect about a teacher is that they're not just giving you all the good, they're giving you the bad. So I'd done this. I'd done this Netflix movie with Emma Roberts called Holiday, and he hadn't watched it, but he'd heard that I was in it, and so he watched it. And then I went for a walk and he said, so I watched that movie and give you notes. He didn't really give me notes. He just gave me an assessment, which was you were okay.
Oh my god.
I really he was like, you were okay.
I mean it was like great.
I was brushing my teeth. I was thinking about exactly this, and I'm so glad you brought it up because obviously any So basically he was truly like my life mentor, so I did. Harbor Westlake was doing Sound of Music when I was in fourth grade and they needed a gretel. They needed the youngest spawn trap child and somehow through basically the headmaster of Harbor Westlake. His wife worked at my elementary school, so she was like, I have a kid that could could hang with the big kids. And I walked into Harbor west Lake at nine years old and I auditioned to play Gretel and the Sound of Music. And that's when Walt I met. So I've known him like pretty much my entire life, and I would say he is my greatest mentor, my greatest teacher, my greatest friend, second grandfather, all of the things. And when I was brushing my teeth today, I was thinking about this podcast, and I was thinking about you and how he when him and I spoke during the pandemic, he said, and I think it was Wednesdays. Every Wednesday, Jessica and I go on a walk. It's my favorite part of the week. And I think, I think you really gave him so much during what we ended up being his last years, and I feel jealous and grateful that you were. I could cry like they are with it, obviously, but he I think he cherished those those walks. And the most nervous I've ever been in my entire life is when Walt is in the audience. There is no one that and I feel sad that I'll never have that, I'll never have that honesty again. But when he came to New York Town, you.
In the show, I mean, he's just it was it was Wednesdays with walch and it meant a lot to both of us. And you know, it's that your story reminds me of is when I was in high school. Uh, we did the King and I that was the part that I auditioned for it that he didn't give me, and I was very mad at him about that. Anyways, we digress. I really really thought that I could be that part. So Jake Chill and Hall came over from the lower school to play one of the kids. No way he was because he was younger.
Why did I think Harvard Westlake was just high school?
It's middle seven, seventh through twelfth. Oh okay, there's a middle school campus and there's an upper school campus. Oh yeah.
No.
Having someone believe in you like that is so incredible. And that's why I do think that, you know, for all of them, for all the people out there listening, that that relationship wherever you can find it. And you know, obviously there's there's he was a super special guy. But looking for you know, people in your community that can help you grow, or that take an interest in you and support you and and can really show up for you. It's really, it was really, it was an unbelievable gift.
I think also for all the teachers listening, like, thank you and keep going, because if you can have that effect on one child, or one person or one family, it's it's just very profound. And I since he's passed, I started volunteering with kids, and actually I'm now on the board of but I volunteer for this organization called Experience Camps, which is a nonprofit organization that puts on camps for kids that are grieving.
I know I've seen and I was talking about it before because I lost my mom when I was young, Beanie, and these camps would have been like I had younger siblings. I was nineteen, but I had younger siblings. And honestly, I literally saw you post one summer maybe two summers ago.
Did you start two years ago?
Yeah?
That was my first Okay, yeah, and I thought, oh my gosh, I should go volunteer, but I think I would be terrible.
I think I would just cry the whole time.
But that's also okay. We can talk about it, okay, But I come with me, Come with me to Maine. It's truly truly changed my entire life just that community. But I think about Walch so much when I'm there, because if I could have like eightieth of the effect on one of those kids that he had on me, it would just be like my greatest life's work.
I think, Well, I do want to talk about the camp just in case there are people listening that have kids that are going to have lost somebody and are going experiencing grief.
Yeah, and what grief is?
Can you talk about a little bit so that because maybe someone's listening and they don't know about it and they want to send someone.
So for context, my brother suddenly passed away almost seven years ago, and he has two children who are like the lights of all of our lives, one of thems at Harve Westlake, and they're just the best thing to ever happen to our family. But you know, I just had to rattle in my family in a way that kind of there are no words for. So I was on TikTok one day and just scrolling away, and I was given this video of a little boy I think he was maybe nine or ten, and he was talking about his father passing away and how camp has helped him find community. All of these like light bulbs are going off in my head because a w summer camp for ten years couldn't be more of a camp. Girl my parents met at summer camp, like camp is in our DNA. So the camp component of it, I was like, what is he talking about? But obviously the more substantial component of it was the loss and a child speaking so openly and bravely about loss. So I google the camp. I go down this like intense rabbit hole about the camp and I cold dam the Instagram account because I can't find an email, and I just was like, anything I can do to help, I'll donate, I'll make a video, I'll you know, anything I can do to help. The girl that runs head of marketing Experience Camps, her name is, her name is Jesse. She's incredible. We get on a zoom and she's like, can I ask you? Or actually I think I asked her first, how did you come to Experience camps? And she said, you know, I was a volunteer after my brother Jordan died and why are you why are you interested in experienced camps Beanie, And I was like, because my brother Jordan died. And we sort of just stared at each other across the zoom. I even have chills when I tell the story. But we just truly we had never met before. Now we're very close friends, and we just stare at each other on this zoo. We've been talking for five minutes and she was like, I think you need to come to camp. She was like, I'll take any donation big or small from anybody, but like, it's clear to me that you have like a poll to be in our community deeper. And I would say the same thing to you. It sounds like you might have a poll to be in our community deeper. And I think it's just an incredibly special place. So it's completely no cost, so any family can access the camp. We have Currently, we have thirteen programs around the country, So there's one in Hawaii, California, Michigan, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Maine, and then most of them have a boys camp and a girls camp. So together it's about thirteen and we're we're servicing. I think about fourteen hundred kids. Wow, what's the age going into ninth grade through senior year of high school? So okay, you never have to say goodbye to the camp. So if you come to the camp, you're always welcome back every summer because we don't want to kind of add more loss into their lives. So once you graduate high school, you're welcome to come back as a junior counselor and that county.
And do you see, like, is it truly this healing experience? You think for a lot of kids it's grief is so hard, less as so difficult, So what do you see?
It's like the most profound experience I think any of us that have been their young or old kids or volunteers have ever had. And I think the magic of experience camps is like the joy, which I know sounds so it's not full or counterintuitive. But when you know that you're surrounded by people that understand, like in their bones understand, you can let loose and you can be vulnerable, but you also can jump in the lake and be silly and sing Taylors at the top of your lungs, and make friendship bracelets and talk about your people or not talk about your people and know that you're in a space of people that will support you no matter what and we'll catch you.
And I think because of alone.
Yeah, yeah, because it's also very complicated in loss and grief because you think, or I think a lot of people would think that the loss and grief is all one thing and it's sad. It's just absolutely sad. And of course we're humans, so actually you know that would we would just shrivel up and die if we were always sad. And I think that it's the paradox of knowing that you can go to a camp where everyone is feeling loss and grief and they're understanding the highs and lows of it, that they're understanding that they can sing and dance and they can also cry and they can and that's and not feel alone.
Really the magic of the camp is like an hour a day, we at least one hour day, sometimes two, we talk about grief very specific with licensed clinicians and counselors. And then when the bell goes off and the hour is over, we get up and we go to soccer.
Where we go and you found them through social media.
I found them.
There's hotel, this is the power of social media. For this is what I believe.
I have to stay on it exactly exactly. I wouldn't have known about this thing, and I feel very privileged because of acting. I get to spread the word about it and hopefully bring more. You know, I love so much.
I love that we're talking.
Do you find yourself on TikTok or what's your social what's the social? So I was just saying that I haven't I go immediately to Instagram, like my fingers. I don't even know all the things that Tristan Harris says are true. There's some dopamine hit. I don't know what happens all of a sudden, my fingers are just on Instagram. I didn't even try to do it, and I'm there, Where do you go?
I'm a little bit of everything I do have. Like no one makes fun of me harder than my wife about this, but like I have a deep YouTube kind of thing where I just go on YouTube.
Do you want to do it?
Wait?
Say more? Where are you going? Are you going deeply in YouTube?
I just know I follow people that she's like to. These people have any other like viewers other than you, and I just will find the most random people and get parasocially attached to them.
I just need to keeping their channel. A love to be real.
Yeah, I need to like watch them, you know, unbox a candle that I'm allergic to and can't ever buy. Just like that.
I love.
And therapy. It calms my brain down.
So when you okay, so also when you if you go on Instagram, do you ever get that thing? I've explained it a couple of times where like a I'll somehow be on someone's page that I don't even know, but i go down the rabbit hole and I'm looking at their whole life and I do the comparison thing that's lethal, Like you should never do it, but but I do it. At least I can recognize that I've done it and like pull myself back from the ledge. Is there any is there any account or scrolling through Instagram where you're like this is I gotta stop doing that. I got looking at that person.
I have to be honest, Like my mom and I talk about this a lot because not to out her on art your podcast, but she really can go down that hole fast, Like this person is so happy and they're on this vacation or they have this thing or you know, look at their holiday celebrations or whatever it is, and I'm like, mom, this is one eightieth of their day. This is one.
Yeah, you're not.
They're not videoing the the you know, car backfiring or the family fight. Yeah yeah, or like spilling coffee all over themselves whatever it is. Like, they're not filming the humanness of their day. They're just trying to make themselves feel better and put out something that's created and beautiful and digestible and all those things. So I walk her off that ledge quite a bit.
Tell her follow me.
She's never gonna sit there and stroll and be like, God, my mom.
No one loves Graze more than me and my mom. It's our thing that we did. I remember I met her a lot.
Oh yeah, and why was she there? She was friends with someone literally her on the lot. She was, yes, she said, because she she she introduced herself to me.
Oh because you know why, Beanie, because you ran you snuck onto the lot June Beanie's episode.
But my mom, no, no, no, no, no no no, this was way before because she now we're like offline. But she came up to me because I think she'd met my sister Sasha. Yeah, maybe through Max and Jonah. So like she came up and she was like like she was like felt like I have no idea. I think she was friends with Ask her about it.
What did you find out that your mom was a character on the show before you? She's like huge, a huge recurring.
I have to makeure this out because she's never met. I just got bring into the space that she did let me miss school the day after George died. I had to.
That's such a fan.
I love it. Literally in the morning after, which like not easy to miss the day at Harber Westley yea, but she made.
That Georgia died.
I think she just like school today.
I think I was old enough that she didn't have to call, but it was sort of like you can's and I was like, I can't speak to anyone or do anything.
I was. I inherited his trailer when he left. I got that's the trailer I got. And so I was their fifth season, so I think that was the season that he died at the end of that, right, and I remember it being like super top secret when he came you know, when he comes back and he does that's the scene where he comes out of the elevator. Yeah, yeah, that was super top secret. Like I don't even actually think I knew.
It that I did. You have to sit the trailer when he came back.
No, I mean no, because the next season I was made a regular so okay season in that trailer and then yeah, and then I remember he had left some things in it and I found them, and I remember being like, what do I do with this thing? I could probably sell this any favor at no.
Wonder you were probably I just can't. It feels wrong to say for you, But like my two favorite characters, maybe it was the trailers, like I need to bring into the space that. Looking back, definitely, Calzona was my gay awakening and I just didn't see it.
A lot of people I didn't know this, so wait, you had not wait tell me this?
What was obsessed on a different level. And looking back, I'm like, oh, there there's so many kind of signs. I think a lot because you were not.
Out yet, No, I think, but not, I don't know your story.
When did you come out?
So I it wasn't that I was like keeping something inside that I was not letting out. It was like I hadn't put the pieces clicked in together my own body, and then the second I knew, I came out kind of immediately once I figured out because I'm incapable of keeping anything inside my brain body and.
Benefited from that.
Yeah, my wife was like, honestly, like the speed at which you kind of put the pieces together, we started dating and then came out. I was like twenty four hours. But I I just I think it's a much more common queer experience than I think people talk about often. And I think the show really did a great job of that with Kelly of like of like, you think you're one thing, everyone tells you one thing, and you're not mad at that thing. It's just something maybe doesn't feel one hundred percent right. It wasn't like I I was like, you know, the men I've dated in the past I had great fulness for and you know, they were good, nice people, and everything was fine, but there was just something missing. I didn't understand. I always I didn't understand songs, like I didn't understand songs until I'm at Bond and then I was like, oh, these songs makes sense.
That's very romantic, that's very romantic and very well, like just very eloquent.
I yeah, yeah, looking back, the writing was on the wall with the colsone it.
I love that.
I love that you hear that.
I feel like we hear that. We hear that.
Yeah, no, because weren't you. I mean, how many gay couples were on TV?
There were not. And as a matter of fact, so and obviously Callie's journey and Arizona's journey were very different, very different, and Arizona's was very much she was so resolved about it. It was there was there was just no there was no apology, there was no doubt, there was no maybe there was.
This is who I am and apologetic.
Yeah, I've known who I I know who I am. I've always known who I am, and this is who I am.
And in fact, when we go to conventions, people have her like they have you write quotes right on stuff or maybe they want tattoos, and your quote that you always get is.
Well, there's a good man in a storm, but there's one that's like, I'm the the gayest of gays, the lesbianic.
Yeah, and I think that that, but I think it sids up who Arizona is.
And it's just like unapologetic you're talking about Yeah, guess why people love that quote?
Yeah.
And I was as an actor, I would always sort of say to the writers like, but don't I have to have like some like isn't that isn't that like my obstacle? Like doesn't there have to be something where she doubts something? And they were always which I think absolutely came from Shonda. It was always yeah, hard, no, no, she knows who she is. And I was like, all right, I guess I just don't play the conflict.
But I think that that's so great.
No, no, no, Looking back on an hour, I was just being an actress being like, yeah, you always.
Want yeah, yeah, And then they took your leg and you were like you.
I know, yeah, here I asked for conflict.
I am.
Yeah.
I have loved having you here. I feel like there's just another layer of you that I know, and I'm gonna hold it close and and I hope that I just wish you the very very your best, and I hope that you come back on again.
And I just have to say, when we first started this podcast, before we'd even done the first one, they were like, give us a list of people that you want on the pod and.
You were on my list.
I was like, Beanie, it's true.
I have to say the same thing back, which is like I only want to do these types of things with people that I really like, adore and people that I know. You know, it's a lot to like bear your soul, you know. Yeah, And I just the second it came in, it was like, Yes, it was the same thing when I when the actual grades offer came in, I was like, I'm manifesting. I love.
Oh my gosh, Beanie, gonna win some time to come back on any time. Beanie, Thank you guys so much.
Bye bye bye,
