Curious Matter Aftershow - Eddie Cobalt Part 2
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Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Curious Matter After Show. I am Alison Hayslip and my co-pilot here is Alyssa DeVries and we are going to be your hosts as we take a deeper dive into this season's episodes. We are going to go behind the scenes to learn a little bit more about these stories and their authors and of course, geek out on our collective love of all things sci-fi and horror.

Tonight's show is live on Twitch every other week. So all of you out there in the podcast land, you know, come join us over at twitch.tv slash Evan funny. You can ask questions, interact with the team and who knows, you know, maybe win a prize or two.

Like that's gonna happen tonight. So tonight on the show, tonight on the show, we have the unbelievably talented star of the Uncanny, Eddie Cobalt, Kelly Dawn Hancock. We also have the always hilarious Jeff Lewis who voiced the character of Simon Hadrell. But before we bring them on, let's do some trivia. Okay, chat.

Get ready to send in your answers. The first one who responds correctly gets a Curious Matter t-shirt, which I want one. I want everybody involved to know that I want one too. Our first question is, what is the name of the new character that was introduced in tonight's episode? I'm going to give you some multiple choice options, okay? First, we have A, Professor X. B, Control X.

C, control C, or D, copy and paste? Whoever gets it in first. A, Professor X, B, control X, C, control C, or D, copy and paste? I'm looking at the chat. I'm ready for your answers. Let me know if you need me to repeat it again. I will keep repeating it as long as it takes. I feel like if I was the person in chat, I'd be like, wait, am I writing...

the name and the letter or am I writing the letter of the name? Listen, I know the answer. So whatever they choose to do, that's true. We all know the, I mean, we should all know the answer, right? Yeah. As I say that, I'm like, I think I know the answer. Oh, Critter Nation 3000 has answered B and you win a shirt. Yes. Control X.

I was pretty sure it was control X, but then I was like, oh wait, was it control C? I don't remember. No, control X. Okay, great. All right. So we have question number two. I hope y'all are paying attention. This one's a teensy bit harder.

What is one of the names of Simon's cats? Just one of the names of Simon's cats at my cat literally just leaped up here. Like it was his cue here. Come here. Just make an appearance so I can show everyone that I'm not talking to a fictional cat. There's my cat. This is Gandalf the white, but the question for trivia is, Oh man, as he rips my headphones off.

What is one of the names of Simon's cats? He had some very clever names in there. That's hilarious. They were very funny. Catherine Zeta-Jones. Yeah, that's right. Yay. Who got it? D-Man 1198. There we go. Perfect. Yes. They also want a shirt.

Yes. Congratulations to our winners. Check your DMs for a message from us about your prize, which is a shirt. And I'm, I'm sad to see the shirts go. Yes. All right. And for those of you who are listening to this, not live, you're listening to it on the podcast. You can join us live on Twitch again, every other Tuesday at 6 30 PM and Pacific time. And you too can participate in the trivia to win awesome prizes, like the shirts that Alyssa loves. But now we're

We are going to bring on our awesome guests, Kelly Dawn Hancock and Jeff Lewis. Welcome. Y'all, my cat really just wants to be involved in the episode. The cat understood that there were cats in this episode. He's like, mom, why haven't you put me in Hollywood yet? And now he's all right. He's away now. Hi. Hi. Hello. Hello. How are you?

The first cat name I threw? Oh, Pobre Plaza. Are you like, damn, I should have thought of that one. I know. Shoot. What was my cat names? Yeah. Jeff, let's throw this first question to you. Did you make up those cat names or were they scripted? They were all scripted. I may have made up one, but it was not as good as any of those he said.

that he had written. I wish I had looking back. I don't know. You're on the spot sometimes, even though I do. I know. I've done improv. I just. It's true. It's very specific. Like I had something with cat and meow or, you know, now I can make a plenty after, you know, after the fact. And of course it's like, every time you walk away from an argument, you're like, I know this was the last thing I should have said. The drive, the drive home. Like, Oh, I should have said that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly, welcome back. It is great to have you after last week. Yes, yes. This was a conclusion. I was not expecting... It ended. Yeah, this ended and I was like, oh, I mean, I guess that is the solution, but I didn't really see... I truly did not see it ending with Eddie...

Editing herself out? Yeah, she thought I'll sacrifice. What was that like for you when you read it, when you recorded it? I was surprised by her self-sacrifice as well because, you know, she was very cynical and didn't believe in anything. And so for her to make that giant, you know...

I'm not good with math, so I'm not sure if it's a 180 or a 360. It's one of those. She turned to a certain point and just completely. Yeah, that was, it was, it was surprising. Yeah. Even when I read it.

Also, I love that it happens after she loses her best friend, Simon. Yeah, I think there's something about the relationship with Simon was that it was the one person who just gave her everything. Regardless, at any point, he never wanted anything. He just had her back. And even though she completely fucked his entire life, he...

he still was like, no, I got you. And she just, she couldn't get past that. And so I think because of that, you know, Susan had done her wrong and she felt like the psychologist had done her wrong. And like the waitress was hitting on her girl. Like all these other people had it coming in some manner, except for Simon. Yeah. Simon was just the dude who liked his corporate life. Yeah. And looked out for her. Jeff, what did you think of this script when you first read it and your thoughts on Simon? Yeah.

I thought it was great. I mean, it made me think about how I would lose my mind if I remembered something and no one else did. I mean, I was thinking about it for a long time. Like, I would think, well, maybe they if nobody else remembers something and I'm the only one that did, maybe I'm insane.

Because that's how you base things on is like other people's memories too. It kind of was chipping me out. It was really interesting to think about, but I thought it was great. I enjoyed it.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. And it's funny that it last week when we talked, I brought up, we were kind of got into talking about some Marvel movies, but I actually just binged all of Moon Knight this week. And so the conversation with the psychiatrist was reminding me a lot of what goes on in that show as well. And I was like, yeah, what is your reality if someone is telling you

That it isn't that, you know? And I'm getting to the age where it's, you know, it's happening. Where I swear I did this thing and nobody else remembers it or I didn't do this thing. Right. So that's kind of trippy. I remember as a kid asking my mother, she remembered something and she would go, fake.

vaguely and I'd be like that makes no sense you either remember something or you don't and as I get older I'm like oh no now I understand the concept of vaguely like something that's just tickling something in your brain that it happened but you're not quite sure if it actually can't access it yeah

Yeah. So, so Kelly, so in this episode, we get a much different Eddie than we had in part one. Clearly she's on a bit of a downward spiral. Did you find a lot of differences in playing her in, in part two than part one? Part two was more fun. Part one was full of exposition and,

And, you know, part two, I actually think she showed more personality and more... I mean, obviously she shows more range, but, you know...

strangely, I feel like part one was harder. Part two was a lot more fun. I got to cut loose on her, um, a lot more. So, right. I mean, we, you know, we get, it almost immediately starts off with her drinking and she doesn't let up from there. So what was it like

You know, they always say that acting drunk is one of the hardest things to do because when you're drunk, you try so hard to show you are not drunk. Right. So what was it like? That's the secret. But also in a voiceover. Yeah, no, that's the secret. Like the acting 101 secret is, you know, if you have to cry,

don't cry. Like if you really have to cry for the camera, the secret is to not try to cry for the camera. And so the same mentality I hit when I was drawing, cause it's really funny, actually, I don't,

You know, I went back to my life in the 20s when I was around 25 and I, you know, was trying like you would drink all night. And then I just remember very much being out with my best friend and we would hit these moments and we're like, I got to maintain, got to maintain. No one can know maintain. And so the whole time I was in the booth, I was like, maintain, maintain, and just kind of went through it from that moment.

point so I guess I trained for this when I was 25 you built up to it I built up to that exact acting drunk moment and um yeah so you you can't push it there's an honesty about you when you're drunk that I think you just talk and you just slur a little bit mm-hmm

- And maintain. - And maintain. - I do remember one of my first acting classes, I had to be drunk in a scene and it actually was in my car. And I took like three shots of gin. - You're method, method. - 'Cause I just was, I was sure I couldn't do it. And it was so dumb. - Yeah, he was like, "Yeah." - Obviously I was intoxicated. - Also, Jeff, gin? You chose gin? - I can't remember what it was. - Oh, okay.

You seemed very convinced that it was gin. I remember gin and tonic for some reason. I took something and it was so dumb. I don't know what I was thinking.

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Well, the other interesting thing, and we talked about this a bit last week, is you two did not record together at all. So all these great conversations you had in this episode were very one-sided when you were recording them. But in regards, I mean, the great thing about this podcast as a whole is all the audio around the dialogue as well. That gives you such...

a sense of space and where you are. I mean, the whole scene that took place in central park, I was, I was just listening to like, you could just hear the faintest other people in the background. So did you get any of that while you two were recording as well? Did you have any sense of the other ambient noises that were going to be around you? No. Wow. It does fill, it does fill in the blanks so well. Yeah. For some reason, you hear those, it's like you're there, but I didn't have any of that. No, no. Yes.

- That's even the scene when, I know, let's talk to him about that. Like the scene where Control X approaches and you hear his point, his like, his dialogue get louder and his footsteps hitting, like that blew my mind. 'Cause that's not obviously when we recorded it, you know, Jonathan just read the lines to me and then that moment, and to me, like that reveal of Control X just really hit me. And I was like, oh shoot.

- I mean, Kelly, that's a great segue too, 'cause I wanted to talk about Control X. - You're welcome. - Thank you. I'll give you five bucks afterwards. So this is a character who wasn't in the original story and here it's now created the explanation for the uncanny part of this and why Eddie actually has her abilities. So what do you feel like this character added to the story? - For me,

It adds a villain for her, right? Because she's had villains all throughout everything else and she's gotten rid of them at that point. And now she doesn't have anything. And so she's looking for this explanation and he doesn't have an explanation for her. He's just like, I picked you because you seemed awesome when you were having a psychotic break. And, you know, and so...

I think not having any answers is what really starts her downfall. And if there was no control X, if it was still just this ethereal thing that one day she just appeared and she had this, you know, she could maybe think, well, is this the solution? Is that the solution? But she was basically told your solution is to find another person who doesn't believe anything and she can't find another person. And that starts her decline like more rapidly.

I also love the decision to go to a speed dating place to find a person who doesn't believe in anything. Nope. Yeah.

That was one of my favorite lines, that nope. Nope. Speaking of favorite lines, actually, I think my favorite part of the episode was revealing that the alien showed up after the Cold War was erased. And I was like, that weirdly makes a lot of sense somehow. But did you all have a favorite moment or line from the episode? Oh, gosh. It sounds so...

My favorite line, strangely, was, poof, baby, I'm on fire. Like, that cracked me up every time. And it sounds so self-serving because I said it. But I just laughed because she...

she's just so completely out of control and it's like she has this whim where someone's like oh I did Instagram well I'm mad at Instagram so bye-bye Instagram and so it just I mean y'all got rid of Twitter too so why not yeah yeah what's true I just I don't know that line tickles me every time yeah Jeff how about you I love doing the douchey like restaurant like

Have you ever had red wine? I can't remember the lines, but that was kind of fun to play that. Like just being that corporate guy who's like getting all these perks and is just being as jerky about it as possible. It was fun. Yeah.

Alyssa, how about you? Did you have a favorite line or do you have any favorite lines coming in from chat? I do have a favorite line. Mine was please feed my cats. I mean, that was truly hilarious. I'm a sucker for comedy. I

Sir Winks 13 says his favorite line is you have a manifesto. That was a hilarious one. Oh, yeah, that was a good one, too. In the chat, everybody's just talking about how amazing the soundscape was. Yeah. Just echoing what you guys were saying, that it was chaotic and they felt like they were in the space physically. And that really is a testament to Jonathan and his amazing work.

Yes. Actually, I want to tell Alyssa, you mentioned the comedy of it. I want to talk about that because Simon, I mean, sorry, Jeff, Simon is the comic relief. So close to the character. I am Simon. You are Simon. I got called by either name. Good. True actor. Respond to it. But Simon is the comic relief in an otherwise very

heavy drama for the most part. How did you approach that? Is there a method that you have to doing comedy in a drama as opposed to comedy in a comedy? No, I think I just treat them both as drama. I mean, I don't think... One thing that was hammered into me is like not trying to be funny, trying to be in the moment and playing the drama of it. I think there's a very small...

sliver of difference between the two it's all drama but there's sometimes maybe a little bit bigger but I think it's always finding that drama I mean it's trusting it too it's like I years for years I tried I thought I needed to be funny and I just needed to trust that it was the material was funny if I played it real and seriously right I feel like basically the theme of

what we're talking about is if you want to do something in acting, don't do it. Yes, don't act. Just do. Just don't act. I just want to share that Critter Nation 3000 said, so unusual for Jeff to be the comic relief. I thought it was pretty goofy. Was that sarcasm? I think it was probably sarcastic. I didn't know how to take that.

Okay. So let's talk about this. This part is where we, we actually get the term an editor or editors as to what Eddie is doing with this, this uncanny power of hers. So if I, I'm just going to say this to the, to the zoom room I'm seeing, but if we could edit out anything in our lives, what would we edit? I got to think about that myself. I know. Yeah.

God. The people that bullied me? I don't know. I guess they're not bullies anymore. I don't know. You don't know. I'm trying to think. I would get rid of money and I would take us back to the barter system. Ooh.

I feel like you guys are thinking big. I was thinking little like, what if we just got rid of body hair so we never have to worry about it? I'm like, what's something significant but not so significant it actually changes the course of human history? We would be so aerodynamic.

Yeah. Kelly, you got some rules. But would we be bald? Like body hair? Oh, yeah. I was thinking like from neck down or something. You gotta be specific. It's like a genius. You gotta be real specific with this stuff. Yeah. It's like, you know, your genius wishes. Yeah. I don't know. I don't, I don't like peanut butter.

I know it's a judgment thing. Did you just erase Reese's Pieces peanut butter? Oh my God. I would have erased Reese's like so fast. Wow. That's so funny. What did you do? Did you just try it once and never liked it?

Yeah. I don't like it. Yeah. I don't know. My sister doesn't like tuna fish and I don't like peanut butter. I don't like the smell of it. Like if I'm with a guy and he ate a peanut butter sandwich and I go in to kiss him, I'm like, go brush your teeth. Nope. I don't like peanuts. I don't like peanut butter. My brother tells everyone he's allergic to mustard. He is not. He just hates it so much that he never wants to be near it. So he says he's allergic to it. I'm like,

- Well, there's a judgment if you tell someone that a beloved thing you don't like, but if you tell them it could kill you, there's sympathy. - Yes, exactly. - Yeah, yeah. - Man. - That's funny. - All right, let's talk about the ending of this episode 'cause I mean, when Eddie edited herself out, I was like, whoa. And then we still get this epilogue moment

of uh uh control x i almost i almost called professor x because of the trivia game copy and paste yeah um yeah copy and paste uh presumably buying eddie's old apartment what do we what do we think about that ending why do we think control x wanted to be there i thought it was because um eddie released him

Like he was no longer an editor because he passed that power to her and she destroyed herself. So in me paying it forward, the power doesn't exist anymore. And so now he's, you know, he's released from his life. It's like the genie, you know, from Aladdin. He's been he's free. And so he likes to pay homage to the person who freed him.

Yeah. I'll say what Kelly said. I didn't even think about it. I mean, I, I, God, it's a good question. I sometimes things just, I passed. I didn't really think about that. Maybe give me some time. We have some time. Was Kelly. I know you did. You did some episodes on season one of, of curious matter, but, but, but,

Jeff, is this your first sort of step into scripted podcasting or had you done scripted podcasting before? This is, you know, it's so funny. Like this thing with John, when I did the reading with Jonathan, I ended up like two other people at the same time. It's like in the air right now doing scripted podcast. I was, I it's it's great. I mean, it's a way to get

an idea across if you can't afford to have a, you know, shoot, have a big production, but you still have the script that you think is good. And I, I am doing a few others, but it's just so funny. It all happened around the night, around this time, last month. I had never really done anything like this.

How do you both feel about this kind of new medium that is approaching and definitely much more prevalent than it had been even just a few years ago? I mean, the business is always changing and you got to evolve with it. And, you know, an actor wants to act.

And so it's a new medium and you have to, like, we talked about this last time, Alison, like what's the difference between on camera and voiceover or even the podcast. Right. And so I think as an actor, it's a new opportunity. Also as an actor, I listen to myself and I'm super annoyed with this, or I don't like how my voice sounds. I mean, we're never, ever happy. Right. Yeah.

It's just another medium for me to like critique myself to the nth degree. You are our luscious critics. And we've seen also a couple of podcasts turn into bigger things. So, you know, it's a possibility, which is great. It's very inspiring. So it's good to know that things can happen from a podcast. Not that a podcast in and of itself isn't enough. I'm just saying other things can come out of it.

Well, it seems like such a wonderful way to consume media. You know, I think podcasts became a bigger thing when people were like, oh, I can listen to something while I'm doing my chores or working out or driving a car, you know, and now it's a way of getting not just potentially like hearing a talking head talk about, you know,

murder true yeah i was gonna say true crime right right we can actually get a cinematic experience in our ear holes while we drive to work which is pretty amazing right um elissa what's going on in the chat anything well i just wanted to share a couple of hilarious ideas that the chat has had to edit out of our lives oh yes please yes we want to edit out high cholesterol chronic illness allergies

uh asmr eating videos and then somebody's been kidding generational wealth so everybody's having hilarious ideas i love that some people are taking this very seriously and thinking of really good things and i was like i just don't want to shave anymore right it is interesting having we don't have the power we talked about

Going from the Cold War to the alien, it's like there's things we want to get rid of, but we don't know right now. What the effects would be. Yeah. Yeah. Something you may hate, like hair.

Yeah. Who knows what the repercussions of that are after it's gone. It makes me think of everything everywhere all at once. If you haven't gone to see that movie, absolutely go see that movie. It is fantastic. You have to, this is not really a spoiler alert at all, but like they, they, it's a, it's kind of a multiverse type movie and they find like,

a a version of humanity that has like hot dog fingers because of some something that happened zillion years ago when we were evolving and now we all have hot dog fingers and it's just that thought of like yeah i guess that could have been a possibility at some point yeah like when you're on a time machine and you change something yeah yeah like every episode of doctor who

Right. It just makes you think. Awesome. Well, thank you both for joining us. I highly enjoyed this. Like truly. Yeah. Thank you. Do we have anything else we need to check in with a chat or chat is looking good. Great. Okay.

Then I think it is time to wrap things up. If you're listening, please make sure to like and subscribe wherever you are listening. Please follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook under the handle at CM Anthology, or check us out online at www.curiousmatterpodcast.com. Curious Matter Anthology will be back on June 14th. We have about a

month before we are back. And that will be with our next episode star Hunter part one. And of course we'll be back that night at 6 30 PM Pacific time live on Twitch doc, uh, twitch.tv slash Evan funny for our next F after show right here.

Our technical director tonight is Death Queen Vex. The Curious Matter After Show is presented by FN Funny and the Knightsville Workshop and distributed by Realm Media. So until next time, I am Alison Hayslip. This is the solicitive reason we've been your hosts. I've just had the best time tonight. Everybody have a wonderful evening. And of course, thank you for listening. The Fable and Folly Network, where fiction producers flourish.

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