Letting Them Talk with Will Harris

This time, I’m letting Grey DeLisle talk.

Grey is a voice actress who’s also a singer. The first time I talked to her, her career was sitting squarely in the former category, but over the years she;s expanded her music career considerably, to the point that it was her new album, Don’t Turn Around, that spurred our conversation this time.

To give you an idea of how long it’s been since that initial conversation between Grey and I, it was before I’d started at the AV Club, and it had never occurred to me that I might someday write for the AV Club, so I decided to put my own spin on my favorite AVC feature – you guessed it: Random Roles – and do a recurring feature at Popdose.com called “You’re the Voice,” where I interviewed voice actors about their various credits…including, on occasion, a few live-action gigs. Grey and I got along swimmingly, so I was thrilled when almost a decade later I was invited to moderate a panel for The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy at the Richmond GalaxyCon in 2020.

Now, at last, we’re back together again, and it’s a delightful conversation. And, yes, I know I often use the word “delightful” to describe my conversations for the podcast, but you listen to this episode and tell me afterwards that it isn’t accurate…because if you make such a claim, I will sincerely doubt that you actually listened. And I only say this for one reason: I’m not even sure it’s possible to have a conversation with Grey DeLisle that isn’t delightful.

We spend a great deal of time talking about her music career, of course, since that’s what brought us together, but we do also chat about her work as a voice actress, including our mutual love of Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated, which – as I say during the interview and I will say again right here – is the best Scooby-Doo series since Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

On the topic of voice acting, however, I have to say that I wish I wasn’t posting this on the heels of learning that one of Grey’s peers, Eric Bauza, who voiced a number of the Warner Brothers character in the recent – and awesome – Coyote vs. Acme. My Facebook and Instagram feeds are currently filled with people mourning Eric’s death, and I’m one of them, because even though I didn’t know him, I certainly knew his work, and God knows he was fantastic at his work. So allow me to offer my condolences to any of his colleagues and other fans who may be listening to this, and here’s hoping this conversation helps raise your spirits somewhat in this moment of loss. Grey is a sweetheart, a sweet talker, and she even sings a little bit during the course of the episode. How can that not put a smile on your face?

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Grey DeLisle talk.

This time I’m letting Marshall Crenshaw talk.

I’ve been enjoying Marshall’s music ever since I picked up a cassette copy of his album Downtown in a cutout bin at a Roses department store. I don’t know why I decided to buy it, since I didn’t know anything about it at the time, but after hearing the song “Blues is King,” I instantly became a Marshall Crenshaw fan, and I’ve remained one ever since.

Marshall found his first success with the 1982 single “Someday, Someway,” and he’s maintained a relatively steady pace of releasing records from then onward, and while they’ve haven’t necessarily always set the charts afire, his way with a pop hook has maintained steady throughout his career. In addition to writing for his own albums, he’s also worked on songs with other folks over the years, including Kirsty MacColl, the Gin Blossoms, and a collaboration that’s particularly near and dear to my heart, “The Best Thing About Me is You,” done with Bill Lloyd and the late, great Jeffrey Foskett.

You might also have heard Marshall’s work in films. In the case of La Bamba, you also got to see him, since he played Buddy Holly in that particular motion picture, but he also wrote the title track for the John C. Reilly comedy Walk Hard, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

Marshall’s latest release, “The Bootleg Sounds of Marshall Crenshaw,” finds him delving into his archives and coming up with some particularly interesting material, including a mixture of originals and cover songs. We talk about the record in some detail, as you might expect, but we talk about plenty of other things as well. Among the topics: playing with Bruce Springsteen and almost playing with Bob Dylan, collaborating with Was (Not Was) on a song that almost brings together the lead singer of the Knack and a one-time member of KISS, appearing on Pete & Pete, his connection to the MC5, and much, much more.

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Marshall Crenshaw talk.

This time I’m letting Parker Young talk.

Parker basically got his big break as an actor when he secured a role in the hilarious ABC sitcom Suburgatory, and although he’s been working steadily ever since, he’s had to endure being a part of too many short-lived series, which is particularly disappointing when those series invariably tend to be pretty great. As such, I for one am rooting for his luck to change, because his new series, CBS’s vampire comedy Eternally Yours, is already starting out very solidly.

I interviewed Parker late last year when I did a piece for Vulture that took a look back at Suburgatory, which at the time had just found its way back to streaming services after having been MIA pretty much since it was canceled. The interview was via Zoom, and it was with Parker, his co-stars Jane Levy and Carly Chakin, and series creator Emily Kapnek, and after we finished our conversation, I got an email from Parker, thanking me for a great reunion, and since I’d also been a fan of his short-lived Fox sitcom Enlisted, I pitched him on being a guest on the podcast. He said he’d love to do it, but he asked if we could wait until he had something else to promote…and now he does, so here we are! Mind you, we had to get past a tiny technical issue when Zoom asked him for an access code that I neither sent him nor asked to have on there, but once we did, things went swimmingly.

During the course of our conversation, we of course talked about all three of the series I’ve already mentioned, so expect solid sections on Eternally Yours, Suburgatory, and Enlisted. We also talked about Imposters, a series which you have to buy outright to watch nowadays because it’s not streaming anywhere, the underrated Chuck Lorre sitcom The United States of Al, and his one-off appearance in season one of Fox’s Best Medicine which finds him emerging from the woods, baring his chest. It’s decidedly memorable. In addition, we talk about the experience of doing an episode of Mad Men, and – because I couldn’t resist the title – I even asked him about being in the film Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust.

This is another one of those conversations where you’d think we’d known each other for ages when, in fact, this is only the second conversation we’d ever had. But Parker’s just a nice, earnest, hardworking guy who does whatever he can to provide for his family while delivering solid comedic and dramatic performances on the regular. And if you aren’t a full-on Parker Young fan by the time you reach his reaction to my question about a failed pilot, then you’re clearly made of stone.

All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Parker Young talk.

This time I’m letting Mike Viola talk.

I’ve enjoyed Mike’s music even before I knew he was the one doing it. It all started with an amazing little movie called That Thing You Do! It was – and remains – one of my favorite movies of all time, about the brief life and times of a ‘60s one-hit wonder band called the Oneders, a.k.a. The Wonders. Big thanks go out to Tom Hanks, of course, since he wrote and directed the film, but when you’re doing a film about a one-hit wonder, you’ve got to have a song that can be played over and over and over again without anyone growing tired of it. That’s what the late, great Adam Schlesinger gave us…and Mike took it, sang it, and hit it out of the park.

Long story short, I’ve been a Mike Viola fan ever since, but it wasn’t until a few years later that I stumbled upon his band, the Candy Butchers, on the soundtrack to the 1998 film Zero Effect. By the next year, the Candy Butchers had put out their full-length debut album, 1999’s Falling into Place, and they were off and running.

By the time you’re listening to this, Mike will have released a book, Superkid, about the earliest years of his music career, and on October 30th he’s releasing his latest album, Chum. Just to clarify, these days Mike is releasing his music under his own name, but if you aren’t familiar with his band catalog, let me assure you that there are several great Candy Butchers albums out there that you should familiarize yourself with first, after which it’s time to bask in the full Mike Viola catalog. But it’s all great stuff, I can assure you.

Mike and I ended up having a wide and ranging conversation that lasted longer than most episodes – you guys, I really have been trying to start wrapping things up by the hour mark, just to keep it easily digestible – but it’s a really enjoyable chat in which we discuss his additional soundtrack work on Walk Hard and Get Him to the Greek, his stint as an A&R guy for Verve Records that led him to sign a particularly wicked artist, teaming up with Adam Schlesinger to record an Andy Partridge song for the Monkees, writing for Panic at the Disco, working with Mandy Moore, covering a plethora of Paul McCartney songs, and much more. Oh, yes, and in addition to reading him a note that my 21-year-old daughter wrote for him about the importance of his music in her daily life, I reveal how his music was part of the soundtrack for my wife and I as we worked through the in vitro process and got our daughter into the world in the first place.

Okay, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Mike Viola talk.

This time I’m letting Neil Flynn talk.

Neil always surprises me when he actually agrees to talk, even though he’s done several interviews with me at this point. In my defense, though, he’s made a career out of playing characters who tend to be men of few words.

Take Mike Heck on The Middle, for example: the guy spent virtually the entire run of the series actively trying to avoid conversation, and when he was invariably forced into having to talk, he generally only spoke as much as was absolutely necessary to get the conversation over and done with.

The first time I interviewed Neil, it was in the bar of the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, and although it lasted for 45 minutes, it concluded with him being surprised that we’d talked so long. In fact, he made note of having read my Random Roles with Lily Tomlin for the AV Club and said, “That thing went on forever! I was, like, ‘I’m never gonna have that much to say!” But it turns out that Neil Flynn is actually a pretty great interview if you can get him talking about things that he actually enjoys talking about, which is to say things that he actually cares about. I’ve also discovered that it helps if you can keep him guessing a little bit with what you’re going to ask him about. And it certainly doesn’t hurt if you let him take whatever tangents he decides he wants to take, because wherever he ends up going, you can count on it eventually being pretty funny.

I’d been wanting to invite Neil onto the podcast ever since I started it, but when I reached out to him after hearing that he was going to be in the first season of the Scrubs revival, he downplayed how much he was going to be in it…and rightfully so, since he only ended up being in a single episode. For season two, however, I ‘d heard he was going to be in more than one, so I reached out to him early, and that’s why you’re getting the interview this week: because if you’re downloading this on the day of its release, then you’ll be able to see him in tonight’s episode.

So of course we talk about Scrubs and we talk about The Middle. This is the first time I’ve interviewed him since he made his debut on Shrinking, so we talked about the fact that this is the third time he’s worked with Harrison Ford, and he reveals how memorable those previous occasions were to Mr. Ford. We talk about his early acting career, which started in Chicago, led him to Los Angeles, then back to Chicago, and then back to Los Angeles, where he remains to this day. He’s got stories about popping up briefly in the unsuccessful pilot for Kung Fu: The Next Generation, kinda sorta making out with Laurie Metcalf, being unable to tell if Norm Macdonald was kidding or not, working with Amy Sedaris in Girls5Eva, and having someone question whether or not he’d really been part of Second City and the UCB.

For the record, the conversation starts with Neil not being able to figure out how to get his audio to connect, and by the end of the proceedings, he literally admits to being the living embodiment of Old Man Yells at Cloud. But that’s just who he is, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Well, that’s almost certainly more than enough of an intro. It’s time to let Neil Flynn talk.

This time I’m letting Brittany Ishibashi talk.

Brittany absolutely qualifies for the descriptor “that gal who was in that thing,” because when you look at her filmography, you quickly notice that she’s been in an episode of just about every hourlong drama of note that’s been on the air in the last decade or two.

Here’s just a brief list of shows on which she’s appeared over the course of her on-camera career, which started in 1999: Felicity, Charmed, Angel, 24, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, The Office, Veronica Mars, Nip/Tuck, Supernatural, Desperate Housewives, House, The Mentalist, Bones, Castle, Major Crimes, Parenthood, This Is Us, and Scrubs. This is in no way a complete list, but it gives you an idea of how busy she’s been and how high profile that busyness tends to be.

Currently, Brittany is working with two of the most high-profile actors in the business: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. She plays Woody’s wife on the Apple TV+ series Brothers, and we talk about how they’re everything you’d ever want them to be, and more. But, of course, that’s not all we talk about. We discuss several of the series I cited in that laundry list of past credits, and we talk about some that I didn’t mention in there, like her recurring role on Grace & Frankie, working with Dennis Hopper on the NBC series E-Ring and Sigourney Weaver on the USA series Political Animals, the opportunity to be part of the MCU via the Hulu series Runaways, and the fun of doing a Hallmark movie. I also enjoyed the opportunity to blow her mind a couple of times during the course of the conversation by asking her about some obscurities from her back catalog, but I regret nothing.

In fact, this was just an absolutely delightful conversation from start to finish. Being as she is indeed a “gal who was in that thing,” you might not know Brittany’s name, but once you’ve listened to this episode, not only do I think you’ll remember it, but you’ll probably want to actively seek out her work, as well you should.

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Brittany Ishibashi talk.

This time I’m letting Renny Harlin talk.

This man’s films have been part of the pop culture fabric of my life dating back to the late 1980s. I’m not going to lie and pretend that I saw his first two films – 1986’s Born American and 1987’s Prison – when they were initially released, but I did rent A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master on VHS, and I most definitely saw both Die Hard 2 and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane in the theater, so…I guess you’ve gotten the idea by now that I’m very much a Renny Harlin fan, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to him, even if it was only for a little over 30 minutes.

Harlin’s latest film is his fourth collaboration with Samuel L. Jackson, but it’s decidedly unlike any of the films they’ve previously done together. It’s called The Beast, and if you’re any sort of presidential historian, then you’ll recognize that the film shares its title with the highly-fortified state car that serves as the vehicle of the President of the United States. Well, in this case, our man Sam is the Commander-in-Chief, he’s inside the Beast, and he’s under attack from virtually the moment the film starts, so…buckle up. By the time this episode is release, the film should be in a theater near you, and if you’re listening to this a little bit down the line, then hopefully it’s available for purchase for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home.

Of course, there was no way that I was going to have a conversation with Renny Harlin without asking him about some of the films that I mentioned earlier, so we chat about the budget battle of Nightmare on Elm Street 4, the rock and roll adventure of making Ford Fairlane, and how little he’s bothered by the aviation inaccuracies of Die Hard 2. We also discuss his shift to directing episodic television a few years ago, the time he had dinner with Billy Wilder, and the experience of working with Burt Reynolds on Driven, which was…definitely an experience.

No, I didn’t get to ask him about everything I would’ve liked to ask him about, but at the very end, I managed to make a closing comment that led him to tease me with a story that I sincerely hope will result in us doing a sequel sometime down the line, hopefully sooner than later. After all, he’s got a podcast now, too – Harlin House, which he does with his wife, Johanna – so it’s got cross-promotional opportunity written all over it!

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Renny Harlin talk.

This time I’m letting Mykelti Williamson talk.

I’ll just go ahead and admit it: this is someone whose name I had somehow never actually heard spoken aloud before until mere moments before starting my conversation with him. As such, I discovered that I’d been mispronouncing his name wrong in my head for the entirety of the time I’ve been watching his work…and I’ve literally been watching this guy for decades now.

Mind you, if I’d seen some of his earliest credits, when he was actually listed as “Michael T. Williamson,” I would’ve known better, but for years I just figured it was pronounced “M’Kell-tee,” and I was very, very wrong.

But better we should focus less on how you pronounce his name – even though that’s important – and focus more on his work, because Williamson’s current series, FX’s The Drop: A Snowfall Saga, is a fantastic piece of work, a spin-off from Snowfall that’s set in 1990 and blends a family drama with a fictionalized-but-familiar look at the rise of the west coast rap scene. Williamson plays a character called Big Daddy, the patriarch of the Kinsey family, and it’s a multifaceted role that gives Williamson the opportunity to play a number of different emotional beats. We recorded this episode with an eye toward releasing it after the fifth episode, so if you haven’t started watching the series yet or you’re not up to episode five, then you may want to hang tight and play catch-up before you listen to the interview.

That said, and I’m not saying you should just suck it up and suffer through the spoilers, but after we finish talking about The Drop, we start delving into other items in Williamson’s filmography, and there are definitely some good stories awaiting you on the other side. Yes, we talk about some of the more obvious points of interest – reciting shrimp recipes in Forrest Gump, sitting next to Nic Cage on Con-Air, and playing alongside Pacino in Heat, just to name a few – but beyond that, he offers up a no-holds-barred explanation about his departure from The New WKRP in Cincinnati, details an awkward moment with Ed Asner on The Bronx Zoo, and reveals the remarkable amount of support he received from George C. Scott after working with him on the Showtime remake of 12 Angry Men. And along the way, we make brief stops on Soul Train, Streets of Fire, Bay City Blues, and… Hell, this man even has a Joey Travolta story!

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Mykelti Williamson talk.

This time I’m letting Jeneva Rose talk.

Jeneva is an author who became a full-fledged phenomenon when she released her novel The Perfect Marriage during the pandemic and found that TikTok was an amazing marketing tool. As a result, the thriller sold millions of copies, thereby making her into a pretty big deal and someone whose name immediately became one of those that you include on your lists of People Whose New Books I Always Want to Check Out.

Jeneva’s work isn’t just limited to thrillers, however, as you can quickly discover if you check out her website, which is – you guessed it – JenevaRose.com (and that’s “Jeneva” with a “J,” by the way). In fact, she’s just released her first proper horror book: “Sometimes I Scare Myself,” a collection of three tales which take some familiar concepts and turn them on their head.

Mind you, as I discuss with Jeneva, that’s a trademark of her work: taking established concepts and scenarios and tweaking them in ways that you might not necessarily expect. We talk about that and various other aspects of her career, including her origin story, various other books in her back catalog, and what’s coming up in terms of adaptations of her work.

For the most part, however, we spend the conversation unabashedly asking her about her favorite horror stuff, from books to TV to films, and sharing a few recommendations with her along the way. It’s what I was always planning to do with the conversation, and when her publicist found out that I was interested in doing that, the instant response was, “I can’t wait for you two to nerd out together.” Mission accomplished.

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro: it’s time to let Jeneva Rose talk.

This time I’m letting John Ross Bowie talk.

Yes, that’s right: I’m letting John Ross Bowie talk again…although in my defense and his, you may recall that during the course of his initial appearance on the podcast, he was promoting the premiere of his HBO Max series “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe,” a series which – at the time we recorded the episode – I hadn’t actually seen. As such, at the very end of that episode, I said, “We’ll need to do a follow-up after I’ve actually gotten my screeners,” and he said, “I was about to suggest the same.”

And here we are.

HBO’s publicity department was kind enough to send out the entire 10-episode first season of the show, and I promptly devoured them, so once John got finished with his promotional duties at Comic-Con, we regrouped and went through the season episode by episode…and so as not to make it chock full of spoilers, I vowed to wait until after all of the episodes of the season had dropped before I dropped my episode.

Just a few things to mention before we enter into the proceedings, the first being that due to a slight scheduling hiccup on my end and not wanting to have to ask John to reschedule, I actually started recording the episode while I was in my car, driving back to my house and – more importantly – to my computer. Trust me, you can tell that I’m not in my usual surroundings from the sound quality on my end, but John sounds great…and don’t worry, I made it home before we were finished talking about the second episode, and it’s instantly evident when I’m back on my proper microphone.

The other thing is that, as of when we recorded the episode, “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” had yet to be renewed for a second season…and now it has, so hooray! But at the end of our conversation, you can hear my ridiculous optimism as well as John’s realism. Needless to say, however, we’re both thrilled about it now, so again I say, hooray!

All right, that’s probably enough of an intro: it’s time to let John Ross Bowie talk…about “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” – Season One.

This time I’m letting Allan Havey talk.

I was introduced to Allan way back in the days when there were two cable stations devoted to comedy: The Comedy Channel and HA! In short order, they combined to form a single entity known as – you guessed it – Comedy Central. If you were watching back then, you may remember a quirky talk show called NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, and if you do, then like myself, you presumably also remember Allan.

That’s not to say that he hasn’t been continuing to work since then. In addition to being a well-respected stand-up comedian – perhaps you’ve seen one of his many appearances on Letterman, or maybe his HBO special – he’s more recently become recognized for his work as an actor. For me, it was particularly interesting watching his acting career evolve, having known him from that earlier incarnation of his career, but he’s really mixed it up a lot over the past few decades, doing both comedy and drama in relatively equal measure.

Perhaps you remember him from playing Lou Avery on MAD MEN or Karl Allard on BILLIONS. Maybe his face stands out to you because you saw him on SEINFELD or CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. If you’re a Prime Video aficionado, you could’ve seen him on THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE or BOSCH. Or you could’ve seen him on GOOD LUCK CHARLIE, like my daughter did.

Most recently, however, the best place to catch Allan has been on Peacock: in addition to having done a couple of episodes of THE OFFICE in 2013, he’s also part of the recurring ensemble cast of THE PAPER, playing Marv Putnam, the CEO of the company that owns The Toledo Truth Teller. In addition, Allan’s got his own YouTube channel – @allanhaveycomedy – and he’s got a continuing series of videos called “Best Stand-Up Advice.” He’s up to 43 of them so far, and the overwhelming majority of them are under three minutes in length, but they’re all worth a watch.

To be honest, I could’ve spent a full hour just talking about NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, but I tried to mix things up as much as possible during the course of the conversation, and I think it’s a fun one.

All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Allan Havey talk.

This time I’m letting Tommy Stinson talk.

Tommy was busy touring the world and elsewhere when he was still in his teens. Of course, that necessitated dropping out of school, but considering the journey that he went on as a member of the Replacements, it’s easy enough to argue that he made the right decision.

Of course, the Replacements haven’t really been a going concern – at least as a full-time band – since the early ‘90s, so Tommy has had to make his own music, something he’s been quite happy to do. First came the band Bash & Pop, which was followed by Perfect. Then came Tommy’s unexpected stint as a member of Guns ‘n’ Roses, after which he finally made his belated debut as a solo artist in 2004 with the album Village Gorilla Head.

Since then, Tommy has continued to do some solo stuff, but he also did a stint as a member of Soul Asylum, reteamed with his Replacements bandmates for a few years to do some shows, and unexpectedly revived Bash & Pop for a second album in 2017. His most recent solo album was 2023’s Wronger, but he’s got plans for new material that we’ll hopefully be hearing in the near future.

I must admit that the reason that Tommy and I did this interview was to promote an intimate live show in Norfolk, but before the original planned drop date for the episode, I got word that the show was canceled. The reason? By unfortunate coincidence, it ended up being the same day at a free Dinosaur Jr. concert in Virginia Beach, which… I mean, it’s virtually the same demographic, and it’s free, so of course everyone opted to go to that show instead. But don’t worry, Tommy will almost certainly be back, and hopefully after listening to this episode, you’ll be inspired to go see him on his next tour.

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Tommy Stinson talk.

This time I'm letting Mark Sheppard talk.

Mark's availability for an interview came up with a press release for his latest film, a horror movie called EVER AFTER, but my reasons for asking him to do the podcast were admittedly tied to the fact that he plays a key role on my wife’s favorite TV series of all time.

Yes, Mark Sheppard plays Crowley on SUPERNATURAL, and given that my wife is part of that show’s substantial fanbase and has attended SUPERNATURAL conventions here in Norfolk, Virginia as well as in Rome (shout-out to JIB!), I’ve heard his name more than a few times. But I was already well aware of him as a character actor thanks to his work on a number of other series, including Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Doctor Who, NCIS… The list goes on. I was also aware of him because of his father, Morgan Sheppard, who I first discovered on Max Headroom but who I remember most fondly for playing the Klingon in Star Trek VI who delivers the rules of Rura Penthe to Kirk and McCoy.

What I wasn’t aware of until I started prepping for our conversation, however, was the depth of Sheppard’s musical history. I knew that he was a musician, yes, but I hadn’t realized that he’d been a member of the Television Personalities in the early ‘80s and been one of Robyn Hitchcock’s live drummers.

Mark is a man who was made for a podcast called “Letting Them Talk.” Indeed, when I told his SUPERNATURAL cohort Jim Beaver that I’d talked to him, he simply asked, “Did you get to say anything?” Spoken like a man who’s been on more than a few panels with him, but it’s a fair question. To be honest, I made good on the name of the podcast and let Mark talk. As a result, he brought up most of the topics I’d planned to ask about before I could ever get to them, and it felt a bit superfluous to return to them, so if you’d like a sequel to this episode that involves more specific questions, let me know, and I feel like it’s something we could make happen.

As you’ll soon hear, we talked about the aforementioned EVER AFTER, which in theaters now (and I confirmed this via Fandango, because it’s playing in my area), we talked about his music career, as well as how his return to music was the direct result of his connection to SUPERNATURAL and its conventions. This is definitely not a conversation that’s heavy on SUPERNATURAL minutiae, but if you’re interested in Mark and his life and times, then I think you’ll enjoy it, and if you’re coming into this episode without knowing much about Mark, I think you’ll find him to be a fascinating individual.

One minor technical note: during the course of the conversation, there were a few occasions where the video hesitated, making us both think that we were frozen, but the audio seemed to be fine throughout, so when you hear those moments of slightly confused conversation, that’s what was going on.

All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Mark Sheppard talk.

This time I'm letting Christopher Plummer talk...because, yes, that's right, it's another stopgap episode, owing to the fact that I have no new episode in queue and I am currently in the process of trying to stockpile some additional episodes for your listening enjoyment.

I suppose there are worse times that I could find myself in this situation than after dropping the 50th episode of the podcast. I had intended to draw attention to this pretty significant milestone when I recorded the intro to last week’s episode, but I got so focused on making sure you had the episode in your hands to enjoy over the weekend that I completely forgot. So let’s consider that accomplishment now: I started this podcast in November of 2025, and we’ve now hit 50 episodes. That’s 36 more episodes that I ever managed to record of my previous podcast, Obscurity Knocks. If you’re doing the math, that podcast effectively stopped after its 14th episode, which dropped in September of 2019, and over the course of that time, people have continued to download those 14 episodes on occasion, bringing its grand total of downloads to 4,400. Meanwhile, I’ve done 50 proper episodes of this podcast since November, and we’re currently sitting at 6,400 downloads, so even if I never did another episode…

Well, there’s no point in continuing that sentence, because I obviously am going to do another episode. Several more, in fact. As many as I can manage. But having said that, I should also underline a couple of key points, the most important being that I have a mortgage to pay, and this podcast is not currently earning enough to pull off that task, so I’m definitely having to continue writing for various outlets. The other important thing at the moment is that I’m also in the process of working on a new book project, one that I’m excited to tell you about as soon as I get the go-ahead from my publisher, but suffice it to say that if you enjoy this podcast, there’s an extremely strong likelihood that you’ll think that it’s a very cool and extremely interesting topic…and to my knowledge, there’s never been another book that covers this topic quite like this, which makes it particularly exciting.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re currently supporting Letting Them Talk with Will Harris through a paid subscription to my Substack or via my Patreon campaign, I really appreciate it, because even if it doesn’t pay the mortgage at the moment, it does help pay for gas or groceries or the occasional bill…and in some cases it provides enough to keep my account from going into overdraft, in which case it’s really, REALLY appreciated. And if you aren’t currently supporting me in either of those ways, well, this is the week of my birthday, so next to sometime in December, this is the best possible time to offer your support in that fashion. I’m working on some sort of gifts for supporters – I could maybe send you some DVDs for your trouble, because God knows I need to get rid of some of these things – so if that interests you, let me know when you make your pledge, and I can make that happen.

For now, though, I’ll just go ahead and offer you an interview from my archives: it’s the audio for the interview I did with Christopher Plummer when he attended the Television Critics Association press tour in support of Stephen Frears’ HBO movie, Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight. Yes, it was a Random Roles interview at the time, but you’ve most likely never heard any of the audio from the conversation…unless you’ve heard him talk about Starcrash, a film so classic that it was covered in an episode of How Did This Get Made? – one that included Paul Scheer reading a quote straight from my interview and giving me a shout-out. Otherwise, though, this is all previously-unheard material, so I hope you enjoy it.

Well, that’s more than enough of an intro. It’s time to let the late, great Christopher Plummer talk…but brace yourself, because it was recorded in a hotel room on a handheld recorder, so it won't be up to the usual audio standards. The stories, however, are worth turning up your volume to hear!

This time I’m letting Wesley Stace talk.

Wes is a singer-songwriter whose work I’ve enjoyed since the release of his debut LP for Sire Records, Here Comes the Groom. That LP, his first full-length studio album, came out in 1990, so not only have I been a fan for 26 years, I’ve even seen him through the loss of his musical pseudonym, John Wesley Harding, in favor of his birth name.

Wes has consistently remained prolific with his releases, and he’s got another one that’s coming up fast: One Last Heist, which comes out on September 2. He’s already teased the record with a couple of singles – the title track, “A Funny One,” and “I Say Lots of Things” – but I’ve had the opportunity to hear the whole thing, and I can testify that it’s great from start to finish and one of the best albums he’s released in recent memory.

The last time Wes and I talked was when I was briefly a senior editor for Q Magazine, and it was a conversation that was focused heavily on his then-impending tour of the UK, so this time we were able to mix things up a bit more. Of course we talked a fair amount about the new album, but we also discussed some of the other records in his back catalogue, including the recent vinyl reissue of Here Comes the Groom and a couple of other albums that’ll hopefully be joining it on that format. We also talked about some of his songwriting collaborations outside of his own work, including Eleanor Friedberger and Tanya Donnelly, and his recent opportunity to serve as one of the recurring frontmen for The Smithereens.

If you ever get a chance to catch Wes in concert, either with a band or without, I highly recommend the experience. He always puts on a good show and chats with the audience during the course of the performance. And I’m not just saying that because I might be doing some writing for him sometime in the semi-near future…but you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out what that means.

All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Wesley Stace talk.

This time I’m letting Robin Shorr talk.

I hadn’t actually seen or talked to Robin since the summer of 2013, but despite the fact that 13 years had passed since our previous conversation – which was, in fact, the only conversation we’d ever actually had – you’d never know it from the way she and I were chatting about her life and career.

But there’s a reasonable explanation for that connection: Robin used to write for The Middle, I used to review The Middle, we’ve got a bunch of friends and acquaintances in common, and – perhaps most importantly – she’s the credited writer on “Stormy Moon,” the episode of The Middle which was partially inspired by a real-life incident experienced by the Harris family.

The quick nutshell summary for anyone who hasn’t listened to the previous two Middle-centric episodes of this podcast: our family once got a summons from the sheriff’s department because of library fines – it happened because we lost a disc from a book-on-CD set, and the cost to replace it was just over the amount that causes a summons to be issued – and when my wife and I visited the Middle writers room, she told that story, and we were informed that anything said in the writers room was fair game. Fast forward a few months later, and “Stormy Moon” aired.

I really only tell this story again because it comes up almost immediately in my conversation with Robin, but don’t worry, we talk about a lot of other things besides The Middle, including our mutual love of the ‘80s sitcom It’s Your Move and her being in awe of Jason Bateman, attending sitcom tapings in the late ‘80s and going to college with Seth and Josh Meyers, writing on the MTV Movie Awards with the guys from The Lonely Island, coming up with The Hills: A Staged Reading, writing for Samantha Who?, working on short-lived – but very funny – Fox series like Sons of Tucson and Traffic Light, her friendship with David Hornsby and Adam Goldberg, being a part of Galavant and The Carmichael Show, and much more.

Oh, and she also has a podcast of her own, Los Feliz: The Podcast, which she does with Morgan Murphy, and which I can assure you is entertaining whether you live in Los Feliz or not…although if you live in Los Feliz, I can only imagine that it’s an absolute must-listen.

Anyway, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Robin Shorr talk.

This time I’m letting Michael Hampton talk.

Michael has been a professional guitarist since he was in his teens, earning his place in one of the most influential funk bands of all time by being able to reproduce a ridiculously difficult solo when he was 17. By the time he was done, there was no chance that he wasn’t going to be in contention for a spot in the lineup in the musical collective known as Parliament-Funkadelic.

Michael has mostly kept his work within the ranks of the group, but recently he’s been making a concert effort to step out on his own and do some solo material. Last year saw the release of the album INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, and he’s just released a new album, KING KONG.

It was a lot of fun talking to Michael, and it was absolutely entertaining, although I’ll be the first to admit that I sometimes lost the thread of the conversation. That said, I don’t think he ever did, because as you’ll hear, there are a couple of occasions where he goes on a tear about this or that, but when all’s said and done, he comes right back to the original question. You know how a certain politician refers to his manner of speaking as “the weave”? Not only does Michael Hampton put him to shame, but he’s a thousand times more enjoyable to listen to, even if you don’t always follow where he’s going. It’s all about the journey, baby.

During the course of our chat, we talk about how he felt about having been crowned Kidd Funkadelic, whether it was weird for him when Eddie Hazel came back to sit in with the group, why he thinks funk remains such a popular form of music, and for my part, I was thrilled about how excited he got when I asked him what he remembered about recording with the Golden Palominos. I think I also threw him a bit when I referenced a quote about him from George Clinton’s memoir, but he gave a hell of an answer to my question anyway.

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Michael Hampton talk.

This time I’m letting Chris Loggins talk.

Chris is someone I’ve been describing as an outside-the-box guest for this podcast. In realty, though, he isn’t, since he’s squarely within the realm of pop culture. It’s just that the pop culture in question is for a slightly younger demographic than most of the folks who’ve been guests thus far.

Chris is supervising producer for Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and if you haven’t been around little kids very much in recent years – or unless you were still a toddler circa 2012 – then there’s a decent chance that you may not be familiar with this series, but it’s a predominantly-animated spinoff of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that revolves around Daniel Tiger, who was a puppet in Fred Rogers’ original PBS program. It maintains a number of staples from that program – the Trolley is still very prominent – and in addition to Daniel, there are also other animated adaptations of classic puppet characters, including Prince Tuesday, son of King Friday and Queen Sara Saturday.

When PBS sent out a press release about how new episodes of Daniel Tiger would be dropping in the near future, it was right around the same time that my wife, an RBT who works with children with autism at a local ABA clinic, was telling me about one of her clients who is absolutely obsessed with Daniel Tiger. That got me thinking about the idea of interviewing someone from the show and finding out a bit about how someone gets into working for a PBS program and what it’s like to be part of a program that carries on Fred Rogers’ legacy, and then when I found out that Chris had also been a part of the PBS series Odd Squad, I decided to reach out and see if he’d be up for an interview. Thankfully, he was.

We talked about both of these PBS shows, of course, and as you’ll hear, I took a few moments up front to talk about my own connections to PBS, but I also asked Chris about his unique office décor, which included both baseball and sci-fi. I also asked him some of the burning Daniel Tiger questions that listeners asked me to pose to him, and I’ll let you be the judge, but I think he was mostly amused by them.

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro: it’s time to let Chris Loggins talk…and P.S. Ugga mugga. (If you don’t know what that means, your kids will.)

This time I’m letting Josh Joplin talk.

I’ve been enjoying Josh’s music for 25 years now. He’s actually been making music longer than that, but I don’t mind admitting that it wasn’t until the release of his single “Camera One” that I first found myself listening to Josh Joplin and his Group.

Josh actually released his first single in 1989, and while it isn’t available for streaming on Spotify or anything like that, you can find it online, and you can hear just how much of an unabashed folk singer he was at the time. That was released under his own name, as was his debut album, 1990’s Facts of Fortune, but in short order he formed the Josh Joplin Band, which eventually evolved into the Josh Joplin Group.

The release of 2001’s Useful Music was a major turning point for Josh, thanks to the aforementioned “Camera One” becoming the first independently-released single to hit #1 at Triple-A radio. The Josh Joplin Group promptly toured the world and elsewhere, and if the band’s next album, The Future That Was, didn’t necessarily hit the same commercial heights as its predecessor – and as we discuss, it did not – it hasn’t stopped Josh from continuing to write, record, and tour in earnest.

During the course of our conversation, Josh and I talk about the various periods of his career, getting the opportunity to be produced by Shawn Mullins and Jerry Harrison, making a memorable appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, having close encounters with Pete Seeger, P!nk, and Jay-Z, being influenced by Dan Zanes, and doing a bit of musical reinvention with Among the Oak and Ash.

At the moment, Josh is proudly revisiting Useful Music for its 25th anniversary, having issued it on vinyl and also releasing what would be best be described as a companion piece: Useful Music: The Silver Anniversary Sessions, which includes a variety of demos as well as a gorgeous piano version of “Camera One” which really does serve to reinvent the song.

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Josh Joplin talk.

This time I’m letting Spencer Garrett talk.

I’ve been watching this guy’s work since he made an appearance in a season four episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “The Drumhead.” No, I didn’t know who he was at the time, nor should I have, since he’d really only just gotten started at that point, but in short order he began to appear in everything.

No, but for real: Spencer Garrett truly is “that guy who was in that thing.” His list of credits is well into the 200s – and rapidly heading toward 300 – and if he hasn’t been in everything, it often seems as though he has, particularly when you start scrolling through his filmography and see how many one-off episodes he’s done over the years.

As of when we recorded this episode, it had been just over a week since Spencer had wrapped a very successful run on Broadway in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ adaptation of the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon, and I literally managed to catch him the day before he headed off for a well-deserved three-week vacation. In fact, even though we’d been talking about doing an interview for awhile, in the end it came together so quickly that I had less than 24 hours to get ready for the conversation.

Fortunately, I was able to reach out to a few of our mutual acquaintances to get some suggestions for topics to discuss…so thank you to Jim Beaver, Xander Berkeley, and the ubiquitous Richard Kind for chiming in. Between their ideas and my research, we ended up having a wealth of material to cover during the course of the conversation.

Among the topics tackled: Spencer’s mother, who – in addition to having been a cast member on The Real McCoys – is a former president of the Screen Actors guild, which put him in some pretty impressive company well before he ever became an actor himself; getting some significant screen time in Air Force One; working with David Milch and Michael Mann on Luck; being part of the Sorkin-verse by appearing in Sports Night, The West Wing, and the Aaron Sorkin-penned Charlie Wilson’s War; how his episode of 21 Jump Street has a notable connection to his work on the HBO series Winning Time; and, yes, we talked about playing a part-human, part-Romulan character on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And given my history with Random Roles, I particularly enjoyed getting to hear about the formation and membership of the CADs, a.k.a. the Character Actors Dining Society.

Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Spencer Garrett talk.