EB 38: Felicia Day: How I Got Here (June 2014)

[Music] welcome to ear biscuits I’m rich and I’m link thanks for joining us again it is another adventure at the roundtable of dim lighting I’ve never get an adventure this visit adventure but I thought I would forewarn you this week’s episode of a sighted well you weren’t excited well I was mildly excited but now I’m really excited it’s adventure an adventure do I need like a Camelback or something yeah you need to be constantly hydrated on this thing the interesting person from the internet that we’re talking to this week is the one and only Felicia Day she’s not only famous for having red hair which maybe she’s not famous for that well she has red hair okay that’s that’s one thing she’s also known for her acting on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and supernatural and as penny on dr. Horrible’s sing-along blog one of my favorites among many other things but she’s more than just an actor oh yeah she’s done a lot of stuff in the the web space I think probably one of the most successful web series ever you know going back years ago six seasons of the guild I know you’ve heard of the guild this is about the online gamers guild called the Knights of good who played countless hours of a fantasy MMORPG called the game that she wrote this she produced it she was in it I mean she basically this is her baby the guild here’s a clip there’s a saying keep your friends close but your enemies closer right can I change that to the closer your friends come the more they look like enemies I mean come on first tink steals my server cave and Zabu moves into my work I was so dumb to think I could keep the game and the guild separate even for a day and then when they mix it’s like oil and water fire and gasoline nuclear Dragon and fairy toadstool village doesn’t know what she’s got weird quick so the guild ended its sixth season run in January of 2013 garnering well over a hundred million views and I mean that’s a lot I mean considering how difficult it is to create for narrative narrative content on YouTube Felicia also co-founded YouTube channel geek and sundry and is continuously creating quality geek and gamer centered content for you on the will and our latest project called spooked it’s a she executive produced this and it’s being called a cross between the Ghostbusters and the guild highly-anticipated it’s on Hulu and it’s also on the geek and sundry YouTube channel and you said that Ghostbusters but the movies are just called ghosts did I say that ghost you said it so well my money Ghostbusters like three guys yeah yeah I think as the three guys it’s a team of paranormal detective so it is the like the Ghostbusters and the guild people yeah we’ll go there’s nothing wrong with what I said okay we had a great conversation with Felicia we touched on lots of topics including growing up as a home-schooled misfit in the deep south the circumstances that led to her writing the guild her thoughts on misogyny in geek culture how she deals with trolls and we talked about kissing girls on screen plus much more so here it is area biscuit with Felicia Day well you got to pretend but your fork is in your hand you’re like you talk about saying grace yeah we’re recording and I think we should start by saying grace okay they do it in their head they won’t say it out loud because then it’s like I’m saying grace and I don’t want to make a demonstration of it sooner to kind of like awkwardly like what should I be doing in my head while you’re praying to whatever God you pray to right and they could just be having some sort of fit or like don’t eat too much like somehow the internals like don’t eat all those potatoes talk a pep talk yeah it is kind of weird because it’s in you they’re basically saying I want you to be a part of something that I’m doing without you yes so it’s this it put you on the spot to come up with something to do while they’re doing their think silent like silently praying their lips are moving a little bit is that what you mean yeah that’s what I mean but then they don’t want to impose on you they’re not like hey can we please say grace because that feels like they’re imposing the religion on you and yet they need their moment to say grace while you’re in the middle of a conversation so they start so it is imposing it is imposing cuz they’re stopping everything to say grace which is fine but then as me as a non-religious person I’m will already dug into my macaroni and I’m like well should I stop chewing should I just slow down should I stare at you maybe you should just continue eating I mean maybe that would be that’s the natural thing I never want to do it always feels awkward well let me ask you what have you done and have you have you landed on a technique well one time I bowed my head for your stander yeah a bystander exact prayer standard that’s true I bowed my head once and I was like this is stupid I’m not talking to anyone you know so then that felt false cuz then I’m like well I’m pretending to pray to a god they’re gonna get pissed off that I’m a poser I’d rather just not do anything so then I meaning the gods are gonna get pissed off whoever’s anywhere or your friend I think you know the person who is being prayed to or the entity ah because their lies are clothes they’re in their own things right right and then then I I stopped awkwardly you know so soon you either join in which was not I wasn’t doing it it was just posing right and then to just keep eating which feels dickish and then three it’s just kind of like a mid to stop like let’s pause like literally like I’m frozen that’s not the freeze that face and you seen you look off you seem to not be looking at like if I was the prayer yeah you would I would look down who looked down imitate them so it’s gonna have a half pray but your eyes are open it’s a half pray it’s really just evaluating what I ordered yeah like planning your first bite yes I mean you just take I mean you could just take a moment of silence for what 911 just for you know just to center yourself you know just to be like alright this person is praying I’m just going to take a moment of silence you know or you could just break your phone out no that’s the word that would be the worst that would be the room okay they just do the moment of something little silence maybe I do have a meditation app on my phone yeah so I could break out whatever it is I listen to there when I’m doing it which I’d usually don’t get around to it but it’s on my to-do list every day no but I would think that growing up in Alabama oh you wikipedia’d me Oh II do that Wikipedia it goes much deeper yeah this is something that you’ve dealt with you dealt with growing up I mean surely there was less people saying grace around you in Alabama not well yeah I went to religious school for a couple years but then we moved to Mississippi which is even more pretty yeah but Ray I know but then I did not go to school there I was home-schooled cuz my mom was this hippie and she was like these the school system is horrible and I don’t want you to go so just don’t go so what we’re in Mississippi and what age did you move there Ocean Springs Mississippi I moved there when I was I believe 7-7 I lived there until I was about 13 is that near the coast it’s all the coast is Renison Springs because my dad was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base okay yeah so that’s why I moved there and it was such a bad school system I guess it was like ranked lowest in the country when we moved my mom was like you’re not we’re not having this there were other options that she could have done versus just keeping us at home I mean perfectly valid ones but at the time I didn’t know that she was I was like hey we’re never going to school again no I mean right described hippie mom in more detail um you know she we recycled before it was cool we were Greenpeace t-shirts we it was almost not even possible to recycle in Mississippi it was not we had to drive an hour away to take our bottle it just meant using your own bottles again yeah yeah but you’re being serious you had to drive over an hour in order to recycle yes yeah it was like I think it was even on the Alabama border or something I mean she it was hardcore guys and it’s fine I mean like I’m I’m kind of a hippie as well I don’t I mean we can recycle in a bin now it’s fantastic but this was this was hipster pericyclic you know it reminds me of a story we had a friend who is from Alabama who moved out here and there as a husband and wife they’re both from there and the wife’s mother came to visit them and they’ve been out in California for you know a couple months and they were recycling and she was like I am I’m concerned about y’all y’all are liberals be because you’re recycling yeah so we went black we understand the it can be difficult to find a place to take your recycling it’s true well you grew up in the south and you just don’t have the context that you should in life I think I mean I did not know the Jewish people had their own foods until I moved to LA and I was like what is this deli thing I thought bagels were only frozen and I honestly honestly honestly thought that oh yeah me too yes absolutely anything else but a frozen bagel no no I know I I am not lying when I tell you I didn’t even know what a bagel was until college yeah I mean seriously no there’s no diversity there’s no representation outside and I thought that it walks on a bagel where it had to do with like not being able to get it out of the freezer I still don’t know what you’re talking about LOX ello ex he’s still very much of a redneck a smoked fish saltier than a smoked say I kind of pretty good in the moment Joe sorry about that as a result when I moved to LA I went to every single deli in Southern California and had matzo-ball soup because I thought it was literally the best invention known to man it’s a soup and bread at the same time it’s Fenske all stick soggy bread question mark well yeah being homeschooled and in the South with the hippie mom who wanted to take you out of the school system and things like that and kind of had a different perspective on things even within home schooling I would assume in the South you were isolated because there were home there were there was a homeschool contingent but that was also a religious crazy religion those were like the girls who were hair shirts and we tried to socialize with them a couple times right there was just no connection there hair shirts you know like it was so religious that they had to wear dresses down to their ankles and they had to wear like button-up white shirts that kind of cuffed at their notes showing no skin basically the Christian equivalent of a Burke a lot of these kids down there right were raised as and that was there was no connection there anyway either right so you were taken out of the public school but then you wouldn’t you the little homeschool gatherings that you could have had we had a couple we were like no we’re not going back no so who’d you hang out with nobody brothers and sisters I had a younger brother I have have I have another sorry Ryan yeah still around around around yeah we actually ever showed together co-optitude he’s out huh every month and we recorded together but yeah me and my brother hung out together in general I just had a lot of lessons so I would I would not hang out with the kids at lessons but I would be around them at lessons and I also did theater and what kind of lessons we talking about violin dance karate we combine those three I could because then it would be like Lindsey Stirling plus one plus one Lindsey Stirling plus martial arts no she she could do you you could cut to her like just using a violin as a weapon like is it oh you can poke a mean eye out with a violin it’s poker you can get yeah I actually saw that happen almost happen it went at the Largo I was telling you about us the Sara Watkins thing and she was playing the violin and her brother leaned down and she got this close to and nobody noticed it except me ie there was no gasping I was like she almost put it out with a bow there’s nothing worse I got poked in the eye but by a girl when I was six that was with what with her finger her colon you felt it go all the way it went all the way and I had to wear a patch for six months I did that to my grandma did you do this your crew yeah I was about six years old and I poked my nanny in the eye and she had to wear a patch for like six months and I would go there every Sunday to eat fried chicken and I feel horrible there she is old eyepatch Nana I mean she regained her sight but how did they send them with you I was on the tires and it was just she was balancing herself and she had pointy fingers and I just I got an eye balls reach of her Jennifer I always remember Jennifer Jennifer and that finger yeah there was no there’s no more pain there’s no greater pain I’ve never given birth but I assume that there could be no greater pain than gain your eyes yeah like that I mean she scratched my cornea like really bad was there permanent damage if I could find her now on Facebook I’d I’d tell her something what would you tell her just saying I mean Jennifer just for the record you ruined my first grade the only grade I ever went to school thank you well you were the pirate I was a pirate and I did not like pirates did you or a fashionable eyepatch it is the black hole it was it was like it was it was it was kind of like a cream color with with a medal it was not even nobody even bothered decorating it for me because you could have done just like some sort of head scarf that just happened to go over one eye that’s what I’ll assure if I had to do an eyepatch that’s what I would do you really it would be a bandana that went over one eye or a hairstyle like Aaliyah she only had one eye she’s dead that’s why she died she died of black oven I didn’t she died in a plane crash or oh no she died in a car crash in Honduras because I was in Honduras music let’s just stick to that yeah there’s a perception joke in there somewhere but I’m not gonna make it because she’s dead right okay or she’s not who knows boy so how did you deal as a young Felicia with these things did you did you pour yourself into the violin I did I just decided to be as good as I could at all the things that I actually had came in contact with and I just really liked the violin it was good it was good to spend some hours doing that and at the same time I did I did dance I dance like three four hours a day I wanted to be a dancer actually that was belly yellow yeah ballet tap I took all of them and I did a lot of like musical theater so I specialized in me like the fifth orphan from the back or like the can-can girl in Oklahoma you know I never had major parts but I always liked the supporting player and just being around people in the theater is fun you know it’s make making you’re making something together even if you’re a small part you’re part of the whole and that was me this is theatre in Mississippi yeah so what’s the nearest town that you were relaxing okay so you were outside of me yeah and there actually were a lot of people who there were really into theater you they would they’re people who moved back from New York who just came home to do stuff so I think anywhere you go you can do see it and that’s what I always tell people if they want to be an actor I’m like stay home get a lot of experience under your belt where you are first cuz you don’t just be going on a boat you know get on a boat or a bus to LA and just saying hey tada discover me because I did that and it took a long time to figure it out but a lot of people just you know do that which is not the smartest so you were the background Theater but I would have thought that she would have kind of moved into you know that starring role type of thing that didn’t happen well I was so young I was like 14 you know what the oldest was 14 or 15 when I was doing these things so it was generally adults who had the starring parts I was like the sister in Brigadoon I was like one of the prostitutes and Sweet Charity like three times you know so it was your dad was in the Air Force and was your mom basically spending most of her time you know teaching you guys and that kind of thing does she have something she was also doing as because I mean our wives Helms Clark kids so oh yeah I know for a fact that that is a full-time job it is a full-time job my mom was pretty lenient and that we never did tests or anything you know I kind of just taught myself every I would I had a schedule that I adhered to that I made up myself that was pretty much it educated me so she was you know she always had well the one thing I will say is that she was we had resources available to us in every single subject we were always buying books and I’ve read thousands and thousands of books as a kid because I’m not doing anything else except sitting around the house right and this is before Netflix and that we just educate our kids with Netflix no I wish if I if your wife could educate me I would have a much different childhood yeah no but but I had a very regimented schedule and my grandpa really loved he was physicists a nuclear physicist so he was really impressed when I knew math proofs so I put a lot of effort into my violin and math Bruce only because it tended to impress people and I got rewarded for that and it just kind of and I enjoyed it nuclear physicist so and he’s your grandfather so is he like involved in the development of like the laser the laser yeah I was gonna say like the atomic bomb well then the national defense systems all that Star Wars stuff he was really high up and all that during the 80s and stuff like that so you know he like helped invent real lasers that are used this is faceted I know he was a great guy he passed away several years ago but he has like hundreds of patents in his name so so your proclivity to math was to gain his approval yeah kind of but also I enjoyed it I liked you know not on a problem in my head and and and it was something my mom couldn’t do so she encouraged me she was like you impressed grandpa because I could never do it was the you know with being so musical and then like enjoying math being into that which informed the other did you see music as from a mathematical standpoint well even for us with engineering degrees I think a lot of times when we’re creating things we see if from a mathematical standpoint there’s a problem to be solved well there needs to be a joke here it’s kind of like arriving at a solution yeah no actually I did a video on my personal channel last week about producing because I feel like people are really impressed when I’m an actor but actually I do a lot of my time is producing and making things behind the scenes and I’m in an analogy about a math degree coming in handy when you’re trying to produce something well because you have an end result like a proof they are trying to use the tools that you have to put together and make the M result happen correctly right and that is the same as filmmaking really I mean you have a goalie of a script or you know project and you have to look around you and say hey what tools do I have to put this together to realize this end you know and result and yeah I definitely think there’s no mathematics there’s a music to comedy especially I think you know I’m pretty you know in the guild specifically I was really precise about how people not rewrite my lines and stuff sometimes people that have the better alternatives but in general was very strict about say it the way I wrote it because there was a music in my own head that ending to sing in my ear if they’ve changed it it wasn’t as me appealing it was just a control freak it’s also called a control freak yeah well that’s gonna be a good quality so even in terms of like the rhythm of it like oh you didn’t say that when I wrote this line I heard it being delivered kind of in this rhythm sometimes to that extent sometimes people wouldn’t get the intent I mean yeah I mean obviously I know people aren’t in cages in their own individually out their own individual elodie comes to the forefront and when you’re reading dialog as an actor but sometimes they wouldn’t get the intention of it I mean only rarely have have I have I said like okay just say it like this but usually when you tell an actor okay the intention here is to do this then they get it and they know how to read the line or say it so but there is I think there’s a certain rhythm to make especially comedy work because it’s really all about timing hmm yeah so you see that music and math kind of influence different things the music maybe in your writing the math and your producing yeah yes and and also I did a thesis paper on this but music and math are generally because you’re double majoring in mathematics and music and there is a there’s a correlation between the area of the brain that deals with music especially classical music and mathematics theoretical mathematics right there is a lot of overlap there so you’re involved in performance you’re doing the theater thing and the music thing you then you go off to Texas double major in music and mathematics at that point when you when you made the decision to go to Texas what were you thinking well my dad moved there he was a sign there we moved like oh well when I was like 13 we moved like eight times oh and two owners basically so there’s a lot of moving around when he was going to finish off his medical research and stuff well and our light just came back I know we are our dimmed lighting failed so he had to go at alternate lighting but then the dim light he came back well now it’s even more on being here yeah so but you turned down an opportunity to go to Juilliard right yeah so I was disgusted I was accepted to pre-program for Julliard which is basically a feeder program to go into Juilliard so you know partially I was accepted to but it was very it’s on the weekend so basically go on the weekends for like a year or two before Julliard and then you know that’s a fast track to get into Julliard and we couldn’t afford to live in New York City and my dad couldn’t get stationed anywhere around so it would have been prohibitively expensive for us to have to house while we were I mean listen I grew up very poor really cuz the lessons basically took all the money so we never really had a new couch ever you know I only got my clothes from Goodwill like we were not poor I mean we were poor in that sense but we always my mom always had the best people tutoring us so it was kind of you know those choir and I think those priorities like definitely stick with me yeah you know so yeah I unfortunately couldn’t do that but I got a full scholarship to go to University of Texas because my professor taught there and he was like hey you wanna go to college and I was like sure I’m 15 let’s get out of here also you went at 15 I just turned 16 he got me the scholarship when I was 15 it was full ride I never here is it here’s a fun fact I didn’t know I have a high school diploma I never need them a high school diploma but I have two degrees two college degrees and I don’t know actually if that’s legal anymore like I don’t know if it’s legal you shouldn’t have shared that because they’re gonna invalidate so they can just take it away yeah and then you know what you’re gonna have degrees anymore and your whole life is gonna fall apart because you know what happens to be boo don’t have college degrees you can just hang out here if you want I mean I like it it’s a pretty cool room especially with the lights back on yeah albeit like we weren’t into Tariq we just had the light of we were just feeling each other like okay you go yeah like just our eyes are wide open can see anything sensory deprivation in here okay so then acting I mean you’ve got the music thing you got the math thing what were you thinking that you wanted to do and then how did his switch I always knew I wouldn’t be an actor okay and I was got on the bus and left that’s why I was telling you earlier don’t do what I did because I had no qualifications I got my degrees because my parents said I had to get degrees okay um I got the mastery because my dad was like you need to get a real degree if you’re gonna go to LA and I was like sure here’s a 4.0 dad boom out of here and I don’t know if that was the smartest thing to do but it’s what I did and I did volunteer for film festivals a lot so I I got a taste of the business of Hollywood what was what was college like as a 16 year old it was not anybody else’s college like so basically I took 18 hours a semester I mean I took I took I probably have like 250 hours and you only need like 110 to graduate so like I have to 250 hours of college under my belt because that makes sense if you didn’t even want to do it I did because though I liked it I sure the achiever I’m an achiever I love doing things I love studying I actually you know my my dream would be to go and I would I would love to go to UCLA and get like a poetry degree or like a history degree you know though that would be truly if I just won five million dollars tomorrow I’m I might I would still make it be making film but I would also be like hey I’m getting a graduate degree in romantic poetry would you like to talk about like specifically Romantic poets I would yes that one I would start with and then I go was like ancient Greek you know lifestyle like I like to see how people lived this is all over the place anywho oh my dear but I was nobody would invite me anywhere because I was illegal I couldn’t drive my mom drove me to college every day so you know it was not any con it was not a real experience as far as like anybody else’s experience which he lived at home yeah I lived out but Austin was significantly different than Biloxi miss no it was great like I said I have Olinger for film festivals I knew I wanted to get into the film business because I like theater but I wanted to be on film as an actor and my ex I did a little student film here and there but mostly my experience came from volunteering for film festivals and that was kind of like the height of the indie you know film world that was when Sundance was really about the work versus like parties and just being in that environment made me more excited to be there because it seemed like this rebellious you know I only saw the indie side of Hollywood so I’m like oh my god people are out of the box they’re creating things they’re making people think differently this is what I want to be part of so that was your passion that’s where you wanted to go yeah was it just because you’re wired as an achiever or was there also something that personally happened in your life that kind of drove you to prove yourself was any naysayers growing up family friends anything like that anyone besides Jennifer poking you in the eye to say I’ve got to this is all for Jennifer you said I can’t do it so I’m going to I think that yeah that comes into play more when I’m in Hollywood I grew up sort of in a vacuum I didn’t know how people acted I didn’t know how girls were supposed to be I didn’t know anything but the sort of books and what I saw in lessons which is all about being the best you can be at something specific so I think that’s what drew drove me the most is just achievement because I loved learning and I loved you know I got along better with my professors unlike my colleague you know my co students you know so you earned the right to go to LA and that’s what you did yeah absolutely and I’d you do that exactly drivers you had won by then no I were you I was I am in today at 220 I was at 2021 so after a full four years in it was four it was five years actually so it just turned 21 when I graduated or I was just about to turn 21 so I knew a lot of people from the film festival so I did know a lot of people so at least I had a little bit of an entree there into that world so and I admit some you know I’d done some acting in Austin so I had a couple connections to get you know an agent or an idea of an agent or at least the idea knowing what to do I I’ve met some actors who are like hey you should do this and get in this class in the blah blah blah so I didn’t go completely blind I did have somewhat of a little bit of a support system through the film festival circuit and some other actors but it was it was pretty like whoa this is here you are right and so what was the first thing that you did to make money well I had saved a lot of money because I was a professional musician during college so I was one of the youngest people ever to join the Austin Symphony I I did weddings every single weekend so I made hundreds and hundred dollars every silent for hire yeah basically which one a bit I could still be doing that I have friends in Austin who still do that there are freelance musicians and they make a great living and I could still be doing that and I did a little bit of that but basically the savings until I got a bunch of commercials you know I lived off my savings and I had saved you know I lived at home I had no expenses I had full scholarship so I saved every single penny and I was able to live for like a year and a half almost two years just on that what was that first commercial oh my god my first commercial was a starburst commercial and I got hired even though the director said in front of somebody she’s too white to hire that was literally because it was a summer commercial and he was saying why is she so pale albino get this albino out of here well did she say did he say white pale or albino um he said I’ll buy no on the set because he’s like take a light off that albino I will never forget that oh wow and then in the fitting she’s like so she’s so pale why do they make me hire her you know he literally said that to somebody next and I’m like I’m and that’s quite an introduction to Hollywood oh it was brutal like it was a wake-up call because I was always a teacher’s pet you know my whole life and then it’s just like I don’t understand why you don’t love me everybody does I’m you know but acting is not about your how hard you work it’s there’s a lot of other things that go into it which was the biggest probably learning curve that I had but um but you I mean you are in fairness you’re kind of pale I mean let’s just on that it’s I own it I am the palest person ever I always have pale offs you know like oh that’s a piss excuse me sir can you just oh yeah I I am waiting for someone to cast me as a ghost because every time I work on a set the I can see the DP take a light off me from the stand-in you know when you’re on a TV show they have a stand and sit for you and then when I come into the shot and sit down so they can look they always take a light off and I’m like if I’m glowing so good somebody hire me to be a dead person the DP brings the light meter up to unit like cracks yeah crap well I mean you can play a ghost I mean you’re producing this series oh it’s true well if we it’s already shot if we start funding for more episodes yes I will write myself in as something that glows legit so that was the first experience and then no but I didn’t tell you I got cut out of the commercial oh you weren’t even in it yeah they told me when it was gonna be on it was like 11:15 p.m. on MTV you know all my family I’m like I finally got a real job everybody and we sat there and watched it and I was not in it and I did not understand I even called the next day I was like so what happened they’re like this is what happens they cut you out of things so what did you do in the commercial that you weren’t in i sat in a beet a lawn chair and I went I’m rich that’s it understand in that voice I didn’t sort of gretagard I’m rich no I just said it was like some kind of sweepstakes where everybody got and I’m like what it what did one of the kids do with their money yeah and I was like I’m rich I was on the beach I mean legitimately I do not look like I should be on a beach well but that’s that’s where the tan starts never that’s where the burn happens I would just burn I would just explode like a devil did it get was that a low point or did it get lower before Buffy the Vampire Slayer whatever the big break was you know I’ve had many low points in in acting oh how many I you know I cut my hair off and I started working it was like an instant switch once I stuck cut my hair off people are like oh that flippy flippy hair bobbed girl I like her so I did start getting a lot of commercials and I those things can pay crazy money especially back then you know ten years ago it was like you could make a year in a day you’re just worth a pay any day which I did what was the big one that I saw you in I was actually I was actually a post office represent I was a girl named Angie and I did one and I was kind of this frantic secretary girl and they liked me so much they wrote me like a campaign it wasn’t a huge campaign but we did for commercials and people would recognize me because they ran all the time on TV and that was like I got all my bills paid thank you yeah Thank You Hollywood and it was fun it was a cute little spot so I tended to work a lot in commercials and then I randomly went an audition for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and as the guest star for the episode and they liked me a lot and they had me go out and read some sides that they had just written which is always my best when I don’t over prepare and they called me the next day and hired me for an Asian girl part so interesting the car the part that I actually got hired for was supposed to be an Asian girl I’m sorry whatever Asian girls have a job away from is that what it like said in the script it did say in the script live I was an Asian girl and then it was changed to albino albino yeah okay so what you know you you’ve got this you have a brand obviously now you know ten years later after breaking in and doing these commercials and you you are the Felicia Day that that you are now you know with the the geek cred and all that comes with it when you were starting this acting career in going out and auditioning for Buffy the Vampire Slayer did you have something in mind like I’m going to be this kind of actress or was it just like I just want a job as an actress did you have a vision I didn’t know I don’t think I had a vision I I found out that I enjoyed comedy after I started taking improv classes here which I did it didn’t occur to me I wanted to be like an indie film actor when I first moved here cuz that’s the world I knew and then when I and I realized I had to be really weepy and probably was just like the victim of the week I played a couple of those like hey I was assaulted and hey my friend died and I’m just in a our show and just get one scene I was like this is not great I don’t like this and then I started doing comedy and I loved it so much better I mean and I didn’t even occur to me that I was good at it so I took classes and through doing that I started getting comedy work which you know at the time I would test for a lot of pilots that became big later and I was always like second choice you know like what um God there were a couple of WB shows that um I mean I sit for like this show called him Samantha who a bunch of comedies that didn’t go but were pretty high-profile so I would test for pilots three or four you know times a year during that kind of four years that I was really just being an actor and getting a lot of momentum behind that so so but but it’s so in my mind I wanted to be a half-hour you know comedy actress because I really enjoyed improv so those are the classes that you’re talking about you started taking improv classes and then I took a sketch writing classes later to kind of fill my time so it was fun you know you know I didn’t I don’t think I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do I just wanted to be in the industry I think a lot of people move here with that so that’s why when I say stay and figure out who you are it’ll be so much easier because if you let everybody else define you that was kind of my problem I started being defined as like this flippy haired secretary and it wasn’t what I felt who I was inside and I was adopting this attitude that I was like I could work like this for 20 years and I’d hate myself at the end of it and so I was you know I that was one of the reasons why I kind of started along the path that I did to kind of rebel against being pigeon-holed because I didn’t define myself before I got here I let other people define what they wanted to hire me as mm-hmm and where when did the guild enter the picture how did that come about um so I always play video games on my life that’s one thing that my brother and I did the past time and this is when you move into the thing that a lot of people ask right I imagine people want to know that guild origin story yeah yeah and you know it’s been told before but you know you can always tell it it’s a lot of people haven’t heard it and I think it’s a good story for anyone oh I want to hear it yeah I don’t I don’t I want you to believe hear it in pig latin okay pig latin I want to hear the dark underbelly of it you mean the dark underbelly was that I became addicted to World of Warcraft for two years and I and I start stopped going to auditions and I stopped well going to classes and I would literally play not kidding like morning tonight I would sit there and just play 12 hours a day eight hours a day every single day was programmed because I was supposed to be on line with people you know I took over my life because what I was doing as an actor you know I would get enough work to pay all my bills great but I wasn’t busy I wasn’t challenged and I was being defined in a way that I didn’t like and I didn’t know how to take control back so I basically just put it into becoming the best warlock that I could be and that was you know that was the hard part and after a while I was I had you know friends and they were like you need to stop there was an intervention there was a little bit of an intervention yeah take place within world of work because that would be one way to do it no I think the guild fell apart and that kind of helped the grading guild that I was in fell apart and then I was like I’m so shattered I have no friends left I was like wait a second you know so that’s when I decided to write something because everybody had been saying write something and take control of your life and I’d never I didn’t have a clue as to what to write before but once that’s I sort of step back from that experience I was like well I know something that people don’t know about gamers and I don’t think that people have a accurate view of gamers and I’d like to show them and I can write a part that’s perfect for me that’s a little bit autobiographical but not completely and I could put it in a half hour and Hollywood will just come running so good plan you know right I’m so smart right now so that’s what I did I wrote it in 2006 and was it easy to write I don’t hate you it wasn’t are you I mean you guys are writers you know how hard the bright I mean you have each other which is nice so you can’t allow each other to get stuck in the mire of creative torment which I love being in I just love it it’s great I’d say we’re very intrigued about this specifically because we want to write long-form narrative content but we haven’t done that yeah it’s hard it’s it’s difficult and you know it’s it requires a quietness in your life creatively in order to sort of gather it all up and to reinterpret it as a role had you even written anything was this like the first thing you just sat down to write I had written sketches so I’ve been doing sketch comedy at Acme theatre but other than that no I’d never written III just attempted a couple of indie films which are terrible but um I don’t even know if I had finished but one of them and it was very bad so I put that away for a while and no so the guild was the only half-hour I wrote it as a half-hour TV show okay and I was literally the first time I’d ever written anything but you know so you just wrote a pilot I wrote a pilot yeah but I had spent eight months just working on who the characters were kind of trying to distill you know cuz I had been online for you know since I was a little kid because my grandfather was very technologically advanced so we were always online even before there was any internet at all he was work logging on to the pre-internet ERP and you know all that stuff to operate a laser in space exactly the other scientists used I mean that’s where the internet came from so my parents knew about that and they always had like online stuff and so I always knew that you can connect with other people on the internet and I was always on whatever service it was you can connect online even through college cuz you can you could login through you you know use Usenet and talk to people this is like really olden times guys I’m looking for a mom the Internet you have to dial up and it went so then you took the pilot on a traditional tour of yes the TV lab right I did I showed it to anybody fancy I knew and they were like you are obviously a great writer you need to be on staff somewhere you’re you’re you know character really well I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about so they this was so early people didn’t have Twitter like this there was myspace but it was more like you know for for those MySpace people you know it was not a mainstream situation and gaming was even farther afield yeah well that’s it you know that’s one of the just the things that I’ve been thinking as you talk about it in the time that this happened is that did you have a sense of how forward-thinking this this idea was I mean now we you know today 2014 we look we’re in this time where everybody wants to do something that’s got some tie-in to gaming or comic books or whatever and you were doing something that no one was doing no it was very early it was early early internet it was early gaming but it didn’t sound calculated it sound like you were just expressing what you knew and had an an unhealthy relationship with yeah no I wanted to show I wanted to represent and I think at the core of it I wanted to show people that gamers were not just you know overweight dudes in their mom’s basement being assholes like it was super important to me and I wanted to show people what I knew about gaming and feature the kind of people who I knew gamed who are older men and a mom and you know young you know hostile college girls you know there was there’s such a breadth to gaming that was reflected in our world and especially I didn’t feel like anybody even recognize the fact that women game or looking game together but nobody spoke your language so then what well they were like I don’t understand this I don’t understand how people talk to each other over gaming I mean even today people are don’t get it so I was discouraged and then a friend of mine who taught me my sketch class Kim evey who you guys did very well she read the script and was like hey my husband and I have been doing sketches for you this thing called YouTube and YouTube started in 2006 as we all know and this was literally January 2007 she’s like we’ve been doing sketches and I had one go viral her gorgeous tiny chicken machine show and I think you should make this for the web and I was like great help me mm-hmm so we just decided to shoot the first 10 pages and that became three episodes and we did it on her own dime and we did it for no money almost and in our garage because we were like so excited to take control of our careers and just have fun I mean there was no ulterior motive other than enthusiasm what was the initial reaction I’m trying to figure out exactly when people stopped thinking this way on YouTube what was there an initial reaction that they were hoped it was real and not scripted did you get to bypass that because it was obvious I think it was pretty obvious I think it was I don’t remember people being confused about it being real or not but the fact that codex I chose to write the write the show with codex talking to the camera I think created that connection I think without that it wouldn’t have been as big a hit and it was only in construction I just thought hey this looks amusing this this is something I would watch yeah and I like this connection with the audience that I think lonely girl had just popped right around there and I was like hey I like this talking to the camera saying and I I’m an internal person anyway and I want to talk about an introverted person and it’s hard to write because they’re not proactive and the audience doesn’t like them but this is a window into the mind of a character that you can start every episode with so I don’t think anybody thought it was not uh they mostly people are like I have a work in my guild and I have a Claire of my girl then and through my hard work basically sitting on the computer 18 hours a day just posting it everyone the internet like that’s how the show gained momentum and how did you how did you know it was working beyond just you knew it was good one person liked it I mean it was really it like when I first saw those comments go up I think we all wanted to become a TV show we’re like hey we’re gonna see this and it’s gonna be great and they’re gonna be a TV show but once that happened I was like screw TV people like my stuff I’ve knew this in my garage and they like it and I don’t care if it’s ten people this is the best thing you’ve ever watched and I will sit here another ten hours and I will email another hundred and fifty people personally to please watch my show and that is literally how the guild happened it was not an overnight success we didn’t have a million views overnight basically we we released one of months for the whole first season and that was ten months so nobody would do that with a show now I don’t know if you could do it now because there’s just too many things distracting people but at the time it allowed the show to spread word of mouth and grow and my you know the hard work that I did basically sitting there emailing bloggers personally but in every forum personally thanking every single person who featured the show personally on every single website like that went a long way and you know we funded the whole first season with a PayPal button this was before Kickstarter was invented we had put a PayPal button up there after the first three because I don’t have the money to have fund anymore and either at Kym and surprisingly people donated and we got enough to finish a whole season so it was crowdfunding like the earliest kind yeah and it was so gratifying and to me that connection with the audience and the material the fact that I was sharing something that I felt needed to be recognized and people were responding to it hey I haven’t seen a girl gamer but I know a bunch like that was important to me have you been surprised that you know thinking about how early the series was and how successful it was YouTube hasn’t really become a place where there are a lot of great web series narrative series to watch you know there are still there are some but that’s not really what defines YouTube even now it’s it’s still a lot a lot of vloggers you’re just flogging not as part of a series but just vlogging yeah and a lot of one-off videos and that kind of thing mm-hmm are you surprised that it hasn’t really caught on I what’s the problem I you know I think that people underestimate how hard it is to make long-form narrative work and how much you have to spend time crafting it I mean I don’t mean to be a jerk about it but just cuz you write a first draft if something does not mean you need to shoot that and expect it to be huge you have to have so much care and especially who are you calling out here no I’m just calling out in general people people they’re like why did my Webster you get more views and I’m like I can tell you 15,000 reasons yeah and most of it is because the characters aren’t real and the situation is not fresh you know the great thing about the web is that you can break narrative you can do things differently and I think that we have yet to see how people creators do that because it started from such a user-generated sort of point of view was people just picking up a camera and going and that’s awesome I love that but it requires a million skills all put together to make narrative work in a way that is suspends disbelief you know when people come to win on the guild set they were like whoa I had no idea to take took this many people to make it and it’s not like I bloat the set up it’s just like at a certain point everybody needs to specialize a little bit in order to make something really really great like spooked you know it took five months just to do post-production on those episodes and not I’m not saying you can’t make something without that but if you want to compete quote-unquote with TV and make TV like things on it requires a lot more budget and expertise at least expertise in a lot of different areas and crew and that’s a lot to wrangle so it gets you know you have to just scale your vision I think you know in the next five years a lot of people will have grown up seeing the web as a legitimate place to make art in a way right versus like disposable mm-hmm well yes so with the with the new series spooked which just launched yesterday when we were recording this was the plan so you’ve is half hour or you know essentially sitcom length right so was the planet always to put this on on YouTube like was that the plan from Fermi yeah it’s part of it was part of the funded channel initiative basically so we needed to put it on YouTube because they helped pay for it right um but we actually released it also on Hulu and you know I you know YouTube is a really I’m not a native YouTube personality you know and I admire people who do it like you guys blow me away because to me you are the epitome of sort of melding creativity and artistry with personality and I don’t I drool II you are the epitome of it to me so kudos oh we’re gonna I’m gonna put that on a t-shirt you should it’s a really long sentence I’m just gonna look the audience yeah but you don’t know say like you you create things that should be created that need to exist and and obviously your individuality is in it and it’s thoughtful and that’s what I love that and that’s why to me it lasts and it’s sticky and somebody will watch that a year from now and it’ll still be relevant to their instrument cuz there’s a spark of artistry there and you know doing their and like doing trying to do TV like stuff on YouTube it’s kind of an uphill battle I’ll admit it it’s harder it’s not what the audience is used to mourning or consuming and it’s it’s challenging but to me you know that’s what I I make what I love and I love I love long-form narrative I love getting characters together and just seeing them interact and I love and to me if you there there’s sort of a snobbery in Hollywood to the whole digital space and now everybody’s moving in but only to use it and I you know it’s just like how could I exploit that network can I use to get people to advertise for me just saying it is another place for content it’s a totally different it’s a different medium exactly and I and I think if I have to be the person to put something out there that may not be you know you know the hugest success but I’m still pushing the envelope toward that because I truly believe the whole cable box is going to go away and you’re gonna get content of all forms everywhere you go so I would like to still be doing the things that I feel like I do best which is something like the guilders note and I and I you know being on YouTube for the last two years I never underestimated what it took to become big on YouTube but you know being in it I admire everybody so much more any and I think that you know when traditional Harley hood comes in and thinks there’s some kind of magic wand to make the magic that the top youtubers have I think they’re completely clearly fall flat on their face a lot yeah so well it’s interesting that because of the success of the guild and everything else that you’re doing you become a voice for these things that you’re speaking about now long-form content narrative in this space particularly but there’s also the fact that you’re becoming a spokes person in the geek community for women it’s that’s a thing that’s happening yeah I mean I it was inadvertent its inadvertent but something that I I feel I hope it doesn’t make my sellotape take myself too seriously but it means a lot to me when like a 18 year old comes up to me and it’s like hey I’m going in a computer program because of you and the guild and you you make it okay for me to say that I love gaming and and I’m a girl and I’m a girl yeah so it is a byproduct that I’m very proud of and I try not to let all the pressure of expectation get to me well how do you do it the fact that you know geek culture has a strong reputation for objectifying women you know when we see our female superheroes they have to have all the right assets and all the right places and we’ve got you know got a word play in it you know it’s a it’s a reputation that I think there’s plenty of evidence for it’s it’s not undeserved reputation a lot of times being a female what’s it like being a female in in in that world where there’s that kind of objectification that happens and then does that impact when you’re creating something are you thinking about okay I am a female in this environment and I’m going to go against the grain or you know how does that honey how does that play into it well first of all I don’t think that geek culture is necessarily more misogynistic than any culture I mean hip-hop culture I mean true Hollywood culture like look at like media culture who is on the front of I mean I’m sorry Kim Kardashian is probably a lovely girl but what she represents to a little girl growing up you know I I need to be like that to be successful those are not the tools that you want to encourage somebody to gather for their life because that is a very short window and it’s all reflective of what men want from a woman you know that all those it’s fine I I you know it’s fine if you’re doing it for the right reasons I like to look attractive I love to have you know have this image of myself but if you’re only doing it to have the interest of men you’re kind of that’s kind of your owned by men in a sense right so I don’t think necessarily culture is the geek culture is more biased toward women I believe that geek culture originated in a much more male centric world you know it was more men who are the outliers in the way who were on in all these subjects earlier on and you know that’s reflected in sort of their the way they see the world and now that women have become a lot more vocal about being part of the culture you know you get people who are butting up against two different perspectives on a culture and that I think the great thing about geek culture is that women do feel empowered enough to say like no this is my geek culture and I’m not going to back down about it and I think that’s more empowered in a sense than other mainstream sub pockets of genre like mainstream media or whatever like it’s harder it’s harder for women to stand up and those other cultures that comprise everything outside I mean like look at a look at a toy aisle you know the segregation is everywhere yeah it’s everywhere if you start looking discriminately at every single poster you see and say I’m gonna put a guy in an outfit like that and and what do I think of that if you start looking at the world like that it transforms the way you think you know you you realize there are subliminal things that we accept as culture around us that do to make women the way steer women in one direction and away from another that’s just what it is I mean so what I what I appreciate about geek culture is the advocacy of when you know women being able to step out more and also the impact that is having cuz it does I love to see that there’s measure will impact because there’s a lot of vocal men and women about this that they want it to be more inclusive they want it to be more presented representative and we’re dealing in worlds of fantasy there’s no reason not to be able to reinvent the way that we live and you know most of the strong female characters yeah there’s someone that some people wearing tighty whities when they were flying around and like a you know there’s there chainmail bikinis and stuff but they’re all are a lot of precedents where you see women and captains on starships and things like that and you see that moreso in science fiction and fantasy than you do in like law and order and all that stuff you know and use you speak into these things publicly I want to talk about a recent tweet that you did but personally do you still experience or heavy experience being objectified and what how how do you deal with that personally maybe not publicly well everyday if you’re on the internet you’re objectified I mean if I suite about spooked then you know several hundred people will click on it and as a producer but if I post a picture of me in a pretty dress it’s like ten thousand people and that’s men and women who are reinforcing that so that’s just what the society is and it’s interesting because then you have the choice well do I post the picture of me and the pretty dresser or however you put it yeah well of course I do because I like being I mean I like being in the pretty horse like I’m not like I’m manipulating like hey I should post a bikini shot today but I’m like I just noticed the discrepancy with about what people respond to I mean that’s just that’s just way that the internet works right that’s why everybody loves healthy selfies but you know as somebody who puts themselves out there I mean I make a video a week on my my personal channel and I’m on geek and sundry every week and you know when I cut all my hair off for reasons you you know it was it was quite hurtful when I had people commenting oh well I’ll come back when you grow your hair out I mean that happens every day about my you know and I said and I’d notice when we have girl hosts on our shows exponential number of the comments are more about their looks or than being bitchy versus like a guy on the show and it really just that’s just what it is and I try to push back a lot on that but that’s reality and you know and then there’s always like Twitter people just harassing me right do you do you engage you said you push back are these like Twitter Wars or no no I block I’m such a blocker it’s like popping pimples it’s like walk walk it’s a fantastic I’m like I don’t need you you have the freedom of speech to be the worst person ever I don’t need you in my world and thank you for blocking and I’ve tended to be more aggressive about blocking people on our YouTube channels because I’m like I don’t need your hateful speech here this is this is a place where I want people to feel safe and feel like they’re part of a community not that you’re gonna do you know anti-feminist or homophobic slurs there it’s not just leave yeah yeah I got new glasses and we made a video where I was like listen I got new glasses I know you’re gonna be talking about it let’s just devote ten minutes of a good mythical morning to discuss my fashion choice because I knew it was gonna it would the comments were just gonna be about every opinion about it yeah I haven’t like it had to prepare myself okay you’re not gonna read the comments but that’s what you always read them don’t you of course I read what I can but that’s almost a ridiculous example compared to what it is that you’re describing that women in this medium go through a it’s like me changing glasses every single episode of my show and every one about it everyone caring about it instead of everything that I cared about like what I’m saying well I mean but appearance yeah parents being so more weighted – whoa how a woman is perceived and it’s like you’re what you’re it’s fine I mean that’s just what we we judge people on appearance and that’s just who we are as humans but when you’re saying as a female you’re irrelevant your ear what you’re saying is irrelevant your your appearance is the only reason I’m here then that negates everything that I want to say I mean that’s that’s that makes me feel very devalued right your tweet was it was a hashtag yes all women yeah when a whole like tool box of trolls well let me read it when a woman makes a video most comments are about tearing apart her looks or if they’d quote do her with a man almost none hashtag yes all women what were what was what was the response there were a lot of retweets I was a very popular tweet tweet 5,000 favorites yeah that was good I got a lot of I mean there were a lot of people just basically trolling for that hashtag to attack people using it yeah and I got some very hateful speech not as hateful as when I’ve done things in the gaming world like the VGA Awards or I see what else there was I had it like someone there were a couple of incidents in the past where somebody said something really rude to me and people called them out on it and saying that I contributed to gaming and then people just got very that was I wouldn’t actually hurt more when you’re saying that I’m just a booth babe I think somebody mentioned I was a booth babe and the guy later apologized yeah but he later apologized which was cool but then all these horrible people just piled on and started attacking me and devaluing my work and like I could take anything said about my appearance I probably sought it more than you have about my appearance but when you attack my work or my motivation for my work then you’re then I’m really sensitive about it because I try to embody what I believe and everything I do you know I’ve been had so many offers to do TV shows or you know go off and do much you know bigger Hollywood quote-unquote sayings and I’ve turned them all down because I believe in the space so much and then when you you know when I’m encountering things like that where people just forget or they devalue everything I’ve done it’s like well am i stupid you know but you know you just block it and move on and you see a really complimentary tweet and it’s like oh the wound is healed you had to make a whole blog post to back up your tweet yeah you said I’m a person who always had has had a ton of guy friends and the fact that there are many social situations where I’m worth talking to as a person because I’m not sexually available makes me so sad for myself and for the friendships that could be but will never happen because to them I’m only there for a possible hookup how would you read it out loud it sounds harsh the fact that you said I I wasn’t going to be on social media today then I tweeted this and now I’m writing this whole blog post about the whole thing you know and you have guy friends is that I don’t know I mean that’s I have a lot of guy friends actually but I’ve been blown off from in more so social situations because I let the boyfriend wear the B word out and that again is reflective of like well so I’m not interested I mean I’m I shouldn’t be part of your world and because I’m a woman I can’t we can’t talk about the things that we look mutually love together because I’m somehow deceiving you if I’m not sexually available like that was the sort of the zeitgeist that I’ve got my feelings hurt a lot when you when you dive in in this way you know it’s like you said it’s it’s one thing obviously these things are invited in your work and the way that you portray female characters and and just the worlds that you create but then when you when you kind of stick your hand into the hornet’s nest in this way on Twitter and then you’ve got the blog post you’re obviously not just limiting it to your work you’re engaging in social media which we all know how crazy things can get do you regret that cars it’s like no this is part of how I am regret anything I do I mean I’m not an impulsive person I don’t tend to vlog about things like this you never regret anything you do well no that’s but I I I tend to I tend to when I feel emotionally strong about something I tend to follow that and I feel like if I feel emotionally invested in something I feel like that will resonate with someone I’m like I feel this strongly about this I know someone else will agree with me and I would rather you know I would rather talk about something substantial that will create a dialogue about something in a way that doesn’t condemn people but just kind of is a talking point that’s important to me because as an artist if you get back to who you are like you here to create your here to reflect your being and and every one of us is unique and unless you’re really always digging and trying to redefine yourself and express that individuality then you’re not gonna make great art and that’s kind of been a mission for me in the last like six to eight months just to really [Music] reinterment say five years ago and that’s good because that means I’m growing as a person do you think you tried to kind of recreate that atmosphere that led to the creation of the guild you know you talked about how you were you had money from the jobs that you were doing but you were kind of in this world where you didn’t have you weren’t running the business that you’re running today were you trying to kind of create almost a sabbatical type approach to your life so that you could have that time yeah those last like six to eight months I have you know I did when Wendy Cassandra first launched I did a weekly show called the flog and I love that show so much but it was a weekly show and I had almost no help I didn’t know how to use a towel probably didn’t use a teleprompter like this was me just like being enthusiastic about the show and I loved it so much and I had like one person who came in and shot it and then other than that was me and somebody who moved in from Andy Anna to do it I didn’t have any help and I didn’t know better I just didn’t know this world and I made some bad choices personally that sort of burnt me out and I think in doing a weekly show I was pouring so much of my creativity into there I had no well to go back to so when I created guild season six the theme of that was you know surviving criticism and being an artist with all the criticism happening that was actually the theme of it because it’s the only thing I knew at that point after geek and sundry had just launched and after that I was like I have nothing right now I don’t know what to say I don’t know what I want to say as a creator and I worry when I do little things that I’m frittering away the creativity needs to be hoarded up and in order to make something bigger like the guild I mean the guild came out of years of work I spent six months just on the characters I did so many drafts of that script and after probably a year and a half process I finally put a camera up but it was so much work and it was never good enough for me and I always was digging like who is this person who is this person so I get to the point where it’s a shorthand I’ll know exactly how they’ll say a line or if I put two people in the same exact situation these characters are so distinct that they’ll talk completely differently I mean that’s when you create you know something that can last 10 seasons or something but it’s not something in my skill set that I can do overnight I’m sure there are people in Hollywood can do it you know very fast lately that’s not my process and you have to create space exactly yes and I’m still creating space so what are you most excited about professionally that’s coming up if you can kind of paint a picture of what’s next you know as far as peak and sundry goes we have some interesting things on the horizon I wish I could say a bunch of things but I’m in process on quite a few things you want to like just mouth it and then I will say it yeah but yeah we have gabba gabba that’s already that names been taken we’re gonna have a bunch of really cool announcements at Comic Con so if you’re a fan of geek and sundry come to comic-con and I’m personally like working on three writing projects and I basically gave myself a year to write them so there’s no pressure and if the end I don’t like it I’m not gonna show it to anyone and that is like it gives me comfort in a way because I know that I’m creating something for the right reasons first it’s like I gotta get something out there people are gonna forget about you well you know what you always have that sense that trains gonna leave without you yeah but it’s fine because another train will come along I mean really honestly LA especially as bad about that nobody’s ever where they want to be in this town and that sort of frantic sort of I’m looking behind you to see if there’s something better happening it’s so inauthentic and false and kind of a horrible way to be or at least fidgety am i doing enough is it especially in this medium – not in this town is there something else is it should I be doing something else on my time now there’s gonna be more strategic that’s gonna be the things gonna make all the difference exactly all the time I guess I’m that person I’m sorry I am that person too and I literally have to tamp it down because I understand having been here for so long you guys have been you know we started pretty much at the same time there’ll be another train yes there’s always another train and it’ll be the right train because literally a single thing I’ve turned down in the last year a better thing has come along yeah or you can just get on one of those things that’s on the railroad tracks that you pump up and down yourself yes exactly the analogy further love it make your own train and you certainly already done that yeah okay now this is an odd thing to bring up but it’s it’s something that’s in my mind it’s a funny conversation we had when we were hosting that thing award where everyone was so drunk I never thought they were did the crowd talked the entire yeah the three of us were reading off we were on stage reading off teleprompters and in it it was it we did great I wouldn’t say I’ll never host anything again but certainly I need to be creating I’m I’m I’m putting a pause I’m putting a pin in yeah right it was an opportunity with you guys again I would be tempted but but I remember a conversation that we had backstage but it’s kind of like being in a war zone this type of thing and when you want out next what’s going out next to like in front of the firing squad but I remember one of the conversations we had somehow we got onto your first kiss with another woman was so was on stage not on stage it was in front of cameras you know so I wanted to acknowledge wow that was it how do we get there and I wanted to go back there how do we get dream that out yeah as long as we go back to it I don’t care how we did I just can you read tell me that story no I mean no because I put a few lessons and I think that’s awesome like that’s great and somehow sometimes I think that it’s Holly was way of getting a really smart girl in there who doesn’t have to be perfect looking and they have to just be like well she’s just not sexually sexually attracted to the guy but I though I’ve been very lucky in that the characters I’ve played who are lesbians I’m not been that they’ve been really well rounded awesome characters and I play Charlie on supernatural and the first time I ever the first time I ever kissed another girl was the actress on supernatural and she was like and did you know it was it was in the script actor she was like oh man I don’t know if I want to do this um because we don’t have to kiss when the cameras on us I’m like yeah no I know that I don’t this is no I’m not getting all up in there like this is not like playtime for me I’m trying to be appropriate and then she comes and she’s like the camera rolls and she’s like all up in my grill so that’s was that’s of story you’re talking about she seems like all tongue it was it was aggressive more aggressive than I would have thought and but she’s like an actor she committed so maybe I should have committed more and I guess my follow-up question was and still as still is was there a sense in that conversation ahead of time I was like should we should we practice is there something – no there’s no practice have you ever never done a love scene no oh and so – no actually no link did a kissing scene in one of our videos but it was with his wife she insisted upon being she has never been in a video and then I come home and they’re like listen the script calls for me to make out with a woman and she was like tell me when to be there and and she said you can only shoot the back of my head when I was like well that’s yeah it’s fine just you have to lean in and be the aggressor and so just look at the amount of strategy went into my conversation with my own wife to make out on camera and if I had to make out with a guy on camera it seems like there’d be a lot of logistics to work out ahead of I mean really it was only like let’s not kiss off-camera I went a camera thought I was I’m like yeah of course so that was it that was the only negotiation happening but she assumed that you would like to practice I don’t know what she was assumed I think she was just a little bit nervous and I was like yeah I would be might imagine yeah I mean a nervous to kiss a girl on camera and then if I had to kiss a guy on camera be not gay yeah and that would be even more like okay now there it was fine it just it was lips they were a little bit too soft that’s all my opinion of it was not in a bad way I was just like this is softer than normal right there normally callused and Ernie’s the only bristle bristles so it was weird for her but it was nothing for you it was just it was not not weird I mean it was a novel I wish I’d done it in college there you go okay and so an you written a novel or made out with a girl in college and you can’t you played a couple other lesbians and then in the first episode of spooks features a lesbian couple and you know we got some great comments that were I blocked everybody what was the strategy there because obviously it’s like I mean there’s one strategy which is like hey let’s start let’s go episode 1 with a lesbian couple because everybody will be ended there yeah it was me you know listen I mean doing scripted on YouTube is as you know challenging I always think not like let’s start lesbians in there but let’s do something that mainstream TV would not do that’s always in my mind if this feels too much like TV then I know 100% that it’s not going to catch people’s attention right and our script literally we were trying to find a guy to play Alison Haislip spart we I was and I was so upset I was like there’s something wrong about this there’s something wrong about this it’s not special enough it’s not special enough and the director and I were like well why can’t it be a woman and then once we said that I was like oh wow the whole character arc where the dad not liking them getting married means mean something there was substance so we made that artistic decision because there’s substance there for the for the character the for the story arc of the story versus like let’s just do a stunt that was never my intention it will never be my intention and the fact that we can represent a lesbian couple being just people in an in a show that should happen everywhere it’s the same thing with a guild like we should have Asians and people of color not calling attention to look I’m the I’m the person of color like that’s how or on the smart girl like it just should be and that’s what I feel is kind of false about TV when I see it I see that it’s sort of they’re pulling from the same cast of characters over and over and the same kind of actors in the same scenarios and I’m like we’re all seen it we’ve all seen it being done probably better than this like let’s just go out of the box and portrayal people that we don’t aren’t used to seeing and that’s why I particularly love that casting choice which literally came like two days before we were shooting because we couldn’t find a guy DJ and it all works out yeah well listen we appreciate the time that we’ve had together to pick your brain well I don’t know I was a little rambling but I appreciate your having me on this table has some of the people I admire the most on it like Tobuscus and jennamarbles and grace over there and now you need to sign it I am totally honored and there you have it our ear biscuit with Felicia being so she was off the radar and is now just kind of coming back into the interfere of the web she did a sabbatical like a professor you know would this is the guy thing that I’ve been termed that they use professors sabbatical and they when they take an extended leave but you know I hear you know she talks about this finding this creative time you know I’m interested in that but I’m also just interested in you know hobbies like woodworking furniture building foam sculpture if you’re interested in hairstyling you could get a hair styling kit think of all the things that we could do on a sabbatical and we want to do it together yeah I do think that we should when I shoot me 2k hey we’re not gonna do a sabbatical I can’t even spell sabbatical I don’t think you can take one unless you can spell it fall you can look at but I will google it and then that may be that I’ll get me interested sometimes you can spell a word you’re so bad at spelling words that you cannot google it you ever happen like so you can’t even get spellcheck to recognize it like you’re like I can’t even get close enough that was me you trying to spell silhouette I try to suppose silhouette I’m like I can’t get close enough to have it tell me that I’m wrong that’s how bad I am but if we take a sabbatical I do think it needs to be for creative purposes it there needs to be some applying or so I’m gonna create a lot of stuff foam sculpture and furniture no I think they arose I think that we would write a lot more music chest of drawers or Chester drawers as you refer to them as yeah like it’s like it’s an uncle I got an uncle named Chester drawers write a lot of music I’m down with that but but separately I mean can’t be on a sabbatical together that’s weird you’re gonna be on my sabbatical yeah maybe we should take a sabbatical with semi regular check-ins like maybe two cabins in the woods separated by about a mile so you had a walk but there’s a line of sight so we can communicate about like our can phone with a string between the two cans yeah that would probably impede the creative process but yeah we could do it separate I don’t care whatever I’ll go to my own cabin I don’t even need I don’t need a line of sight I mean it’s not we’re not that codependent are we I don’t think so but as long as I can string we’ll reach let Felicia know what you thought of her your biscuit her twitter handle is Felicia Day it has two eyes in it and it has two A’s in it has one e in it that’s how you spell it also remember you can support the show by going over to iTunes leaving a review or a rating can also leave a comment on soundcloud some of the plays you can listen to the podcast let us know what you think about the podcast hash tag hash Mahesh hatchback oh man I need a sabbatical or else I’m gonna keep saying things like hash tag back your best kids hash bags a totally different thing I’m not going no handbags almost better hash tag your biscuits sorry [Music] [Music]