As their characters struggle with the situations they’re dealing with on the show... Hilarie, Sophia, and Joy relive what life was like behind the scenes during this time.
It was definitely a tale of two dramas as things were surreal with the highest of highs while simultaneously marred by the lowest of lows. And it’s all explained right here…
Plus, a special guest performed at Tric on this episode… find out who and why this was one of Sophia’s most memorable days on set!
First of all, you don't know me. Were all about that high school drama, Girl Drama Girl, all about them high school queens. We'll take you for a ride in our comic girl Cheering for the drama Queens Girl Fashion, but you'll tough, girl. You could sit with us Girl Drama, Queens, DNA, Queen's Drawn, mc Queen's Drama, John mc Queen's Drama, Queen's Welcome Back, Everybody it is Season four, Episode four, can't stop this thing you started? I wish we could. That train is a rolling baby. There's a lot that I wanted to push stop on in this episode. I didn't like it. It was a good episode. The subject acidic front. It's so uncomfortable that while we were watching it we were like, wow, they really did a good job because we're all super creeped out. But yeah, maybe didn't really make me feel sick. Bethany Rooney was our director in this and it was her first time. I believe in my right that she one last year too. Has she done one before? Well? I loved her. She was one of my favorite directors and um, you know, she would always come in. She had a very calm energy and really knew what she wanted, but was also really open to our ideas, So that was nice. Um. But she she came in with ideas. It wasn't just somebody coming in expecting the machine to run itself and she's just there to, you know, call call out the shots every once in a while. She really had ideas and I think it showed up a lot because there was a lot of stuff that she just had to juggle in this crazy episode. She had really creative shots. That basketball shot at the very top of the episode where Lucas is like looking through the basketball hoop and the way it was revealed, Yeah, it was super cool. Well, what this episode that Bethany Rooney directed beautifully is about is deb continues her downward spiral to her addiction. Rachel continues to chase after Nathan. He is still searching for answers about what he saw in the water. Whitey and Karen make a proposition to Lucas about returning to basketball. The rumor about Brooks pregnancy is just spreading like wildfire around the school, and Derek starts getting closer to Peyton, but Lucas begins to suspect that his intentions are not good and the coolest thing that, like I don't know ever happened, was Lupe Fiasco performed at Trick. Amazing, so exciting, there's a lot. Loupe being there is one of my core memories of our show, Like truly one of the best days I've ever had at work. It was so fun and so cool. We were all so excited and it was a long day at Trick and we were all it was one of those ones that we all showed up even when we weren't there. We weren't do on set yet. We were just wanted to hang out. We wanted to be there when lou Loupe was performing and then hang out in the green room backstage so we could set chat. We were so fang early about it, we really were. And I don't know why I remember this. I remember because I had gotten to work a couple of hours earlier than I was needed and they were loading in his set. You know, they put up that chain length fence with all the loop A skateboards on it, you know, the it was just the board part though, without the wheels, and I remember helping like unwrap those skateboards out of the bubble wrap, out of the boxes and being like helpful, this really cool? What can I do? Put me to work? Like he wasn't there. It was like me and the set dep guys. But I was like, this is so cool. I can't believe it's really coming. And I don't know why. It's like it's burned into my brain. I just have such imposter syndrome. Like even on TRL at MTV, my assumption was always like no one knows who we are. No one knows, like like you're going to forget my name five minutes after you leave. And I just had this kind of like feeling when he showed up, like does he even know what our show is? Like our show? What do you do? Hopping about? You here? Why are you here? You know? Like I just yeah, my imposter syndrome was so big. I was just like who did your manager trick you? Like, yeah, I'm not cool. It was a lot of that, like how did we get you here? Like extreme confusion. Well, you made a great point while we were watching Hillary you were You mentioned a writer that we had come in once who was telling us um because she was back in the writers room in l A and that they were really trying to get a lot more male viewers on the show, and um, so I think maybe that was part of it too, because Lupe was definitely like the coolest I mean, well, I guess Jack's mannequin was pretty cool, but still kind of indie. Like Lupe was pretty mainstream and like cool and appealed to both sexes more than like a Michelle branch or maybe even Tyler at that point. Well, we had a lot of singer songwriter energy, yeah, and so to ranch out um into more you know, like I don't know, you're right, like mainstream, go to a club, have fun kind of like fun music. Maybe that's the word I'm looking for because it fits with all the other things we were talking about in the episode, like all the stuff with Rachel being naked basically, and all the stuff with Nathan on the motorcycle and the way they were you know, even the psychoderic stuff. The way that was cut it was definitely had had a bent toward what male audiences at the time we're showing up for. They were fixated on the mail thing, and we can talk about it more like as the psychoderic thing evolves. But I was specifically pulled aside and told that our male numbers in viewership skyrocketed when Peyton got her as kicked by Derek, and so what you'll see, there's a pattern on our show where either violence towards women or super sexualized situations. There's gonna be an uptick in that because they were really hot to capture the male audience and they saw those numbers, like they had data that showed them this is what the boys like. Um. And that was really frightening to me. But I had to be a good like sport about it and be like, oh, I'm so glad I could bring more eyeballs to our show. That feels great. Um, But yeah, they were. They were trying to get the dudes for sure. They couldn't do it with basketball, so we'll punch a girl in the face. It's upsetting, though, to to think about what kind of male audience we were cultivating with that note on certainly not and there's plenty of shows men watch that don't revolve around assaulting women. And I think it feels extra intense given that, you know, we had those conversations in season three with the school shooting episode about what we've learned in the last twenty years, what we've learned about these groups that groom men and boys towards violence online, and that those are the people that are pushing um the rhetoric and the misinformation that literally we find repeated again and again and again, and these manifestoes of these men who who commit violent acts like that. And to think that we had a team of people in charge of us that chose to seek out and try to entertain violent men, like that's a that's a really hard pill to swallow, even all these years later. It's really no joy. I mean, how fucking meta is it? How meta is it that they are clearly vilifying Derek the creep on the internet, right while also soliciting the creeps on the internet. Yeah. Absolutely, I just think it was incredibly careless. I don't know that it was sinister and that there are people sitting in their offices like you know, how we can really you know, because the psychos out there, right. I think it was just a carelessness of like, oh, yeah, it's action, it'll be cool and like and then it's it's just it's it's just careless. It's a total lack of awareness of what it's actually doing, right, But it's it's the kind of lack of awareness you see in, for example, people who can't get pregnant, men trying to regulate women's literal reproductive systems, like it's the same sort of thing where they go, this is going to be really cool, and they don't follow what their actions actually cause or mean. So I know they weren't trying to solicit like basement bullies on the internet, but they saw that a lot of young men were drawn to a violent assault of women, and they went, we should do more of that. Not hold the phone. How are we gonna Okay, wait, if if we suddenly have a lot of these young men tuning in, how are we going to talk about how awful that was? Instead, they were like, maybe we should do more. Maybe we should make the girls do maxim and tell them they'll get fired if they don't like that. Is that what happened? Oh yeah, okay, talk about the maxim? Shoot. Oh man, oh man, guess who wore pants and maxim? This guy? Because I have kept this pair of white jeans for so long because I showed up that day and was such a righteous bitch and like such like a brat, like such a baby. Uh, And I was like, I'm wearing pants not just I don't I'm uncomfortable plumbing in the pants. And also I've saved those white jeans as like a testament to I'm gonna wear pants and Maxim, I mean our hardest. We got like cute vintage one pieces and high waisted bikinis and I was like, yeah, I'll wear this like corset top that totally covers my tummy and then these shorts and it'll look like a fifties pin up shoot. And then the photo shop they did of that outfit, half my ass is gone, like literally one of my legs just is half of its size. And they did the thing that they loved to do to us then, where they tried to make our boobs bigger. I've never had boobs in the corset and shorts shot of me. They only like, it's like someone started making one of my boobs bigger and then went to lunch and forgot they weren't done. So like one normal size boob and one huge boob and half but on one side, like you guys, it's the worst. It's the worst, babe, that's called the Maxim Special one big bob. Really, it was insane. Just once we really did try to make it the best version of it we could. But yeah, we got told we had to do it. And I because Brooke had been so sexualized on the show, and the whole idea of this like hometown hottie was Rachel's storyline. I was like, Look, if if the girls want to do it, that's great. I don't like I have gone to battle trying to make Brook less of this thing that you guys tried to force me into. I don't want to do it. And I literally got told, if you do not go and shoot this cover with your co stars, we will guarantee you that you will never be let out for a press day, a movie, an event, any of your charities. We will keep you here forever. Where was your manager the leverage they had because I didn't. I remember getting pulled into the production office, your Lawyal and I sat on a floor while our boss was on the couch as we were given this like very friendly soft pitch that was Look, all the other shows have been on the cover of every single magazine, and no one wants you, Guys, no one wants you, and you finally have someone that wants you, and you're really going to turn your nose up at that UM and you know, we were on the bubble every year, and we were assured that Maxim had just been purchased by a new parent company and they had UM British ownership now, so they're classing up the joint and that it was run predominantly by women, and we were like, but what do you mean. They're like, you guys are going to be the start of the rebranding of Maxim. It's going to be so classy, like it was this whole thing because we said no to that for years, for years, but it was very much a no one else wants you, studio wants to cancel your show. If you don't start to generate some buzz and attract these male numbers, then we're dead and all your friends are going to lose their jobs and it'll be your faults. I think. You know what's interesting for me is it's about agency. Like at that time, I said, no, I don't want to do this, and I was told I had to, and I hear you on the like, where was your manager? But what's a manager going to do? Well? They said, you're working every day in this episode. Yeah you're supposed to have You're not technically on camera on Friday, but that's the only time they can do your wardrobe fitting, Like they can keep you on the ground if they want to. And it just seems like something that would have happened enough in this industry that lawyers would know how to handle that. It was pre texting, really joy Like, how often were we really in contact with our managers back then? It was It was such a profound threat and a threat to like being able, honestly, even to have the ability to escape for a weekend a place that at this stage, like this season, I was leaving every chance I got. I would come into work and do my job, and then I wanted out. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with my family, I wanted to be with my friends. I did not want to be on our set. It was not a safe place for me, and this was such a threat to safety. And I remember, and it's weird because I remember having these conflicting feelings when we did that cover, like looking at you Hill and looking at Danil and being like, God, everybody, everybody looks so beautiful, and like I farted in all those pictures. I'm making the most uncomfortable phase look uncomfortable. But in the room I remember being like this, like I'm looking at my friends who look stunning and who do look like these fifties pin up girls, and this should be so fun, but it's miserable because we didn't choose it. And it's interesting because many years later when that when there was actual like when we did Maxim on our show, it was still like college humor, like really gross. All the articles geared towards like just grossness, like frat house humor. And many years later, on a different job, the magazine had actually changed hands and had been bought by one of the big women's magazine umbrellas. I guess maybe again, And I got to art direct to shoot with Maxim with these three incredible um photographers who like came in from France, uh team that came in from like tom Ford, like super high end fashion. We were we were doing these like video clip like short film inspirations for the shoot, sourcing the locations I was involved, and all the things we were like taking references from the first Beyonce a visual album and it was like the coolest, sexiest vibius thing I've ever worked on. That, Like photographs came out of and it was such a I had this pang, being like we could have actually done something that made us feel special, but like back then when we were we just felt like bossed around and used and and the glaring difference under you know, quote unquote the same banner I get fifteen years apart or whatever. But it really wasn't lost on me when I thought back to this episode. Also at the shoot. UM, first of all those pictures that we see that Rachel takes, or the Brook takes of Rachel in the episode, those are pictures that were up in our writer's office. I would to go visit the writer's office in Los Angeles. Imagine she didn't know, she didn't know, yeah, And I remember seeing them being like, what then is this um? But then our boss came to the maximum shoot and he made a production out of giving me a present in front of Sophia and Daniel because he was trying to put so it was an iPod that he had loaded with music he thought was applicable to me and wanted Sophia to see it to put it her in her place, and he wanted Daniel to see it because he was trying to make her jealous and little game. Oh god, I mean, like, by the way, who does that with a pack of like twenty four year old We weren't even we were twenty three, right, it's sick on like every So that is something you do for your crush when you're in high school, or your girlfriend or boyfriend when you're an adult, or you know, your your spouse or your best friend. It's not something you do for an employee. Who is who is taking pictures? Taking pictures? Who is what fifteen years twenty years your junior and you are a married adult man, married adult man. I just remember how scary and uncomfortable that stuff felt, like, Hillary, I remember him doing that to you that day, and how sick it made me feel, and looking at you because I could see you like collapse a little bit. And then I remember trying to catch your eyes, but you were like looking at the floor, like burning with discomfort. But then like I remember you checking to the side to like see are they watching this? Like I was watched, and I was like trying to catch your eye but also not make a scene and let you know I saw you and let you know I knew it was him, But we couldn't talk about it because he was in the world like it was all just so awful, like it's awful. Well, because we'd all been pitted against each other in different ways, and we had actually had a nice day for all of our discomfort, you know, when you're in the trenches and you're all just like, I guess we're doing this thing okay, and we'd actually, like you, Me and Danielle had had this kind of like nice day where we would all check in with each other and be like, no, you look good, you look good. I'm here for you. Let me put my hand here, you know, let me like I'll hold you. Um. And he came in and just made this very like visual move to be divisive. And I was so embarrassed because I even though it was like a day, I was like, oh, well we're cool, like the girls are cool, this is great, and he just I was so embarrassed. I was so embarrassed. I just went to my friends Steve's house afterwards, and I was like, can I wash my face here? I just wanted to wash it off. You know, we we were all really pitted against each other, and this is a great example of that because I never even heard I think I remember hearing like, oh, the girls are and were you guys in New York? Where did you go for the But they you were off. The girls are off doing their maximum shoot and they replaced you with Danielle Joy. Um, that's what they told you. Yeah, they told me they didn't come to me because I was too fast and um, and I just wasn't like. I wasn't the hot girl I wasn't like a hot girl on the shop anymore. Joy. They told us they asked you and you said no. Okay. First of all, I don't understand how a person calls the co star. Look. I understand we're all like on the body, on the spectrum of bodies, like we're slender ladies. Yes. Wait wait, yes, I never heard a word. I'm like, how they could call the girl who literally has the physically smallest waste of all of us fat. I don't understand. Second of all they said to us, because by the way, when when I said I don't want to do it, I was like, but Joy is not doing it. She said no, and they go, well, she said no, so you have to say yes, and she said no. First they told us that you said I absolutely will not do it. And Maxim said, well, we can. You know, it's still it'll still work if it's a group of the girls, if it's just the three, but any less than three then we don't have the cast. So they basically said, sorry, she said no first, so you can't. Wow. They never asked. They never even asked. I just happened, and I was like, wow. I mean I probably wouldn't have done it because at the time I didn't you know, what Maxim was to me was not something that I felt like I wanted to be a part of. So I would have said no. But they didn't even ask. It was just like the assumption Joy's not going to do it. And by the way, here's why. Because isn't it crazy though, to to realize that they escapegoated you to tell the three of us we couldn't say no exactly. They threw you under the bus. I was like, why does she get to say no? And I don't. I don't understand. I was like, how come Joy got first pick? I mean, if they had put me in that position, in the position they put you guys in, Yeah, we weren't mad at you, but we were piste about it. But that was the beginning of all of them. It was like, for some reason, I don't know. I think it was right after I had gotten my life and um our boss was It started with that in the last episode, the comment that Rachel makes you're a fat girl the little head? Yes, what was that? I remember reading that on paper and just being like, what, Like that's so it's so random. That actually must be what he thinks of me. And it was such a strange. I just never you know, you just there's something sometimes like someone will say something to you and you're like, I never ever saw myself that way. And now suddenly every time I look in the mirror, I'm like, am I fat? Like do I guess I do kind of have a little head? Does that? Is that bad? Is that unattractive? And it's so dumb, but it really followed me around for a long time in my brains and and and what a fucker. That was the beginning of it when that comment came out in the script and we had to do the scene and she had to say it over me, like, you know, ten times in the takes, and then we uh. From that point forward, it was like I started getting treated like just put joy in the category of like middle aged mom and we're gonna we're gonna do all the sexy stuff with everybody else. There's nothing interesting about Joy anymore because she's married. And apparently they thought I was fat and boring, and so that was it. And I just got kind of like replaced with Danielle, who I love and you know, I've said a million times, like I love. It was just so so weird. But what's crazy about that? And this is something I've realized in our industry because of the way we as women get treated. You being married at the time, whether it was conscious or unconscious, meant that a group of men went, well, no chance of now, so what are we gonna do with her? And it's like, immediately, that's not what I'm here for. And by the way, the irony is that in the last episode, you and James have that scene in bed that is vulnerable and sexy as helper, like him crawling on top of you and you guys having that conversation real close to each other's faces. I was like, I don't know if I should be watching those, but I like it. This is intimate. This feels really intimate, and I feel like a fly on the wall, but I want to know what they're saying, and it's like, we don't Our sexiness are our mininity. Our ability to connect doesn't change whether we're married or not, or whether we're twenty or forty. Like, I'm sorry, maybe it's ghosh or whatever to say, but I think we're all a ton hotter now than we were then. Girl, I'll freak here now after two kids than I was. Come Hello, yes, I'm way better in bed than I was then. I've heard joy. It's like, it's true, and it's so irritating to me that what we were allowed to do or portray was governed by whether or not our boss thought he might have a shot at us. That's just disgusting, and it doesn't I want to say, Like, I know, our business isn't easy for men, and like I get that they get objectified. And look, we made James take a shot off a lot on this show. I don't know if he liked it or not, but it was a lot. And I get that they also have the standards they're supposed to live up to, but they don't go through this part and I'm pissed that we do. I just I'm pissed about it. Well, hopefully girls talk to each other now, you know, like, yeah, I hope that there's a you know, a pack of eNews coming up that are like, oh, rules, we're not going to follow those. I missed that in this episode. I missed the camaraderie with the girls. In this episode we're all like split off and dealing with our own weird stuff. Although one of my I mean what I one thing I really love about the camaraderie that we didn't get to see too much of but we knew was there was Brooke being an amazing friend to Haley and just continuing to take the beating from every left, right and center. Everybody's coming after Brooke, and I love that she just holds it in, holds her own stays there strong for her friend, and then at the end is like, okay, listen, it's time. I've I've hit my limit. But you know, she's just so true blue. I love it. I love it too, and I loved You're right it was. It was such a breath of fresh air our scenes together because even they've given this weird thing, it's like it's it's like a it's like a bitchy little seesaw that they give to brook and Rachel, like Brookish shooting Rachel's photos for the messing thing. But they're yelling at each other while they're doing it, and I'm like, why are we doing this? We're roommates, you know, whatever, I get it. Complaints are in private. It's pillow fights and bitchy see sauce. I'm like, if I'm taking pictures of one of you in your underwear, I'm gonna be like, you look kind of amazing. Your tits look great. I'm so proud of ever Ever, So it's like that that bummed me out a little bit because I think when when they give me and Danil fun things to do together, it's so much more entertaining than when we're snipping at each other. So it was it was like such a breath of fresh air the scenes with us leaning on each other, and and that was the stuff I thought was so well written. The misdirect remains where you still don't know who's pregnant, what's happening, you know. I keep trying to watch the scenes, remembering that at the time nobody knew it was Haley, And it's so tender and real and kind and that's really refreshing given all the creepiness in the in the show right now. Yes, I know, I loved that Matt Bar's back tattoo. God man, that Psycho Deeric was really horrifying. And he's so good. Matt Bar is just so good at being subtle and um, yeah, yeah, I thought they handled it well in spite of all that we were talking about about you know what it was bringing in, um, just from a purely artistic level. He's a great actor and I thought, you know, Bethany did a really nice job with that. She did and it's super creepy. Sure is My favorite kind of stories are when you can see both sides right and you can see the cool older brother energy in Matt Bar. Like we said, he's got like Ryan Gosling energy where he's like, I don't have a problem with you, Luke, Like I think you're a cool guy. Like, what's what's going on here? Boy? The second you see that like underlayer, you can't un see it. And the escalation of creepy in this episode, it just kept getting grosser and grosser and grosser. And yeah, I mean I know what was going on in l A. Like we've talked about it. Our show kind of hit this point where it was like no one could correct or give advice to or rain In our creator anymore. And so I know that that Writer's Room was just a show of like, what is the grossest, most inappropriate we can get away with on a c W show. And yeah, because we were then officially competing with Gossip Girl in the o C which was all very still on at that point. I think they only did how many seasons did they do? Three or four? Well they started after us though, didn't they know they're before us? They launched? Oh they were, Yeah, it was definitely Gossip Girl. I remember that was we were constantly hearing that we were in a race with Gossip Girl all the time, which was so strange because it's just two shows that are completely different. You go to these places for completely different things. Well, and we all could have been very kumbaya, like what if Brooke hung out at the Gossip Girl kids in New York? You know it? Girls great, it was fun. It was like totally thought you went there for that whole world and that vibe. Why did we need to also be that world? It didn't make any sense. No, No, a female executive energy is like, hey, let's do a fun crossover. The energy we had back in those days was we hate each other dot dot com. Yeah yeah, and it feels like self sabotage, like to have to have two of the biggest hit teen shows on the same network and nine say, well, we could really use this to our advantage, Like why was clothes over? Bros not dressing Serena Vanderwoodsen Hello, absolutely, Like Don, why you're not kissing that broody dude on the show is what I'm saying, grumpy mother girl. Um, do we want to get into all the Derek of it all? Because there was so much stuff. I feel like it's weird this episode with it ping ponged. It was like Derek pregnancy, deb Shelly Maxim shoot Hyman's all over all over Well. We had the introduction of Elizabeth Arnwa who play Shelly the Clean We Love the band. Liz was a friend of mine, um and our creator. This was peat creep right where he was my betty and was like, what was high school really like for you? And so I told him that I was a part of a group called clean teens in high school and like our joke because that we would we were at all the football parties, you know, we would like go to stuff, but we'd be like virgin for life. You know. It was way of making fun of ourselves before anyone else could, but also about setting a boundary with the boys at our school so that they just knew not to try anything weird, you know. And back then there wasn't a lot of that. Um, we didn't have like a lot of role models that I could be like, hey, you know, actually I don't want you touching my boobs. You know, Like it was hard to find the language for it, and so making a joke out of it, put out a T shirt, that's it. It was the easiest thing to do because it made it funny and and you had the confidence to pull it off because I didn't care. Uh, it was just like day, don't date me. There's a lot of you. I'll figure it out. Um. And the thing is we all were legitimately like virgins, you know, and we were good with that. We didn't feel pressured. When we were in high school. Was the era of like girls gone wild and whip them out Wednesday, and like everyone wanted to see your tits and to stand up to that and be like, my brand of feminism is earn it like you don't. Nobody just gets this. This is special. Um, I had no idea when he was like, hey, we want to put clean teens on the show. I thought he was going to honor kind of what that meant, and instead it turned into this really gross parody where no one actually was a virgin. They were all just hypocrites and liars and mean and mean, like hateful in his mind, every chick is a horr at heart. Yeah right, yeah, And and when you've been the quote unquote whore that exists in his mind, you regret it. You regret your choices, you sob over them, and you want to use them as a weapon to shame other women who don't express this regret over their hordom too. And it's just like the whole thing makes me so mad because it's black and white. Yeah, And and it it doesn't also tell the truth about anything. It doesn't tell the truth about your experience. It doesn't it doesn't actually highlight the experiences of young women like it's it's like a cartoon version of all of it. And at the core of it is judgment. Yeah, everything's jammed into one into one, like you know, twenty minutes slot when there's so much, so much to be explained expounded upon. Um. I mean we teased out the water work for six episodes. We could have teased out the Shelly the Shelly revealed for a minute. I mean, I think the interesting conversation, at the very least that it sparks is how people mask shame, Like what do you do when you feel shame about something, whether the shame is justified or not in your own mind? There are plenty of things that I feel shame about that other people would be like, there's what do you worry? What are you worried about? But you know, we all have our own versions of that, and how people mask it um usually turns into judgment. I think in my experience it ends up being you start using your the the opposite of whatever it is that you're using to cover up your shame. You start taking that and lording it over other people and saying, why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing it the same way I'm doing it? See see look, I'm I'm virtuous. I'm doing it the right way. Um. And so I've liked the opening of that, because that's an interesting conversation to me. I liked that Shelley, Um. I think it's strange that she trusts Brooke right away with like you know her. Um. I like that she represents a lot of the girls I did go to school Worth who weren't necessarily in clean teens, but who belonged. There was a there was a youth group we would go to. They were called the fire Escape and I think they were named because you were trying to escape the fiery pits of hell and like, yeah, yeah, girl, that's what I'm talking about. They had like a haunted house that was all like drugs and abortion, and it was one of those right. It was like Hillary crazy when I tell you I grew up in like the thickness of that, I did, and it was It's a strange mix because you're friends with those kids and you're like, yeah, it's a Wednesday, and like there's really nothing else to do in our town. I guess I'll go to this thing. Um. And And I felt really badly for Shelly because I don't think her shame is that. UM. I don't think the shame is hers. I think the shame is something that is imposed on her by her parents and her church. And Shelly talks about you meet a boy and you're having fun and everything's like great, and I can't tell my parents I got pregnant at church camp. And it's like, well, baby, why can't you? Why can't you? That's awesome A great question because judgment, judgment isn't love. And what bothers me about I don't know about that. Well that that's that's my opinion anyway, is that like you don't judge in shame, Like if you can't tell the people who say they love you what you're going through, whether those people will have an opinion that it is a good thing or a bad thing, that's not love, you're not safe. And and what I struggle with in this again when you look at who we worked for, a man who cared not at all about the real experiences of women, who wanted to write fantasy experiences of women, and a man, by the way, who does not have children, so has no concept of what pregnancy is and no concept that if you want to have a baby, yes it's a miracle, but pregnancy is literally a life threatening condition, like to bottom life threatening condition miraculous, So special. I can't wait to be a mom. My husband is so cute. All I want is a little ginger baby that looks like but like Grants pictures is a little boy with red hair. Just give me eight of them. Like, I can't say it, but like, pregnancy is dangerous and we've divested from these realities. And what bothers me about someone like our boss writing this story, which is shame, shame, shame, regret, regret, regret, nightmare, nightmare, nightmare. My parents judged me, and my church judged me. All the stuff you were mentioning, how like it's actually antithetical to the real exp variances of women in our country, of women who seek reproductive care, who seek abortion care are already mothers plural. Well, the mythology is it's all slutty teenage girls exactly. And that's why it angers me, is the mythology does a disservice. It's it's repeating the same kinds of lies as that other vertical we've talked about, which like grooms boys to be violent and tells them that's masculinity. Like, I don't like when men repeat lies about women that harm women. And I really I struggle with the ways that all of us in various storylines Elizabeth with this thing was Shelley that each of us have talked about how vulnerable we felt when we had to do things on screen that we knew to not be true. I don't like that a forty five year old married man who who wanted to cheat on his wife with twenty year old girls was writing storylines that shamed sixteen year old girl. It like, it makes my blood boil, you know, I see exactly where you're coming from. It just irks me. Man. I think there is on the on another viewpoint of that, there is a realism to um. I have spoken with plenty of women in my life who have had abortions and feel and they do feel regret about it, um and then there are many who don't um so and I think the fear and this how scared it is to be a teenage girl and be in that position. You know, as I said, we were watching the episode, that does seem realistic to me. I think that's a realistic situation. But in the context of everything that we're talking about with who the boss, who our boss was, UM, how he was just using all of these like very deeply complex emotional issues and turning them into quips and sound bites and like from little emotional storylines. It takes away from the value that actually maybe could have offered. Well, he weaponizes those things into purity politics. And I hear what you're saying, and I also have to say, like, I have a handful of girlfriends who've had abortions who don't regret it, and many of many women I've spoken to who are only alive because they were able to have abortions, like whose lives were threatened by terminal pregnancies. And the reality of this conversation which everyone is entitled to their feelings and their opinions and their emotions. It's an emotional conversation for people. But it is nobody's business to place judgment on what you need or what you needed at the time, or what you needed to stay alive, or or what you needed to get out of an abusive relationship, or just what you needed because it wasn't right for your life. It's nobody's business. And what bothers me here is the judgment that again this man put on all of us as girls. I just it. Just imagine being a sixteen year old girl at home who had had an abortion in two thousand six and watching this and being like, oh, I'm bad. Like, we didn't need to do it that way. We just didn't need to have this conversation in that way, and it didn't need to be had by a man who treated women the way that man treated all of us. Yeah. I just didn't see it that way. I didn't see it as like, I'm like, if I was sixteen at home and saw that and think I'm bad, I would think it's relatable because I probably would have felt some of those things. And I what was interesting is that Shelley did take though that all of those that shame and emotion and turn it into judgment and it was very clear that she was doing that and it was very gross, and so it was it was I thought it was a nice way of saying, hey, don't yes, don't shame people, don't act out in judgment the way that she's handling this, because it's not pretty and it's harmful. It's hurtful. I like the way Elizabeth played it, Like that panic that she exhibits while she's telling the story to Brooke. It's like she's having an anxiety attack as she's telling Brooke. And you know when your nervous system is so affected by something that you just cannot mask it, and you see like Shelley's nervous system just like glitching as she's telling this story because she's trying to make it make sense and she's like, I have to find the path of like righteousness and this, and the other thing that bugged me about this was I was like, why do you think all church people are hypocrites? Like, like, why is the one church person you have in the entire series the one who's like, I'm a big fat liar and I loved you know, like that was his one representation of a church person on the show. Yeah, it would have been nice to see some alternatives perspectives. Yeah, it's judgment. It's just judgment all around, and I don't like it, but I do I will say, you know, I think I think the silver lining to your point Hill. And by the way, Joy, you're talking about her performance too, is that Elizabeth took something that felt pretty icky all around and was like I'm going to figure out how to make this girl feel human and and maybe even be an example of like what cruel judgment looks like, and I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna do more with her. Like she brought that visceral anxiety, she brought that misplaced emotion that she's dumping on Brooks. She brought all of that. You know, she put so much more into the performance than than what our boss put on the page. And that is when like, I just have moments where I look at, you know, the three of us on the on the screen right out and our our friends. I look at Liz and Neil on screen, and I just think, like, we got such a badass group of women because we were unwilling to be shrunken by the man who wanted to like shrink us and put us all in these little boxers us like Ripley's believe it or not right sunk the kids. Like one of my most favorite memories, as the course of season four goes on, is that he had hired Liz specifically because he was like, well, if this is something that really happened to you, do you have like a hot friend that should come play this person. And I was like, yes, like my friend Elizabeth, you know, like and she's friends with Danil and like our girl gang will be together and his fantasy was like, this is going to be so hot, and instead what ended up happening is a stone wall, just like all the chicks would hide after work and compare notes, and it was the worst thing that ever happened to It's so victorious that the idea of and this this leads me a bit into Dan, the idea of judgment as love UM and I want to I want to tap on that a little because I don't think it's in the in the way that it initially sounds like. But what I'm thinking of is the reason that we demand in our spirits or our hearts, this judgment over um Keith's death, over the way that Nathan is being taken care of, not being taken care of the way he's been treated by his parents, particularly with Dan. We want to see Dan received the justice that he is due for the horrible things that he's done. And we want that because we love Nathan, because we loved Keith, and I think that desire for justice often then turns into shame immediately instead of UM acknowledging like where it's coming from, this deep deep love. And when I watch Nathan and Deb and Dan in this episode, I think a lot about that because Nathan you said it in the last episode that we filmed Hillary or taped, um that Nathan is in like full trauma mode. He's been basically a bit abandoned by his parents. He's um, he's his uncle has been shot. I mean, I guess we can just start going down the list of all the horrible thing the year. All right, he fell off his bike this episode, Yes, all of these awful things that are happening, and now he's totally acting out with Rachel, which is still a little confus excuse me, still a little confusing to me. But um, I like the dance. I like this back and forth just as drama. It's it's really interesting to watch what's happening with his parents and all that they've created, the hurricane that they've created, how it's affecting him, and how it's affecting both of them right now, like everybody's spiling out of control because there's no justice happening. Do you guys, do you think that that intervention at the beginning of the episode would have been more successful if Dan hadn't been invited, Like, yeah, thats just how are there? I feel like no one could have expected that to go well well, and they knew that it wasn't going to play well, which I think is why they gave the therapist the line being like, you know, everyone who's important to you has to be here, because everyone was like, why is he here? She hates him, like like he's driven her to drink. She should not be the one in the room. The worst interventional best ever, Please invite the play the person that's going to make you feel at least safe your abuser. Didn't that man grab you by the threat of a week ago? Yeah, threatened to kill you. We'll have him come when. I didn't love the reveal of Keeps sleeping with dev That was kind of oh my god, Hayley Hilarus getting all of the tea is so good, Keith sleeping with what was the other one? Wait? There was one more that you were just was happening. There were multiple things and you just like swinging your head around like why does nobody tell me anything? I was cackling. That's an intimidating thing though for a kid, because you know, addiction is scary. When this when we were filming this, remember that show Intervention. It was a hit, like it had only I watched that show all the time. We would get off work and like watch that show because it was like, Oh my god, I can't believe this is on TV. It's crazy sometimes how topical our show is because we were really drawing from the other things that were cultural at the time. Um and that show intervention was like a really big deal. But deb playing it so um like she really does not care. She just does not care at all, And it's heartbreaking because we know we've seen the good and so it just makes this feel so like scuzzy and weird. Well because you know how much she does care, and so there's some kind of connective tissue that makes you watch her in this episode and think if this is how far gone she is. Essentially, she's behaving like she doesn't care if she's alive or not, and that is such a sad place for a human to be. And and the projection of that none of this matters energy on her son onto her daughter in law. Can you imagine being the tea you're in that classroom or just like man, it's the mayor's wife. I guess I better demands pills from a teenager. I mean, that's a call the CPS, even if the kid doesn't live in the house anymore, Like that's a phone call for sure, he's a man. You walk over and take the bottle of pills off the desk, so nobody gets to take anybody home take any pills. Somebody gets the pills. Now, that's what Haley became a great teacher. No pills for you, no pills for you. No one knew what to do, and the teacher just says, Okay, everybody, back to your tests. What insane? That made me uncomfortable that boy. You know what I did love was, um, you guys, as I makeup in this episode, we all had the double wing. It was like it was the hair Hillary too. It was a double who was doing our makeup? Was this Rachel kick? Was this? Honestly? Yeah? Because it all felt like a little like punk rock princess. I loved that we got We got some Cosmo girl and teen people issues in that hair and makeup trail, and we were like, we want this this one. That's just what my notes say. Peyton's Luke, Yeah, you had the double eyeliner and I had that single like sixties wing and I didn't even realize it until we were at trick, but we both had our hair half up different dudes, Like yours was really curly and romantic and mine had like that that like little sixties push up in the back almost. But I wonder if they were like, we don't want to touch. Well, that's probably what it was, but it weirdly struck me visually as oh, you know, we have these two best friends that aren't speaking right now, but they can't help but make the same choices still because they're so similar, know, like that like we kind of showed up looking like each other, and I like, yeah, we sure did. I mean we're going after the same dude or not? Who knows. Um. I just want to say Peyton once again is like co tuk to Brook Luke, I'll never talk. I okay, I'll talk to I give I give you to her on a silver platter. She's all yours. Peyton could not have tried harder to get those two back together. It's all so funny. It is so funny. It's like Lucas says, all those boys, she's all yours, fellas, and you're basically like Lucas, She's really she's all yours. She's the one everybody's just trying to give Brook away. Oh god, it's only a matter of time before Payton does that thing where she like sends flowers to Brook but signs Lucas's name, like starts like doing parent traps. Has to get back together. She's doing the cute ver of Derek telling lies to everybody, but instead of trying to keep him apart, she's trying to make a romance happen. God, we tried, you know, we sure tried, but that that whole night at Trick is weird because we laughed so hard when when Rachel slides an underwear picture over to Nathan on the bar, and it just is so dated because now we send iPhone pictures like here, look at my boobs, congratulations, But you had to print out a whole as picture in whatever I printed this out at Costco and keeping your locker. Yeah, I wore underwear in this shot to make sure the guy at right it didn't see my ariolas, Like, oh god, you that word makes me so uncomfortable. I mean, to Nathan's credit, he passed the picture back. He gave it back. He did, he did give it that. That's what I was going to say, I really I continue to be so impressed with the way that James plays Nathan in all of these scenes, because it would be so easy to lean into flirting with Rachel, and he he manages to be very compassionate, but to have a firm wallup. He's not judging her, he's not shaming her, he's not leading her on. He's just like, you're going through something. I see you. This is not for me. It's it's so it's classy and mature. Yeah, it's getting into dangerous territory though, Oh yeah, I feel it's like bubbling beneath the surface, like it's getting into a place where he could potentially still sleep with her just because he feels like it, and there's some kind of chemistry happening, but not get emotionally caught up in it. Hey man, she's having a rough time, I know well. And you see the way he begins to change the energy, like who Nathan is at that bar when he hands that picture back to Rachel, begins getting chipped away at by the time they're out in the parking lot and he gets on that motorcycle with her. But to James's credit, it's so subtle and it would have been really easy to play it up and to go, oh god, what's happening to Nathan? But you said it Joy, you go, I can see it. It might be coming, and I love I love the hint of it rather than the the big change happening quickly. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Well the scene that you guys had Haley and Nathan where he is just like, can you believe Brooke is doing this to Lucas? Oh my god, that's scene. I know. That was the first time that I think as an audience member, you go, oh, it's Haley, it's not Brooke because they let me have the reaction there. Yeah, and you're like, because she's scared, and he says, yeah, i'd be scared. Don't you tell a guy's life's over. Oh the gut bunch like you guys, that turned my stomach upside down. Yea, yeah awful. They're gonna have to go back to their round bed and talk about it. Yeah. I mean, if he's going to crawl on top of you again, talk it out, baby. Where do you find sheets for a round bed? Girl? I think you have to have two flat sheets and then just like hope it doesn't untalk in the middle of the night. How distressing have you, guys seen the videos about the Swedish sleeping method. I went down, you, guys, I went down a hole on t found actually a man. Imagine that this journal that I'm lifting up is your bed, like this is the mattress, but this half and this half are their own comforters. So you basically get like two queen size comforters and you like lightly overlap them over the center, so each person has their own comforter, but you're in the bed. I don't I don't like to lose covers in the middle of the night, so I don't know that it would be for me. But I've now watched so many videos about it that I'm obsessed, and I know that at some point this week I'm gonna creep my husband out because I'm gonna be like, Hey, I'm gonna bring another comforter downstairs and be like, what are you talking about? Listen, it's not as weird as a round bed. Let me try this because for one night. Yeah, we need to be more creative in our bedmaking. I get it. I get it. Plus you two are like both only children. I think like having your own blank ese is totally cool. Yeah, and then why do you have kids, because that's a whole that's a whole reason. I know what we do do that is quite funny is I love to sleep under a weighted blanket because I have tremendous anxiety and it calms me. I'm like, if you've ever read Temple Grandin's studies on farm animals, you'll know that to be squeezed lowers anxiety and animals and in humans. And so I sleep under a weighted blanket, and a weighted blanket is Grant's worst nightmare. He is like that that is my it's evil. I hate it. So what we said, that's heaven. Oh my god, it's my heaven. We're just like heavy, a nice heavy blanket. It's like it's like it's just like a nice it's a nice touch. And so what we do now is the weighted blanket is on one third of the bed, like all the way on the right side, one third from the bottom of the bed up to the top of the cover's weighted blanket, and then there's two thirds of the bed that's uncovered, so I can cuddle with him in the two thirds of the uncovered bed. And then when we're both like about to follow, I scooch. I retreat over under the weighted blanket, but it doesn't get on his legs because he hates it. There's no retreating on a round bed, like there's not an edge. You just fall off. By the way, where are your feet supposed to go? They're gonna dangle off the curved No, it's totally totally non functional. I feel like the only way to sleep on a round bed is to sleep in the fetal position at all times, which is not good for your back. Or just be a single person, one person in one single you're just like a starfish. A round bed is for when you go through a breakup and you're happy about it and you're like, it's mine. Start now. Here's what I need for us to do is take the video you acting out all of those things right now, but mute it and then just run the tape. Start that and this and this the mold making shuffling. Oh my god, guys, we have a question from Dana. She says, did you all make a playlist together for the drama Queens RV Road Trip? And what are some of the songs you played to get you hyped? For shows. We definitely had some Abba and that we didn't make a play but we had a we had a DJ, and yeah, we made live to playlists every day. What is that when you like add songs to the queue, And yeah, we were doing we were doing a lot of like Abba show tunes. I was trying to go back to senior year in high school and requested Vitamin C graduation song and could not have been less into it. So I just like remember looking in the rear view mirror at one point and she was like, are we there yet? You were not of it all. I don't know, man, I just wanted to go back to like Abba and share. I'd really been feeling that vibe. I will say though, the other thing that I loved, because obviously we love podcasts. I loved that we had the perfect mix of tunes that we were belting and then we would get into podcasts and Hillary, you played us your Friends podcast Robbia and Ellen Solve Crime and solved the case. Okay, you played us your Friends podcast Robbie and Ellen Solved Case. I am so deeply obsessed that I've also gone down a rabbit hole on the case. We talked about and say a bunch of TikTok videos to some friends and I'm like, guys, you gotta listen to this podcast. It's so good. I must have been sleeping when this happened. You were definitely sleeping. Robbie and Chaudre is Um. She's got a book that just came out called Fatty Fatty Boom Boom. It's her memoir. But she is a lawyer who was vital in getting a non said out of prison. And she does a lot of exoneration work and wrongful conviction work. And I met her working on a wrongful conviction case in Tennessee. And so I love seeing other women out there thrive and pushed back against patriarchy and unjust systems. And yeah, I mean, look, if we could do a crossover with like chicks who are solving crimes, will be drama crime Queen all day, give it to a day. I'm so in Yeah, yeah man Um, Well thank you for your question, Dana. Yeah. Should we's been a wheel? That's been a wheel? What if it's so? What if it's who's most likely it's solved true crimes? I would die solid crimes? Is the wheel listening to us? Oh my God, don't be a creep wheel, don't be a Darren. Who's most likely to travel to space? Who's the richest? I am our boss made all the money on our show? Unfortunately? Andy? Answer, Andy, Andy's the right answer. I mean, look, what is if money wasn't an option? Right? Yeah, not an option. Did you see that thing that William Shatner said about seeing Earth from space and how he thought it was going to be the best moment of his life and instead it made him so incredibly sad. Wait why really? He was, like, it just made me realize that we were squandering the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Like it was to have someone whose entire career has been space oriented finally like do the thing and then have it made him feel remorseful, I guess, or just like an element of grief. I was really taken aback by that. That's surprising. Yeah, as a Ray Bradberry fan, I always thought like, yeah, we'll go live on Mars. That sounds dope, Yeah, I'll go do that. But I think it's really interesting that that point, right, because you know, I've I've listened to a couple of astronauts on podcasts as well who said that it when you really see the Earth out there and you realize what's here, like what is on this planet and you just see the rest of space, there's just like rocks out there in the empty You go, how how are we still fighting over things? How are we not all on the same team? How are we not protecting this planet? Like it's a miracle. And so I feel that, you know, the when you look around and you go like, man, we're still missing it after all this time, Like aren't we supposed to be smarter, be nice to each other everyone. I like things that make me feel small. I think it's one of the reasons. And also things that just remind me I'm like a cog in the wheel. I think that's why I've always been attracted to um antique stores and having things in my home that are that have history, because it's like a sort of subconscious reminder that there was a whole life and world and many many thousands and thousands of civilization years of civilization before this moment right now and there you know, hopefully we'll be many more in the future. And I'm just like I'm a blip on the radar. Well, I found the exact quote, he says, it was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The trassed between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands, the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna, things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration. Instead it felt like a funeral. Willie William Shatner. Then you know what, I'm glad we made a TV show that's about mankind trying to be nice to each other. You know, I mean, like, for all the dorkiness of One Tree Hill, for all of our missteps. If we are going to be here for a blip, like, let's make let's make a warm hug. You Also, thanks for joining us. I didn't know William Shatner was so poetic and I'm so touched. Oh yeah, well, let's go make some more loving content. Guys. Let's do it all right. We will see you guys next week. Oh my god, this title is awful and perfect. Oh no, Season four, Episode five, I love you, but I have chosen darkness. Done, don't do by everybody, by y'all. Hey, thanks for listening. Don't forget to leave us a review. You can also follow us on Instagram at Drama Queens O t H. Or email us at Drama Queens at I heart radio dot com. See you next time. We are all about that high school drama. Girl Drama Girl, all about them high school queens. We'll take you for a ride in our comic Girl Cheering for the right drama Queens up girl fashion, but your tough girl, you can sit with us. Girl Drama Queens, Drama, Queens Drama, Queen's Drama, Drama, Queen's Drama, Queens