November 25, 2024 • 55 mins
When it comes to iconic ‘90s TV roles, it’s difficult to top Winnie Cooper - and the actress who gave the character life, Danica McKellar, is just as impressive!
Danica shares the story of how she landed the beloved gig on The Wonder Years at just 12 years old and why many of her co-stars were just pieces of tape.
And after a deep discussion comparing Winnie and Topanga, and their similar first IRL kisses, we learn how Danica found a new sense of purpose and identity after taking…a math class. All this and more on a holiday ready episode of - Pod Meets World!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I went to two concerts in three days.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh god, that sounds o me left your house twice.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I left my house twice in one weekend, both times
getting back home after midnight and then waking up at
five point thirty in the morning to do radiation.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
But it was so worth it because I got to
see Sabrina Carpenter's Short and Sweet tour, which I the
her La shows were how she ended the tour, so
I couldn't believe that I wait until the very end.
I actually all of October, I kept thinking, if there's
any time I have to take off and fly to
(01:06):
somewhere else in the country and see the show early,
I'm going to try to see the show early. And
it just didn't work out that way with everything we
have going on, really, so.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
I was going to say, the one thing you have
in abundance is extra time, Danie, I know anything about you.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
You've just got like your schedules.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Wide open, wide open, calendar, wide open.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
But the tour was so great.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Sue Will's wife Susan went with me last night. I
brought some other friends with me, and I brought some
other girlfriends on Friday night, so we saw her at
Crypto Arena, which formerly known as Staple Center. Unbelieved that
this is the way. It's not the Staple Center anymore.
It's not the Staple Center anymore. It's Crypto dot Com Arena.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
It rolls as to tom different corporations.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I also, I do want you guys to know that
I win the Crypto bought Staples. I was like, give
me a break, I will never ever call it Crypto
dot com Arena.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
Well, guess who flipped a switch.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I remember going to a Springsteen concert there when it
was first Staples and him doing a whole bit from
the stage like why is this place called Staples, And
he's like, I can't wait to meet mister Staples. It's
like this old bit because it was so weird back there.
It was one of the first to be named after
a corporation. But I'm totally right now it's crypt Now
it's Crypto, So look at it this way. In another
(02:25):
month it's gonna be worth half as much.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
So nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
That'll be great, But I do the show is absolutely amazing.
Next year she'll be doing a European leg of the tour.
If you have not seen the show. It's really truly
so beautiful. The set is gorgeous. She does these very
cool vignettes. You know, writer, you got to know Sabrina
(02:51):
very well. You know, she's an incredible storyteller, she's a
great actor. Nothing with her is like, oh yeah, we'll
just do the very basic pop star thing. Like everything
is well thought out and it's just so well done.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I you know, sobbed through the first show and then
actually really got to enjoy the second show. And she
is annoyed with me because I keep talking about the
Forum cake.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
So if you've ever been in the Forum.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Club, which is like the lounge as part of the Forum, No,
we're not.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Cool enough to have them.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Now, I don't think I've ever been.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Probably every time you go to before, but literally don't
think it would have been in the Forum.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Okay, So when artists perform there, they make a cake,
a big cake with the artist's face on it. And
for ten years now a little over ten years, I
have known Sabrina And every time I've been to the
Forum in those ten years and I see an artist,
I take a picture of their cake, and every time
(03:57):
I send it to Sabrina and I say, I can't
wait for the Sabrina cake. I can't wait until someday
we're eating the Sabrina cake. And so I'm gonna start
crying me back. But so when I knew she was
doing the Forum I was so excited about the Forum cake.
I didn't even eat the cake last night. It's not
about eating cake. It's about I don't even like cake.
(04:18):
It's about the fact that this was such a milestone
and to see her reach this level and to have been,
you know, just knowing she would get there eventually, and
continuing to take pictures. And then yesterday someone told me,
she said, oh Danielle.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Cares about is this stupid cake?
Speaker 6 (04:35):
But literally a superstar. Also, I also a gazillion records.
I was nominated for Acre face is on a freaking cake. Thanks,
but I've got a sheet cake with my face on it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
But it really represented something to me, and I was
very excited. So literally I walked into the Forum Club
yesterday and I was.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
Like, I gotta find the cake.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So out we'll post the picture of the Sabrina Carpenter
Forum Cake on our Instagram for you all to see.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
I'll go to the next one. I want to go
to her Tall tour. I think that's going to be
I can't wait for that. That's the one I'm looking for.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Good lucks, little short and sweet girls. We don't get
very tall, we definitely get it.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I want that cake. I remember working with her the
first first year, you know, meeting her. She was probably twelve,
she was thirteen, Yeah, she was thirteen when okay, but
I came and visited. I remember the there's a photo
of like, you know, because I just came and visited
this the pilot and it was like, oh, I meet
the new girls or whatever, and there's a photo of
the two of us. And then I got to work
with her and actually, you know, act with her, and
(05:40):
I was like, oh, she's just such.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
A great actress.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
But I had no idea about the singing until I
was directing the episode that was nineteen sixty three where
it was like we went back in time to the
sixties and at the table read, she just sang acapella.
This you know, they had written lyrics, but they didn't
have a song, and she sang acappella and it was like,
oh that was that was perfect because I was worried, like, oh,
we have to, you know, figure out a song and
(06:04):
incorporate it. And Ray Colecord, the late great Ray colecrd
uh just I met with him afterwards. I was like, so,
what are we doing about this song? He's like, oh, well,
I just wrote down what she sang, like the notes
she sang. He's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna write the
song to what she did a cappella because she was
just that good and and I remember talking to her
about music. I even like, I wrote her like this
(06:24):
long Spotify list with like the reasons why I was
including all these songs that I could tell. I was like,
you were going to be like, I'm already you're a
great actress. But like I could tell, it was like
you you have this musical thing too, you can do
it all. Yeah, I wonder because I remember then, like
a couple of years later, she still had the playlist
on her Spotify.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
She was really nice. There's so few of us triple
threats like that out there. Yeah, you know, we got
to stick together. We got to stick together support one another.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Welcome to pod Meets World. I'm Danielle Fischel.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I'm right strong, and I'm Wilfordell.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
For one hundred and fourteen episodes of television over five years.
Our guest this week was one of the most iconic
pop culture characters.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Of the late eighties and early nineties.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
It would have been hard to find someone who didn't
know or a boy who didn't love Winnie Cooper, the
unattainable love interest for Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years,
and those who knew her in real life figured out
she was just as kind, impressive, and beautiful as she
was on screen. And we didn't do a ton of
research into this. But she's also probably our only guest
(07:39):
to have a mathematical theorem with her name on it.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Don't worry, Blake, Senate, there's still time.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yes, she is an actual genius who outside of Hollywood,
graduated UCLA with their highest honors in mathematics, and once
co authored a paper titled Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity
for Pharaoh magnetic Ashkin Teller's models on Z to the second.
While I genuinely have no idea what any of those
words meant, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Her conclusions are ridiculous in that paper.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
Oh yeah, is that your favorite of person?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
No, I just don't know how she You know, I'm
all for a theorem, but I don't know where she
came up with this one.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
This was just she was z in the second. Is
that what you.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
Keep? You know you keep?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Seriously, come on, come on, rookie mistake.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
She appeared in the movie Sidekicks, and was seen on
TV shows like The West Wing and Big Bang Theory,
and has since become a Queen of Christmas, starring in
some of your favorite festive flicks, including a new one
just around the corner.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Please welcome to Pod meets World.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
We're getting by with a little help from our friend
Danica McKellar.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
So good to see you.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
Good to see you too.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh my gosh, I'm sure a lot of our listeners
are brains are exploding with a nostalgia seeing the four
of us together on their screens.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
Oh my gosh. That cool. So good to see you, guys,
So good to you.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So I wanted to talk to you about the fact
that is this correct that your very first job was
The Twilight Zone, but your second role ever was Winnie
Cooper on The Wonder Years at twelve.
Speaker 7 (09:24):
Sort of. I did two episodes of the Twilight Zone,
and I'd done some commercials, some mashup commercials, but that
was my first like theatrical like non guest dying role.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Wowt pretty good one to get.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
Yeah, all say, yeah, what was the audition process?
Speaker 7 (09:39):
Like, I mean, it was kind of a last minute
thing because I was I didn't have many credits to
my name at all, and so they had done this
search for the character. And I remember the winning Cooper
was supposed to just be a guest role on the
first episode.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Oh come on, really, yeah.
Speaker 7 (09:54):
Otherwise.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
You gonna say, like Topanga, Wow, Oh.
Speaker 7 (09:59):
Is that the for you too? Yes, Oh my gosh,
that's amazing. I didn't know that. Yeah. So that's the
only reason that my mom left me audition for it,
because at the time we were not considering anything that
might disrupt our lives. Really, like that was not uh
it was guest roles commercials only, no feature films, no
series regulars, and so this was just the That's why
(10:19):
I got to audition for it. That's why I was
even eligible to audition for it in terms of it
because I, like I said, I had no credits. So anyway,
I I auditioned, bought my sister auditioned for it as well.
It came down to the two of us and for
this for this one time guest rule relatively small part
on the first episode, if you remember, Winnie Cooper was
kind of seen from afar. There wasn't like there was
a kiss at the end, but there wasn't like a
(10:41):
lot of lines. And yeah, I came down to the
two of us, and I remember they Fred Savage lived
in Chicago at the time, and so they'd flown him
out to do like a chemistry read and so Crystal
and I both did that, my sister and I and
they came down to the two of us, and and
then they said, well, we're giving the role to Danica,
but if we get picked up for Stu, then we'd
love to give a role to Crystal as well. And
(11:03):
then during the pilot of The Wonder Years, they said, look,
the network loves the chemistry between Danik and Fred and
we want to offer her a series regular like if
we get picked up. And so the time, like at
that point, my mom had a chance to meet some
of the other moms, Juanne Savage, Jane Saviano, these women
who really cared about their kids being kids. They weren't
stage moms, you know, So she felt comfortable with it,
(11:27):
but she had she got me this fancy lawyer to
put in a loophole because I ever wanted to not
do it anymore, like you can get out because it's
a seven year contract, and so she she protected me,
but I never wanted to quit.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
So, oh my gosh.
Speaker 7 (11:42):
And then they did write a role for Crystal Becky Slater.
She played the Bred's or Kevin's nemesis, and she did
nine episodes, I think, which was cool.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
So what was your life on set like then as
a kid.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Did you go to traditional school as well or did
you were you just schooled on set?
Speaker 7 (11:59):
I did both. I went back and forth. So I
went to Harvard Westlake. Okay, first it was Westlake then
and became Harvard Westlake. And I would go to school
when I wasn't working, and then I'd run my school
work to set when I was working. And we did
it like that. It was just back and forth.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
It was it was.
Speaker 7 (12:17):
It trained me to be able to like compartmentalize my brain.
So I mean just being on as you guys know,
being doing school on set is like that anyway, because
you're doing this scene and then you take a break
for twenty minutes. Now you're doing a history test or
like math concepts, go back and now this is the
emotional part of the scene whatever. Like you just learned
(12:38):
to like be here now and then be here now,
and it trains you. It's funny because so the movies
that I do now, these romantic comedies in the Christmas movies,
first for Hamewark Channel, now for a Great American Family Channel.
We shoot these movies in fourteen days. Sometimes it's fourteen
or fifteen days. It's a crazy schedule, and you have
to be like, Okay, I'm here doing this scene now,
and then now we're doing the end of the movie,
(12:58):
and now we're doing this little blip from like midway
through the movie. And as you guys know, it just
takes this kind of this focus and you have to
be able to just be where you are now and
completely shut out all the rest of reality so that
you can do your job well. And then later Galla
gets cut together and it's great.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So the show was such a massive hit for ABC.
It was always in the top thirty, and it won
an Emmy for Best Comedy Series in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
Was it difficult.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
For you to have a normal childhood or do you
feel like you got the best of both.
Speaker 7 (13:31):
Worlds Alsiman, We had a very normal childhood because, for example,
when we won the Emmy for Best Comedy Series, my
sister and I were not there at the awards ceremony.
We were on vacation with my dad because we had
this vacation plan. He's a busy real estate guy. He
didn't have flexibility, and so we had to either go
to the Emmys or go on this camping river rafting
(13:54):
trip thing with my dad. And we did that, and
we talked about it as a family. It's like, no,
this is more important. And I remember I remember being
in this tiny little motel room the night before we
hit the river, watching the Emmys on this like it
had to have been a TV from the nineteen seventies.
My dad was always very frugal, so you know, we
didn't stay in like it's retain this hotel and everybody
was like this old yellow little TV. And we watched
(14:16):
The Wonderers win and we jumped up and down the
bed like yay. We woke up next morning, like five
in the morning and hit the river and had the
trip of our lives. I mean, I remember so many
details about that trip. I remember solving like these minute
mysteries at night around the campfire. I remember picking blackberries
on the side of the river, and that just is
so emblematic of how I was raised. That the Hollywood
(14:37):
stuff was not this. There wasn't a big emphasis on
how important it was, or how glamorous it was, or
how you know, how that defined me at all. I'm
so lucky to have had parents who weren't overly impressed
with it all, and who really cared about us being
kids first. I mean, you know, as evanced by the
fact that I wasn't allowed to audition for series regulars.
I mean, my mom and my dad both had a
(14:59):
sense of like, Okay, this is all great, but we're
not going to just take over her childhood.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
So where did the desire to do it in the
first place come from? Was it just like local theater
or acting classes? How did you and your sister get
into it?
Speaker 7 (15:11):
Oh, my gosh. I mean, my mom was a professional
dancer before we were born, and so she had a
dance studio that we took lessons in when we were
very young. And she was also friends with Leslie and Warren,
who is an actress who did like the original Cinderella.
Speaking of Cinderella, I have to reach out to her
actually about that. Anyway, Leslie and Warren wonderful woman, and
(15:34):
she The story goes that I was sitting on the
floor of my mom's dance studio, staring at myself in
the mirror, making faces at myself, and then Leslie said, oh,
that's an actress. No, that was And then and then
my mom she moved us up to Los Angeles because
she was getting into like producing music videos and stuff.
(15:57):
And it's funny because that never really took off. But
at Leslie's suggestion, my sister and I tried acting classes
and we loved it. We went to Lee Strasburg and Stupid.
It's so much fun. It was singing and dancing, acting,
it was it was camera work, it was theater work.
It was like an all day thing on Saturdays. And
I remember my mom said that she felt back. She's like,
I'm dropping them off for so long. But the end
of the day we didn't want to go. Oh we
(16:18):
had so much fun. So then we did some theater
there when we were like six and seven years old,
and then after that we got an agent came to
one of those shows and started doing commercials and there
you go.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Wow, where was your first commercial?
Speaker 7 (16:33):
It was for a nineteen eighty five Volkswagen Golf car
and it was I was just a family getting out
of the car. It was supposed to show how big
the car was on the inside, because I guess they
were known for being small cars, Like no, no, there's lots
of space, and so we all like piled out of
this car like a clothing car.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah you think, you think of exactly, but yeah.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
I mean you have to pause to see my face
because I remember my mom saying, oh, the mother in
this new head of find the camera because she's like
getting stuff out of the trunk and she turns her
head towards the camera to get into stuff out and
I was like, just I had no clue. And basically
I was like it was like she was holding this
speech ball and I had pigtails. You could see meet
my pigtails from behind the ball. And then she moved
the ball and there I was with.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Pause, there's there's her face. Yeah, that's so funny.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So again, similar to me and Topanga, your first episode
had a kiss on screen.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
What was that experience?
Speaker 7 (17:29):
Like for you, Well, that was my first kiss in
real life too. Yes, how old were you when I
had that?
Speaker 5 (17:35):
Twelve?
Speaker 7 (17:36):
Okay, wow, parallel lives, Yes, it was, it was.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
It was.
Speaker 7 (17:40):
It was exciting and nerve wracking. I mean at the
time I had a massive crush on Fred, so that
worked out. But it was embarrassing because you're like a
preteen about to have your first kiss and there's all
these people watching.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
Yes, including all your family.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
Oh yes, my family and not all my family well
well eventually my family. It was there at that moment
outside with us, with the Harper's Woods and the village,
the uh, the video village was right there, and like
everybody was just there, you know, and trying to have
my first kiss over here people can we.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
And you both kissed the Savage for your first time.
I mean just the parallels are pretty amazing.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Yes, so funny.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
My my parents were there, but also my grandparents were there,
so I was literally was like it truly felt like
this is not usually how I would have chosen for
a first kiss.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I think this brings up an important distinction though, is
that we were a multi camera sit and Wonder Years
was single camera, so it's actually, you know, even though
we have a lot of parallels, you were living a
very different day to day lifestyle. You were, you know,
you would shoot a scene, you'd get the pages, you know,
and then shoot that scene that did never have to
look at it again, whereas we would be rehearsing, you know,
(18:54):
all week long, and then it would just be.
Speaker 7 (18:55):
Okay, did you rehearse the kiss? Like, did you kiss
in the rehearsals?
Speaker 5 (18:59):
Yes, for at least the run throughs. We didn't kiss
necessarily all day.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
During the the rehearsals, but I think it run throughs
we did the kiss, and then on tape night it
was still like a really.
Speaker 7 (19:11):
Big deal, yeah, right, because then you've got the live audience.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Right exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We had two hundred people in the audience, my grandparents included.
Speaker 7 (19:19):
Yes, we were outside in the woods, you know, sitting
on that rock, and and and also and Fred and
I both wear glasses, and we didn't have our glasses on.
We were shooting, and we didn't work. We were like
too young for contact or something anyway, so we couldn't.
Really it was like this haze of people, which is
actually probably good yestive as clearly because just a crowd
(19:40):
of people just you know.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Watching Where's kiss? First kiss should be blurry? I mean
I should be blurry. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Where did you go to shoot Wonder Years? You were
obviously Yeah, but were you?
Speaker 7 (19:53):
I mean we shot we were we had since we
had sound stages in Culver City eventually, but we shot
the the neighborhoods were in Burbank and which is Los
Angeles for those listening, part of Los Angeles. And yeah,
we just had we had locations, we were all over.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Wow, that's very and so what Yeah, what was your
your typical day then? Like I know, on a single
cam it kind of changes day to day and your
location changes.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
But we've talked a lot.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
For our listeners about what our schedule was. We started
on our week started on Fridays, we would do a
table read, we'd rehearse for you.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
Every day was probably very different.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
But could you walk us through a pretty typical day
for you on set?
Speaker 7 (20:35):
Yeah. For the days that I was working kids, I
would literally work maybe two days out of the weekend.
The other three days I was going to my school.
I was bouncing back and forth and back forth. The
thing that was unsettling about that, honestly, is that like
they would say, okay, well there's a history of test
next Friday, and I would have no idea if I
was going to be there for it or not. All right,
I wasn't giving my schedules till sometimes the night before.
I wouldn't know if I was working.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
So he teach you to be like, you know, yeah,
that's flexible.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
And uh and ready for anything. A lot of interesting
skill there and this young person.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
But then you guys would have on super early morning
calls sometimes right like you would be yeah, sure.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
We would always do like too bad. It wasn't well,
it wasn't as a as a kid, they didn't bring
in too early. They would bring the parents in early summer.
Dan and Ali played the parents. I'd get there and
they were already they'd already shot sometimes by so I
don't weber being called earlier than eight as a kid,
whereas you know, Allie Mills would have been there at
six thirty and here in magup right, and now that's me,
(21:34):
now I get it was not It was not too early.
It was pretty reasonable. And we only worked nine and
a half hours, and that was including lunch and including
the three hours of school, so we were and they
did a really good job of protecting us, so we
were not overworked and and but but that meant that
we often didn't shoot with each other. So another thing
that's very it's different from what you guys experienced, is
(21:55):
that because it was single, Cameron because he had to
get three hours, had to get three hours to school
work done. And that was the most challenging brand because
he was in so like basically all those scenes, and
and so I was often on my close ups, he
was never there. And then photo and the foul worked
a lot too and also needed uh schoolwork. So sometimes
(22:18):
it was a single, clean single I'd be literally working
to a piece of tape. And I remember there's one scene,
there's one episode of It's called a Mad Mad Madline
World where it was a field trip we were we
shot at a Griffith Observatory and I remember my close
up in this scene with like five people, and there's
four pieces of tape and the trew smile and pieces
on I knew which tape was each person in the scene.
(22:39):
And Kirk Trutner, who read the voice of the narration
while we were shooting it, he would he did all
the different voices and he would change his voice slightly.
He was super talented voice actor that we were lucky
to have on set with us because he was the
voice of the narration. He would later be recorded by
Daniel Stern. He was there to guide us through it
and you Also, the other interesting skills that that I
(23:00):
you guys probably didn't have to learn is because of narration,
is that when you're not the one having the thoughts,
you just have to kind of suspend yourself in that moment. Yeah, right,
suspended where you are as Bread was getting to act
the thought that we're hearing.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
Correct, you couldn't even act it.
Speaker 7 (23:17):
Yeah, why I wasn't having those thoughts. I was just right.
It's like an avatar that's kind of waiting for the
next instruction. Hey, in the moment, there's almost like, you know,
like you're shooting something and they're like, wait, come in,
we fix a hair like wall, but you're still in
the middle of the scene and they walk off there
and continue. It's like being that suspending moment. So that's
a lot in those kinds of situations where there's some
(23:40):
shuan set that fixed something in the background. We have
to keep shooting, and I just have to stay where
I am.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Well, something we all had to learn holding for laughs
because that's c you have to sit there. And what
you realize, you know, especially as a kid or an
actor who's never done that, you just want to keep
playing the scene. But what you realize is that everybody
sort of like turns off and just holds for to
laugh because if you keep playing the scene, the laugh
will actually stop. They'll think something else is going to happen.
Speaker 7 (24:04):
Right, And at the beginning of whatever you were saying.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
You know, and I've seen it now, like you work
with you know, new actors that haven't done it, and
you have to teach them like no, no, no, no, it's
like it's like reality stops and it's actually more realistic
for you to just hold your facial expression for thirty
seconds or whatever. It's so weird.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
You come to realize though, that that's that's the audience's line.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yeah, so, I mean, that's that's the laugh. Is their line.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
So you're just essentially reacting to another to their yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Giving their line out and all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
But I'm curious, So you the show is obviously a
smash hit, but this is all pre internet and pre
social media. When did you realize kind of what you
were doing in the culturalegeist.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
It's funny because in six seasons and the last season,
somebody on set asked me what it was like to
be America's sweetheart. And I had no idea what they
were talking about. It was clueless, Like what what do
you what do you mean? I mean, I was so
busy working, but mostly going to school, you know, a studying.
I mean I I you know, I went to this
(25:09):
difficult I mean, Harvard was no walk to the park
and and you know it prepared me for being a
math major at U c l A afterwards and all
all the rest of it. So it was it was
I was so busy doing that and I was not.
I was a very I was a good girl. I
was I didn't go to parties and stuff. I was
just And even if I did go to a party,
like nobody was offering me drugs, Like nobody because they
(25:30):
just could tell I really couldn't.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
This is this is a waste of drugs.
Speaker 7 (25:41):
So it's sorority party is at U c l A.
I was like, and I would go to a fraternity
party like maybe once a year, and like, oh, this
is why I don't usually go. I would take a
beer cant like because I was so people would just
pressure you, Oh why aren't you drinking? So I take
your can, dump it out filled up with water, in
the bathroom with one of these frat houses, and then
drink that all night. And then people would not write.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
People wouldn't bother you.
Speaker 7 (26:03):
Then they beat they'd leave me alone. Yeah. So I
was just always a good two shoes, which I have
no problem with. I e. I wasn't mean or judgmental people.
I just like to you.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Didn't even like cigarette smoking. I remember that distinctly.
Speaker 7 (26:19):
Yes, Oh my gosh. Okay, so there was So we
have a mutual friend Jason Marson, who I think was
trying to set us up. But you smoked, and I.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Told you, yeah, You're like I'm not going to date
you because you smoke cigarettes.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
And I was like, all right, I will continue dating
camera lalth.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
Not you don't get any of my camel.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Bucks, then exactly I could have showered you in camel cash,
but whatever. Yeah, it's fine. I could have made it
rain with the camel cash.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
But no, it is like no yet, No, I remember that.
It was like, it's not it's not going to happen.
You smoke, and I was like, all right.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
You'll be happy to know Will is ten years free
of cigarettes, so everyone can enjoye ten years.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
It's been really difficult. Breathe better.
Speaker 7 (27:02):
You probably exercise more, Yeah, but at what cost? So
I tried a cigarette once when I was eighteen, and
it was like so good and nutty and satisfying. I
was like, okay, I'm never touching that again.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
It was exactly the opposite reaction.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
I supposed not like it the first time you try it,
and its like if I like it the first time
I try it, then that's bad news.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
That's bad news for you.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
I can see why people do this.
Speaker 7 (27:32):
Yeah, I feel this, and I have been I better
not yep.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
So when Wonder Years ended, did you find it hard
to be seen as anything other than Winnie Cooper? Did
you have a hard time breaking out of the like
child actor stigma?
Speaker 7 (28:00):
Well that's a good question. I mean, I I still
am recognized Cooper like that's so. Did I have a
hard time breaking out of it?
Speaker 5 (28:07):
I never did, never did, but it's okay.
Speaker 7 (28:10):
It was. It was confusing when I first went So
I the Wonder Years ended and I started UCLA within
a few months of each other, and so I was like, Okay,
new chapter of my life. I'm moving on with my life,
and everyone else will do that with me too.
Speaker 5 (28:24):
They're all going to move on to.
Speaker 7 (28:26):
Everywhere I went on campus whatever, people like, oh my gosh, hey, Whinny,
where's Fred? And you know the riche Kevin and and
uh and that girl friend that show. Oh my gosh, dude,
look it's that girl from that show. It's like over
and you guys are I'm sure that guy from that
show that girlfriend right, yeah, oh yeah, you're like grew up,
you know, and you're you're that girl played Winny and
and so I had a big turning point at UCLA
(28:49):
where I kind of like I just needed to know
who else I was. And at the time I was
considering being a film major. And then I had taken
a math class. I always loved a good challenge, and
so I took this mathlas multi variable calculus because I'd
taken single variable calculus in a Harbor West life, and
so that was the math that I passed into. I'm like,
oh my gosh, college math, this is gonna be so hard.
(29:09):
But just I just I just have to see what
it is like. Let's just see what that would be like, right,
And I did really really well, and uh the first
midterm I studied so hard too, I really I put
everything into it and it paid off. First midterm, Remember,
I thought, oh my gosh, I failed. Right, I got
a twenty two out of forty. But apparently it was
(29:29):
some sort of weader test because the professor like grafted
the scores on the chalkboard. There was one twenty two.
This is a class of one hundred and sixty three people.
There was one twenty two if there were two fifteen's
and the rest was nine and below. I'm like, I'm
looking at my test, like that's that's me, And there's
all these people who looked much more like math people
than me. I don't know how to say it, but
(29:50):
they just I thought, well, those people, I'm sure I
can tell that they're gonna.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
Yeah, they're gonna aice this.
Speaker 7 (29:54):
Yeah, exactly. They all look like they belong here, and
I do not feel like I belong in this class.
And that was a good lesson for me, like, oh, okay,
I guess maybe I do belong to this class. The
next day, I had someone tap me on the shoulder
in that class and say excuse me under that girl.
And I figured they were gonna say from the morning,
who got the twenty two? I was like, it is me.
(30:16):
And that teacher told me, he's like, you have a gift.
You need to pursue this. You know, you guys weren't
supposed to do this well and what's going on? And
so it was like it was just music to my ears.
I felt so from from being associated with something. It
was over. It was the one years was done and
so and it makes you, as you, guys, I'm sure
(30:37):
have experienced to some extent at some point. Who else
would I be if I didn't have this character? What
would my value be if I didn't have this show
and this character that everybody loves, like who also want
to be? And so I got to find out by
I just I decided to quit acting because I was
still trying to do like I done a TV movie
up in Vancouver and the Moment of Truth movies on NBC.
(30:59):
You guys did any of those anyway? I did one
and then I came back and it was this was
before I took that math class, and I was like, okay,
I'm ready to to do a makeup mid term and
they're like, no, you can't do that. We give you
an incomplete I'm like what I was like, Oh wait,
maybe you can't really straddle these two worlds. So anyway,
as I really fell in love with math, I was like, Okay,
I'm not going to be a film major. I can
do that later if I want to, and you know,
(31:21):
learned behind the scenes, behind the camera stuff, and I'm
just going to do math. I'm just going to see
what that is. And it felt so good. I wore
no makeup to school. I would wear like jeans and
a T shirt and my hair and pointing tail, and
I wore my backpack with two straps and I was over.
And I would walk to camp like across campus, and
I just felt so a lot of the professors and
(31:42):
then the math apartment didn't even have TVs. They had no
idea who I was. And it was perfect. I went
from that girl on that show to like that girl
who helped me pass calculus because I was I was
a tutor in the math apart I met at that
point and it just felt so right. I felt really good,
and it gave me this whole other base. But I
remember it was interesting when I came back to acting
and I would go into auditions and I would have
(32:04):
these casting directories. I'm not going to name any names.
I won't who were like, oh, so, how have you been?
You know. That was the time of I'm not a
writer and like the shoplifting and all that stuff and
the child stress did not have a good name, right,
you've been like everything? Okay, I'm like, yeah, no, no,
we haven't seen you in a while. I'm like, yeah,
yeh know. I was at college like, oh, that's that's great.
Speaker 5 (32:27):
For you, for you who are.
Speaker 7 (32:29):
Like a theater major. It was like and I loved
this moment, just this little moment in time so delicious,
Like actually, mathematics and I it's like, what you know,
for some reason, I just loved that stilly. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Well, I'm curious. I have to ask why maths.
Speaker 7 (32:47):
Because it gave me this other sense of identity. It
gave me because it's hard, it's challenging, and I was
doing well at it. So I felt valuable for something
that had nothing to do with winning Cooper I got.
I felt the value of like I felt like kick
ass for something that's just in my brain something that I.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
I mean, were you were you attracted to math your
whole life, because again I mean, you could.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Have done that with it. You could have been an archaeologists.
You could have been And so why maths?
Speaker 7 (33:12):
Well, I love puzzles and any times I love solving things,
I always have to this day I do all The
New York Times calls you the connections and Wortle and
me too, selling me yeah all that stuff. Connections is
actually right now my favorite. I pretty much addicted to it.
And if I do it after a minute, like turn
it the next day, I don't have it. I've already
done it. Anyway, I love puzzles. I love, I just love.
(33:36):
I love the beauty of math. Math is not a science.
It's a language. So it's much more fiwer than the sciences.
Sciences are like open term interpretation. People keep discovering things
that disprove what they used to know, and like that's
that's kind of defined science. And so with math, it's
really an exploration of the human mind in a lot
of ways. It's the patterns and the games that we
(33:59):
get to play. It's like check simple rules, but the
strategies are endless and so with math, it's these simple rules.
There's like seven axioms or something, and then everything is
built from there. And I homeschool my son, Draco, who's fourteen,
and we're now doing algebra two. It's so much fun.
By the way, I've written math books now, but I
read that night to my son.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Bathtime math time is a regular in our house.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Really.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
Yes, I love that.
Speaker 7 (34:24):
I love that. Yes I have. I have eleven math books.
They're all at mckellermath dot com. You can go there
and you can there's this big slider button. I'm very
proud of where depending on the age of your child,
I have the book that I recommend her books and yeah,
I've got I got let's see, do I have that.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
One bathtime math time? My son loves.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yes, there it is, that's where has to start.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Yeah, I'm still there.
Speaker 7 (34:47):
Yeah, and I teach I have like this one is
for multiplication and division, so third and fourth grade, the
times machine, times tables, and yes there is time travel
because you know, I mean, I'm an entertainer, so I
like to make math entertaining. It's it's about you know,
stories and just you know, like I come up and
(35:07):
have like different rhymes and things to help kids memorize
their multiplication facts, which is super important.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Four did you get rid of that?
Speaker 8 (35:15):
One?
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Was?
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Four? Yes?
Speaker 7 (35:20):
Trust you?
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yes it was full.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
Never trusted. I've never trusted math.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Would you say you have like an expertise in math? Like,
what would your expertise be if you had to say, one.
Speaker 7 (35:32):
Teaching math to kids, making math fun, and teaching math
through stories and characters and making it not scary anymore,
it would be what I would say. My my superpower is.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
See my mom would have really benefited from you had
you been able to help my mom when she was
a kid. My mom somehow ended up in the wrong
math class in high school. She like, I think, walked
into the wrong classroom and no one ever or noticed
she wasn't supposed to be there, and the teacher it
was like algebra, and and she literally thought it was
(36:06):
a joke. When they started adding letters into this, she
was like, Oh, that's funny. Is what's that X doing
in there? And then she was like, oh, other people
are answering this. And she just thought she was She
hadn't taken the class that led before it. She just
thought she was incapable of learning, and she just stayed
the entire year and failed, and from that moment on
(36:27):
truly traumatized by math. She was like, I'm afraid and
I can't do it well.
Speaker 7 (36:33):
Like I said, it's a language, and if it's not
translated properly, then it's like reading Chinese, and it's scary.
It's scary when you're doing something that's so foreign. So
that's why I try to make it like not foreign
and make it just bring it into the world of kids,
make it feel like kindergarten, even when you're learning algebra.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
And I read I read the other day that in
heart at Harvard they didn't teach calculus when Harvard was
founded because Isaac Newton hadn't actually invented it yet, which
is just crazy when you say, really, yes, apparently this
is a this is a true statistic.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
So it's like, that's the thing about math is it changed.
It changes. I mean there's still discover for.
Speaker 7 (37:13):
New ways to to find patterns and calculat I that's amazing. Yeah,
I mean, calculus is basically the way to do It's
like you get to do infinitely many, infinitely small things.
It's kind of how I would describe calculus is it's
a better way to calculate things, Like you can you
can estimate the area under a curve, but if you
(37:34):
have the form find the exact area, which is useful
for things like if you're going to paint an area,
right you need to know how much paint you need
or whatever. And it's got a nice creamy line to it.
There's there's that calculus kind of a rudimentary explanation. That's
integral calculus. Derivative calculus is finding the slope of like
if you have a curve, like you know the silp
(37:54):
of the line is you know, run over ris or
run or whatever. But a curve. How do you define
this slope of a point on a curve, Well, it's
defined as the slope of the tangent line that touches
that point. Only think about only one line will touch
the curb at that point. If you try to like
touch a different point, well, now it's a different point,
different different slope.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Right.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
So that's that's that's the first calculus that you learn
is derivative calculus. Then the integral one that teaches the
area under a crib. I mean, I could talk about
this more than my brain. You brought me on to
talk about I've not written a Caculus book. Maybe someday.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (38:31):
Now you're written up through high school geometry.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
So okay, Well you've got plenty of time, so you can.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
You can.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
Maybe the next one will be calculus. You can.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
You have your whole life ahead ahead of you to
write as many books as you want.
Speaker 5 (38:45):
So going back to Winnie.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Cooper just for a second, I wanted to ask you
if you we have another thing in common that's not
necessarily a negative thing, but I do wonder your thoughts
on it that our characters were written by men to
be kind of these perfect, dreamlike characters meant for the
main characters. Looking back, now, what are your thoughts and
(39:08):
feelings on Winnie Cooper.
Speaker 7 (39:11):
Well, she I don't actually see her as perfect because
she had a lot going on, like her parents separated
in one of the episodes.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
And oh really, yeah, I'm just look.
Speaker 7 (39:26):
Yeah. And she and Winnie Cooper had that one episode
called the Accident where she starts dating somebody who's not
necessarily from the right side of the tracks, and he's
a little reckless and they get in a car accident,
and uh, and and and that was kind of played
as when he is trying to deal with her parents,
you know, separating and doesn't really know how. But I
(39:50):
think Winnie Cooper was mostly I think whether she was
perfect or not seen from afar definitely put on a
pedestal and not and not understood. But I think Kevin
not understanding when he is. Part of what people can
relate to is it's difficult to understand the opposite sex
at any age, especially when you're just first entering into
relationships with the opposite sex. It's like, what, who is this?
(40:13):
Why do they not respond the way I do to things?
And hack when I said this, it was misinterpreted and
I don't understand. And it's like remember that book men
are from Mars, women are from Venus, that that whole
thing of weight. We're speaking different languages. It seems like
we're speaking the same language, but we're not. That whole
revelation starts, I guess in middle school, and that I
think is part of why when he was put on
(40:35):
a pedestal. And and yeah, like to your point, Daniel,
it's it's the guy's point of view in both our shows,
how like, how how do I deal with this alien?
Speaker 8 (40:45):
Female race, Yes exactly, but I think importantly, like you know,
the Cory tapang of storyline, pretty quickly became that they
were meant for each other.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
And so in a lot of ways, that's a completely
different art. Because Kevin and Winnie did not get enough together,
which were great, I mean, that was just yeah, but
I was that always the plan.
Speaker 7 (41:07):
I mean, in my fans, fans still upset on me,
I'm like.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I'm sure, like it's your fault, yeah, like how come.
Speaker 7 (41:13):
You didn't you and Kevin didn't have together? Like oh
my gosh, oh my god, we're still talking about this. Well,
you know, it was it was the wonder years was
I think also because it wasn't like a three camera
show and it wasn't as like everything didn't all work
out on the end. It often didn't work out. I
think it was trying to show something that more people
(41:35):
can realistically, I guess relate to, because most of our
lives don't out the way we wanted them too or
thought they were going to. And so in that same way,
Kevin and when he did not end up together, I
like to say, though, look, all we know is what happened.
That what the narrator said happened, which is that when
he went off to the Savonne and got her degree
(41:55):
in art or whatever, and he had a baby with
his wife, and I was the first to you know,
they were the first to greet me off the plane
and all the rest of it. Yeah, well that's only
the beginning of this story. Personally, I am divorced and remarried,
and a lot of people are. And maybe Kevin and
Winnie ended up together after all.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
You never know, Yeah, you never know that.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
Yeah, it was the thing that I mean that struck
me about that show and still does so. Television is
hugely important to me, and this was one of the
first shows I can remember my mom and I every
week hopping on the couch getting under a blanket because
the show was one thing to her and something else
to me.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
It seemed to.
Speaker 4 (42:34):
Straddle that line of it had something for everybody. And
I'm curious when you were doing it, was there a
sense on the set that it was a kid show?
It was an adult show? Was I mean, was there
a vibe that you guys were feeling or was it
just the show?
Speaker 7 (42:51):
I mean, from my point of view, it was a
kid's show. I didn't get how important. The nostalgia aspect
was for adults until later. And also people would recognize
me on the street and say, oh my gosh, I
grew up in that era and they're nailing it. That's
exactly the music I should listen to. And this the
car we had. My dad had the same car, and
(43:11):
we had that same TV or like so. So I
did have a sense that they were doing a good
job of being accurate, but I didn't realize how much
it meant to people who grew up in that time.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
So we are currently very deep into a Boy Meets
World rewatch for mostly the first time. Will and I
watched the show when it was on in the nineties.
Writer never watched it, so that he's seeing it for
the first the first time. When is the last time
you watched the Wonder years?
Speaker 7 (43:37):
You know? I tried to show it to Drake. I
showed him one episode, but it was probably like four
or five years ago.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Yeah, not interested.
Speaker 7 (43:46):
That was me, Like, I'm like, no, that's that's me.
It's like really, I'm like, yeah, how come everybody else
thinks I look the same? You don't even recognize me?
Oh wait? Because we all got older and so we
all like understand the translation of what we look like now.
But yeah, he wasn't that interested. And then I did
during COVID. I remember, like when the first lockdown happened,
(44:08):
I did this thing where I had this old de
I was like desperate to help entertain people I don't know,
and I had this old DVD player, like a little
portable DVD players. So I showed the Wonders on that
and like, I think it was just the first episode
or the first few episodes, and I would like talk
about it behind the like pause it and talk about it.
I'm sure that was not like I wasn't licensed to,
(44:30):
but it was a tiny little screen. It was sort
of not necessarily in focus. And so yeah, but I haven't.
I haven't. Really. It's funny because some there there are
shows that that that mean a lot to us growing up,
and like that I would probably watch if I had time,
But I don't ever feel I don't ever crave going
back and watching that show. I don't know, but I
(44:54):
like Dan Laurie and I are good friends, and he
played the dad on the Wonder Years and I so
we keep in touch. I try to keep touch with
everyone's it's tough though, but I went out in June
to see him in a play, an off Broadway play
that he wrote, and it was in And so we
try to keep in touch in terms of watching the shows.
I should. I mean, Drake was fourteen. Now maybe he
(45:15):
would like it now.
Speaker 5 (45:15):
Yeah, maybe he didn't.
Speaker 7 (45:16):
Try.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Dan was actually on our show. Dan was on our show,
and Fred was on our show. We had had a
lot of the cast of Wonder Years came on board.
It was cool.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yeah, well we pretty much only existed because of Wonder Years.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Oh yeah, yeah, but that's what I'm wondering.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
See you finished Wonder Years and they were like, get
us another Savage, let's do another show.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
But that's what I'm wondering. I'm wondering how much Tipango
was actually kind of modeled on Winnie. Yeah, I mean
the similarities are so kind of glaring that you wonder
it's like, Okay, let's just this worked. This is going
to be the new Kevin and Winnie. Let's go from there.
Speaker 8 (45:48):
Yeah, who knows.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
I mean, it's just coming of age, like the story.
I mean, like you're always going to have a crush er,
you know, you're a character. But yeah, to keep it
going for the whole series is pretty I.
Speaker 7 (45:57):
Was jealous of Danielle like a View and like Milano
and all those people who got to a Candice Camera Brick,
who got to like wear cool, fashionable things and putanaclips
in your hair and stuff, because I was like, I'm
stuck in these nineteen sixties wower hands. I was. I
always felt so uncool. I'm like, look at them, they
are feathered bangs, and I don't have any of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Oh I bet looking back now, it's it's pretty enjoyable
to see that fashion. And you have a new Christmas movie,
a Cinderella Christmas Ball, premiering on Great American Family this month,
So tell us about that movie.
Speaker 7 (46:31):
So my new movie, my new Christmas movie, comes out
really soon. It comes out November twenty ninth. It's the
day after Thanksgiving, which for some people is the first
acceptable day to start celebrating. And it's called a Cinderella
Christmas Ball. And it's just as Christmas being magical as
you would think. I play a dance teacher from Chicago
who doesn't who never knew her birth father. My birth
(46:52):
mother like literally didn't put his name on the birth certificate.
And then she died when I was young. So at
the beginning of the movie, I find a picture that
has it's my mom that I've never seen, my birth mother.
She's wearing a wedding dress, she's holding a hand of
a man that we can't see in the picture, and
on the back it says our place, haven Shire and
the date is nine months before I was born. So
I'm like, oh my god. So it's like solving a mystery,
(47:13):
and I go to having Shire to try to find
my family, and I end up as a dance teacher.
I end up getting a job teaching the Prince of
having Shire a very important waltz for an upcoming event
that is called the Cinderella Christmas Ball, because at that
event he is to dance with different royal ladies and
then choose a bride, which is what happened in Cinderella.
So that's how I got the name. So he's helping
me with my emotional search for my family. I'm helping
(47:34):
him learn this waltz, which I used all my Dancing
with Stars knowledge to do, and so I was on
that show ten years ago. And then it's a beautiful,
happy ending that's cathartic and amazing and people are gonna
love it. And again the day after Thanksgiving November twenty
ninth on Great American Family Channel. And if people find
me on Instagram, You'll be getting ulters of updates and
I'll be posting on x during the premiere live posting
(47:57):
so people can join in. Just on the commercial break,
so someone should have watch the movie. I'll be like
giving bts and stuff.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Is he is he British? Or is this a fake
land that he's the prince.
Speaker 7 (48:10):
Of well Hanshire is a made up city, made up
country in Europe. But he actually there is a country
where everyone speaks English with British accents of chess and
he is so Oliver Rice, my co star, he's actually British. Usually,
you know, we shoot all these movies in Canada mostly,
and so we usually get some great Canadian actor who
does a pretty darn good British accent. This is an
(48:30):
actual he grew up in London, he moved to Canada
ten years ago. Who was super legit. If you're in
the New York area at all, you have to check
out the Great American Family Christmas Festival. It's like an
immersive Christmas experience, like dropping into a Christmas movie. There's
ice skating, there's Santa, there's gourmet food and beverage, and
then we have special screamings with Q and AS and
you can meet the stars of Great American Family. And
(48:53):
that goes from November twenty second through December twenty ninth,
different celebrities going each weekend.
Speaker 5 (48:58):
So so fun.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Do you have any other holiday movies or holiday themed
episodes from TV that you love to watch around the holidays?
Not that I was in, but just that just generally, Yeah,
like anything that I mean, Elf is so great.
Speaker 5 (49:12):
Oh, yes, my mom's favorite.
Speaker 7 (49:14):
And a Christmas Story. Yeah, Actually, I remember when we
were shooting, right before we shot the pilot, they had
Fred watch a Christmas Story because the whole narration thing.
They wanted him to understand kind of what it was,
and so that I remember that that was the first
time I ever heard of a Christmas Story.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
It's such a good movie.
Speaker 5 (49:31):
Every year, those are the.
Speaker 7 (49:32):
Two movies that we always make sure to watch it
at least once usually a few times during the holiday season.
And then Wet and then we have Great American Family
on all the time because I've got so many friends
doing movies on the channel, so watched.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
I wanted to ask you too about Swinging to Romance.
What can you tell us about that movie?
Speaker 7 (49:48):
Swinging a Romance is a movie that was came out
last year on Great American Family but now just dropped
on pure Flix. So this is another dance movie. So
like my new the upcoming Christmas movie, it's into really
Christmas ball. I do a wall A couple waltz is
in it, and that was choreographed by globs of Schenko,
who's a pro and Dancing with the Stars, but he
was actually in a Swing into Romance last year. He
(50:09):
also choreographed the swing dances or the jives in Swinging
to Romance. But then he played my ex fiancee and
my ex dance partner in that movie, and that was
a blast because I got to dance on screen with him,
which is amazing because he's like so good. It was
like doing Dancing with the Stars, but without the eliminations
and without a live pressure so you could do it
a few times. And then also without the broken rib
(50:31):
because I did break a rib on Dancing with the Stars. Anyway,
Swinging to Romance per fun movie, and yes, it's like
reliving and Dancing with the Stars. It's on pure Flix
and you can stream it anytime.
Speaker 5 (50:40):
Wait, how did you break your rib?
Speaker 7 (50:43):
Repeated trauma Week three actions when the trauma started because
of there was this move so Val Traumakowsky was my partner,
and there's this move where it was a contemporary dance.
He throws me in the air and I do a
three sixty spin and it catches me.
Speaker 5 (50:56):
Oh god.
Speaker 7 (50:57):
Eventually we had to change it into a one eighties
spin because six I was never quite getting around all
the way and so I kept landing in his on
his hand on this one rib, and and I was
so determined. I was like, yeah, it hurts, but you
know what, I'm a dancer. Dancers, you know, you work
through the pain. You just dance through the pain. Just
be tough. At the end of week three contemporary dance,
(51:19):
my rib hurts so much. I went to the doctors, like,
get way, did I break it? Like's, let's no, but
it's weekend sore. Wear a brace. Wear a brace for
the next couple weeks. So I did so from then on,
you see, you don't see my stomach and any of
those dances because I need to wear those braids. Well,
for week six. After week six, for week seven, that
was like, okay, do you think you know it's feeling
better yet feeling better, Let's go ahead and do a lift.
(51:41):
And there was this one lift thing we tried to
rehearsal and it snapped. Oh god to hear it snap,
and then flooded. So when I danced for two more weeks,
I danced week seven in week eight, and so I
danced eight out of ten weeks two which I danced
on a broken rib. And that's because because that's what
you do do. Yeah, that show really taught me resilience.
(52:05):
Have any of you guys done it?
Speaker 4 (52:07):
No?
Speaker 7 (52:07):
No, it's it's a ride of passage.
Speaker 5 (52:10):
Yeah, no, we have not done it, but I will
say you have.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
If there's anything we learned about you in this episode,
it's really that you can commit to a bit, just
more than just about anybody you were like math, Yeah,
watch this, oh acting, child acting? Yeah, watch this, Oh dancing,
Watch this. It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 7 (52:33):
It's called stubborn.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
Stubborn and.
Speaker 7 (52:37):
We'll see it's a guy you know, good in bed,
but it's it's.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Who I am.
Speaker 7 (52:42):
And I try to try to live life to the
fullest and help people along the way. You know, my
math books. I mean, that's something I'm super proud of
because you know, I want other kids to learn resilience.
I want kids to learn that, Like when math gets challenging,
that's you don't give up because that that's when you go, oh,
this is when I'm getting stronger. Yeah, this is when
(53:02):
things are challenging, that's when you're getting stronger. It's like
lifting a heavyweight at the gym. If you lifted easy weights,
like who cares. Yeah, but when you're struggling, when you're
struggling with anything, that's when you're getting stronger. Like embrace
those moments, go oh wait, this is actually good. I
still her the first time that math professor told me
because I was like, I'm just I'm confused. I'm trying
to figure out. He goes, that's good, Am I what?
(53:22):
Because you're in it, yeah, working it out, and you're
going to remember what you learn right now much more
than you remember something that it was easy that came
to you.
Speaker 4 (53:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (53:31):
Yeah, so resilience.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Well, Danica, thank you so much for being here with us.
Thank you for spending your time with us. It's always
such a joy to see you. Hopefully we will see
you at another nineties con or somewhere eventually, but it
was always it's always so good to see you.
Speaker 7 (53:47):
You see you, Danielle. Thanks guys, Bye bye.
Speaker 5 (53:49):
Hy Wow. I mean she's a smarty, she's as smart.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
She's definitely a smart.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, she's definitely a super smarty. We my kids love
bathtime math time. It's very sweet. Every time she writes
a new little kid math book, she sends it to
me and she autographs it. And so I've read it
a few times to Adler and he's like, what is
this here? I'm like, that's the author's autograph. That's her
sign that she cares whatever.
Speaker 5 (54:18):
Two plus three fast job, that was so fast.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (54:27):
Wow, you don't even need Danica's math book.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
I sure don't.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Thank you all for joining us for this episode of
Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us on
Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us your
emails Pod meets World Show at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
And we have merch A squared plus B squared equals
merch alt. What would you do if you're trying to
calculate the area underneath the curve?
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Merch Pod meets worldshow dot com will send us out.
Speaker 5 (54:59):
We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 4 (55:02):
Podmets World is niheart podcast producer and hosted by Danielle Fischel,
Wilfredell and Ryder Strong executive producers, Jensen Karp and Amy
Sugarman Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor,
Tara Sudbaksch, producer, Maddy Moore, engineer and Boy Meets World
superfan Easton Allen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton
of Typhoon and you can follow us on Instagram at
(55:23):
Podmeats World Show or email us at Podmets Worldshow at
gmail dot com
I went to two concerts in three days.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh god, that sounds o me left your house twice.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I left my house twice in one weekend, both times
getting back home after midnight and then waking up at
five point thirty in the morning to do radiation.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
But it was so worth it because I got to
see Sabrina Carpenter's Short and Sweet tour, which I the
her La shows were how she ended the tour, so
I couldn't believe that I wait until the very end.
I actually all of October, I kept thinking, if there's
any time I have to take off and fly to
(01:06):
somewhere else in the country and see the show early,
I'm going to try to see the show early. And
it just didn't work out that way with everything we
have going on, really, so.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
I was going to say, the one thing you have
in abundance is extra time, Danie, I know anything about you.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
You've just got like your schedules.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Wide open, wide open, calendar, wide open.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
But the tour was so great.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Sue Will's wife Susan went with me last night. I
brought some other friends with me, and I brought some
other girlfriends on Friday night, so we saw her at
Crypto Arena, which formerly known as Staple Center. Unbelieved that
this is the way. It's not the Staple Center anymore.
It's not the Staple Center anymore. It's Crypto dot Com Arena.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
It rolls as to tom different corporations.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I also, I do want you guys to know that
I win the Crypto bought Staples. I was like, give
me a break, I will never ever call it Crypto
dot com Arena.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
Well, guess who flipped a switch.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I remember going to a Springsteen concert there when it
was first Staples and him doing a whole bit from
the stage like why is this place called Staples, And
he's like, I can't wait to meet mister Staples. It's
like this old bit because it was so weird back there.
It was one of the first to be named after
a corporation. But I'm totally right now it's crypt Now
it's Crypto, So look at it this way. In another
(02:25):
month it's gonna be worth half as much.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
So nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
That'll be great, But I do the show is absolutely amazing.
Next year she'll be doing a European leg of the tour.
If you have not seen the show. It's really truly
so beautiful. The set is gorgeous. She does these very
cool vignettes. You know, writer, you got to know Sabrina
(02:51):
very well. You know, she's an incredible storyteller, she's a
great actor. Nothing with her is like, oh yeah, we'll
just do the very basic pop star thing. Like everything
is well thought out and it's just so well done.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I you know, sobbed through the first show and then
actually really got to enjoy the second show. And she
is annoyed with me because I keep talking about the
Forum cake.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
So if you've ever been in the Forum.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Club, which is like the lounge as part of the Forum, No,
we're not.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Cool enough to have them.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Now, I don't think I've ever been.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Probably every time you go to before, but literally don't
think it would have been in the Forum.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Okay, So when artists perform there, they make a cake,
a big cake with the artist's face on it. And
for ten years now a little over ten years, I
have known Sabrina And every time I've been to the
Forum in those ten years and I see an artist,
I take a picture of their cake, and every time
(03:57):
I send it to Sabrina and I say, I can't
wait for the Sabrina cake. I can't wait until someday
we're eating the Sabrina cake. And so I'm gonna start
crying me back. But so when I knew she was
doing the Forum I was so excited about the Forum cake.
I didn't even eat the cake last night. It's not
about eating cake. It's about I don't even like cake.
(04:18):
It's about the fact that this was such a milestone
and to see her reach this level and to have been,
you know, just knowing she would get there eventually, and
continuing to take pictures. And then yesterday someone told me,
she said, oh Danielle.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Cares about is this stupid cake?
Speaker 6 (04:35):
But literally a superstar. Also, I also a gazillion records.
I was nominated for Acre face is on a freaking cake. Thanks,
but I've got a sheet cake with my face on it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
But it really represented something to me, and I was
very excited. So literally I walked into the Forum Club
yesterday and I was.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
Like, I gotta find the cake.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So out we'll post the picture of the Sabrina Carpenter
Forum Cake on our Instagram for you all to see.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
I'll go to the next one. I want to go
to her Tall tour. I think that's going to be
I can't wait for that. That's the one I'm looking for.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Good lucks, little short and sweet girls. We don't get
very tall, we definitely get it.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I want that cake. I remember working with her the
first first year, you know, meeting her. She was probably twelve,
she was thirteen, Yeah, she was thirteen when okay, but
I came and visited. I remember the there's a photo
of like, you know, because I just came and visited
this the pilot and it was like, oh, I meet
the new girls or whatever, and there's a photo of
the two of us. And then I got to work
with her and actually, you know, act with her, and
(05:40):
I was like, oh, she's just such.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
A great actress.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
But I had no idea about the singing until I
was directing the episode that was nineteen sixty three where
it was like we went back in time to the
sixties and at the table read, she just sang acapella.
This you know, they had written lyrics, but they didn't
have a song, and she sang acappella and it was like,
oh that was that was perfect because I was worried, like, oh,
we have to, you know, figure out a song and
(06:04):
incorporate it. And Ray Colecord, the late great Ray colecrd
uh just I met with him afterwards. I was like, so,
what are we doing about this song? He's like, oh, well,
I just wrote down what she sang, like the notes
she sang. He's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna write the
song to what she did a cappella because she was
just that good and and I remember talking to her
about music. I even like, I wrote her like this
(06:24):
long Spotify list with like the reasons why I was
including all these songs that I could tell. I was like,
you were going to be like, I'm already you're a
great actress. But like I could tell, it was like
you you have this musical thing too, you can do
it all. Yeah, I wonder because I remember then, like
a couple of years later, she still had the playlist
on her Spotify.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
She was really nice. There's so few of us triple
threats like that out there. Yeah, you know, we got
to stick together. We got to stick together support one another.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Welcome to pod Meets World. I'm Danielle Fischel.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I'm right strong, and I'm Wilfordell.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
For one hundred and fourteen episodes of television over five years.
Our guest this week was one of the most iconic
pop culture characters.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Of the late eighties and early nineties.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
It would have been hard to find someone who didn't
know or a boy who didn't love Winnie Cooper, the
unattainable love interest for Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years,
and those who knew her in real life figured out
she was just as kind, impressive, and beautiful as she
was on screen. And we didn't do a ton of
research into this. But she's also probably our only guest
(07:39):
to have a mathematical theorem with her name on it.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Don't worry, Blake, Senate, there's still time.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yes, she is an actual genius who outside of Hollywood,
graduated UCLA with their highest honors in mathematics, and once
co authored a paper titled Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity
for Pharaoh magnetic Ashkin Teller's models on Z to the second.
While I genuinely have no idea what any of those
words meant, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Her conclusions are ridiculous in that paper.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
Oh yeah, is that your favorite of person?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
No, I just don't know how she You know, I'm
all for a theorem, but I don't know where she
came up with this one.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
This was just she was z in the second. Is
that what you.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
Keep? You know you keep?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Seriously, come on, come on, rookie mistake.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
She appeared in the movie Sidekicks, and was seen on
TV shows like The West Wing and Big Bang Theory,
and has since become a Queen of Christmas, starring in
some of your favorite festive flicks, including a new one
just around the corner.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Please welcome to Pod meets World.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
We're getting by with a little help from our friend
Danica McKellar.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
So good to see you.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
Good to see you too.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh my gosh, I'm sure a lot of our listeners
are brains are exploding with a nostalgia seeing the four
of us together on their screens.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
Oh my gosh. That cool. So good to see you, guys,
So good to you.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So I wanted to talk to you about the fact
that is this correct that your very first job was
The Twilight Zone, but your second role ever was Winnie
Cooper on The Wonder Years at twelve.
Speaker 7 (09:24):
Sort of. I did two episodes of the Twilight Zone,
and I'd done some commercials, some mashup commercials, but that
was my first like theatrical like non guest dying role.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Wowt pretty good one to get.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
Yeah, all say, yeah, what was the audition process?
Speaker 7 (09:39):
Like, I mean, it was kind of a last minute
thing because I was I didn't have many credits to
my name at all, and so they had done this
search for the character. And I remember the winning Cooper
was supposed to just be a guest role on the
first episode.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Oh come on, really, yeah.
Speaker 7 (09:54):
Otherwise.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
You gonna say, like Topanga, Wow, Oh.
Speaker 7 (09:59):
Is that the for you too? Yes, Oh my gosh,
that's amazing. I didn't know that. Yeah. So that's the
only reason that my mom left me audition for it,
because at the time we were not considering anything that
might disrupt our lives. Really, like that was not uh
it was guest roles commercials only, no feature films, no
series regulars, and so this was just the That's why
(10:19):
I got to audition for it. That's why I was
even eligible to audition for it in terms of it
because I, like I said, I had no credits. So anyway,
I I auditioned, bought my sister auditioned for it as well.
It came down to the two of us and for
this for this one time guest rule relatively small part
on the first episode, if you remember, Winnie Cooper was
kind of seen from afar. There wasn't like there was
a kiss at the end, but there wasn't like a
(10:41):
lot of lines. And yeah, I came down to the
two of us, and I remember they Fred Savage lived
in Chicago at the time, and so they'd flown him
out to do like a chemistry read and so Crystal
and I both did that, my sister and I and
they came down to the two of us, and and
then they said, well, we're giving the role to Danica,
but if we get picked up for Stu, then we'd
love to give a role to Crystal as well. And
(11:03):
then during the pilot of The Wonder Years, they said, look,
the network loves the chemistry between Danik and Fred and
we want to offer her a series regular like if
we get picked up. And so the time, like at
that point, my mom had a chance to meet some
of the other moms, Juanne Savage, Jane Saviano, these women
who really cared about their kids being kids. They weren't
stage moms, you know, So she felt comfortable with it,
(11:27):
but she had she got me this fancy lawyer to
put in a loophole because I ever wanted to not
do it anymore, like you can get out because it's
a seven year contract, and so she she protected me,
but I never wanted to quit.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
So, oh my gosh.
Speaker 7 (11:42):
And then they did write a role for Crystal Becky Slater.
She played the Bred's or Kevin's nemesis, and she did
nine episodes, I think, which was cool.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
So what was your life on set like then as
a kid.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Did you go to traditional school as well or did
you were you just schooled on set?
Speaker 7 (11:59):
I did both. I went back and forth. So I
went to Harvard Westlake. Okay, first it was Westlake then
and became Harvard Westlake. And I would go to school
when I wasn't working, and then I'd run my school
work to set when I was working. And we did
it like that. It was just back and forth.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
It was it was.
Speaker 7 (12:17):
It trained me to be able to like compartmentalize my brain.
So I mean just being on as you guys know,
being doing school on set is like that anyway, because
you're doing this scene and then you take a break
for twenty minutes. Now you're doing a history test or
like math concepts, go back and now this is the
emotional part of the scene whatever. Like you just learned
(12:38):
to like be here now and then be here now,
and it trains you. It's funny because so the movies
that I do now, these romantic comedies in the Christmas movies,
first for Hamewark Channel, now for a Great American Family Channel.
We shoot these movies in fourteen days. Sometimes it's fourteen
or fifteen days. It's a crazy schedule, and you have
to be like, Okay, I'm here doing this scene now,
and then now we're doing the end of the movie,
(12:58):
and now we're doing this little blip from like midway
through the movie. And as you guys know, it just
takes this kind of this focus and you have to
be able to just be where you are now and
completely shut out all the rest of reality so that
you can do your job well. And then later Galla
gets cut together and it's great.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So the show was such a massive hit for ABC.
It was always in the top thirty, and it won
an Emmy for Best Comedy Series in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
Was it difficult.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
For you to have a normal childhood or do you
feel like you got the best of both.
Speaker 7 (13:31):
Worlds Alsiman, We had a very normal childhood because, for example,
when we won the Emmy for Best Comedy Series, my
sister and I were not there at the awards ceremony.
We were on vacation with my dad because we had
this vacation plan. He's a busy real estate guy. He
didn't have flexibility, and so we had to either go
to the Emmys or go on this camping river rafting
(13:54):
trip thing with my dad. And we did that, and
we talked about it as a family. It's like, no,
this is more important. And I remember I remember being
in this tiny little motel room the night before we
hit the river, watching the Emmys on this like it
had to have been a TV from the nineteen seventies.
My dad was always very frugal, so you know, we
didn't stay in like it's retain this hotel and everybody
was like this old yellow little TV. And we watched
(14:16):
The Wonderers win and we jumped up and down the
bed like yay. We woke up next morning, like five
in the morning and hit the river and had the
trip of our lives. I mean, I remember so many
details about that trip. I remember solving like these minute
mysteries at night around the campfire. I remember picking blackberries
on the side of the river, and that just is
so emblematic of how I was raised. That the Hollywood
(14:37):
stuff was not this. There wasn't a big emphasis on
how important it was, or how glamorous it was, or
how you know, how that defined me at all. I'm
so lucky to have had parents who weren't overly impressed
with it all, and who really cared about us being
kids first. I mean, you know, as evanced by the
fact that I wasn't allowed to audition for series regulars.
I mean, my mom and my dad both had a
(14:59):
sense of like, Okay, this is all great, but we're
not going to just take over her childhood.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
So where did the desire to do it in the
first place come from? Was it just like local theater
or acting classes? How did you and your sister get
into it?
Speaker 7 (15:11):
Oh, my gosh. I mean, my mom was a professional
dancer before we were born, and so she had a
dance studio that we took lessons in when we were
very young. And she was also friends with Leslie and Warren,
who is an actress who did like the original Cinderella.
Speaking of Cinderella, I have to reach out to her
actually about that. Anyway, Leslie and Warren wonderful woman, and
(15:34):
she The story goes that I was sitting on the
floor of my mom's dance studio, staring at myself in
the mirror, making faces at myself, and then Leslie said, oh,
that's an actress. No, that was And then and then
my mom she moved us up to Los Angeles because
she was getting into like producing music videos and stuff.
(15:57):
And it's funny because that never really took off. But
at Leslie's suggestion, my sister and I tried acting classes
and we loved it. We went to Lee Strasburg and Stupid.
It's so much fun. It was singing and dancing, acting,
it was it was camera work, it was theater work.
It was like an all day thing on Saturdays. And
I remember my mom said that she felt back. She's like,
I'm dropping them off for so long. But the end
of the day we didn't want to go. Oh we
(16:18):
had so much fun. So then we did some theater
there when we were like six and seven years old,
and then after that we got an agent came to
one of those shows and started doing commercials and there
you go.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Wow, where was your first commercial?
Speaker 7 (16:33):
It was for a nineteen eighty five Volkswagen Golf car
and it was I was just a family getting out
of the car. It was supposed to show how big
the car was on the inside, because I guess they
were known for being small cars, Like no, no, there's lots
of space, and so we all like piled out of
this car like a clothing car.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah you think, you think of exactly, but yeah.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
I mean you have to pause to see my face
because I remember my mom saying, oh, the mother in
this new head of find the camera because she's like
getting stuff out of the trunk and she turns her
head towards the camera to get into stuff out and
I was like, just I had no clue. And basically
I was like it was like she was holding this
speech ball and I had pigtails. You could see meet
my pigtails from behind the ball. And then she moved
the ball and there I was with.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Pause, there's there's her face. Yeah, that's so funny.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So again, similar to me and Topanga, your first episode
had a kiss on screen.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
What was that experience?
Speaker 7 (17:29):
Like for you, Well, that was my first kiss in
real life too. Yes, how old were you when I
had that?
Speaker 5 (17:35):
Twelve?
Speaker 7 (17:36):
Okay, wow, parallel lives, Yes, it was, it was.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
It was.
Speaker 7 (17:40):
It was exciting and nerve wracking. I mean at the
time I had a massive crush on Fred, so that
worked out. But it was embarrassing because you're like a
preteen about to have your first kiss and there's all
these people watching.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
Yes, including all your family.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
Oh yes, my family and not all my family well
well eventually my family. It was there at that moment
outside with us, with the Harper's Woods and the village,
the uh, the video village was right there, and like
everybody was just there, you know, and trying to have
my first kiss over here people can we.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
And you both kissed the Savage for your first time.
I mean just the parallels are pretty amazing.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Yes, so funny.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
My my parents were there, but also my grandparents were there,
so I was literally was like it truly felt like
this is not usually how I would have chosen for
a first kiss.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I think this brings up an important distinction though, is
that we were a multi camera sit and Wonder Years
was single camera, so it's actually, you know, even though
we have a lot of parallels, you were living a
very different day to day lifestyle. You were, you know,
you would shoot a scene, you'd get the pages, you know,
and then shoot that scene that did never have to
look at it again, whereas we would be rehearsing, you know,
(18:54):
all week long, and then it would just be.
Speaker 7 (18:55):
Okay, did you rehearse the kiss? Like, did you kiss
in the rehearsals?
Speaker 5 (18:59):
Yes, for at least the run throughs. We didn't kiss
necessarily all day.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
During the the rehearsals, but I think it run throughs
we did the kiss, and then on tape night it
was still like a really.
Speaker 7 (19:11):
Big deal, yeah, right, because then you've got the live audience.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Right exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We had two hundred people in the audience, my grandparents included.
Speaker 7 (19:19):
Yes, we were outside in the woods, you know, sitting
on that rock, and and and also and Fred and
I both wear glasses, and we didn't have our glasses on.
We were shooting, and we didn't work. We were like
too young for contact or something anyway, so we couldn't.
Really it was like this haze of people, which is
actually probably good yestive as clearly because just a crowd
(19:40):
of people just you know.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Watching Where's kiss? First kiss should be blurry? I mean
I should be blurry. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Where did you go to shoot Wonder Years? You were
obviously Yeah, but were you?
Speaker 7 (19:53):
I mean we shot we were we had since we
had sound stages in Culver City eventually, but we shot
the the neighborhoods were in Burbank and which is Los
Angeles for those listening, part of Los Angeles. And yeah,
we just had we had locations, we were all over.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Wow, that's very and so what Yeah, what was your
your typical day then? Like I know, on a single
cam it kind of changes day to day and your
location changes.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
But we've talked a lot.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
For our listeners about what our schedule was. We started
on our week started on Fridays, we would do a
table read, we'd rehearse for you.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
Every day was probably very different.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
But could you walk us through a pretty typical day
for you on set?
Speaker 7 (20:35):
Yeah. For the days that I was working kids, I
would literally work maybe two days out of the weekend.
The other three days I was going to my school.
I was bouncing back and forth and back forth. The
thing that was unsettling about that, honestly, is that like
they would say, okay, well there's a history of test
next Friday, and I would have no idea if I
was going to be there for it or not. All right,
I wasn't giving my schedules till sometimes the night before.
I wouldn't know if I was working.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
So he teach you to be like, you know, yeah,
that's flexible.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
And uh and ready for anything. A lot of interesting
skill there and this young person.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
But then you guys would have on super early morning
calls sometimes right like you would be yeah, sure.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
We would always do like too bad. It wasn't well,
it wasn't as a as a kid, they didn't bring
in too early. They would bring the parents in early summer.
Dan and Ali played the parents. I'd get there and
they were already they'd already shot sometimes by so I
don't weber being called earlier than eight as a kid,
whereas you know, Allie Mills would have been there at
six thirty and here in magup right, and now that's me,
(21:34):
now I get it was not It was not too early.
It was pretty reasonable. And we only worked nine and
a half hours, and that was including lunch and including
the three hours of school, so we were and they
did a really good job of protecting us, so we
were not overworked and and but but that meant that
we often didn't shoot with each other. So another thing
that's very it's different from what you guys experienced, is
(21:55):
that because it was single, Cameron because he had to
get three hours, had to get three hours to school
work done. And that was the most challenging brand because
he was in so like basically all those scenes, and
and so I was often on my close ups, he
was never there. And then photo and the foul worked
a lot too and also needed uh schoolwork. So sometimes
(22:18):
it was a single, clean single I'd be literally working
to a piece of tape. And I remember there's one scene,
there's one episode of It's called a Mad Mad Madline
World where it was a field trip we were we
shot at a Griffith Observatory and I remember my close
up in this scene with like five people, and there's
four pieces of tape and the trew smile and pieces
on I knew which tape was each person in the scene.
(22:39):
And Kirk Trutner, who read the voice of the narration
while we were shooting it, he would he did all
the different voices and he would change his voice slightly.
He was super talented voice actor that we were lucky
to have on set with us because he was the
voice of the narration. He would later be recorded by
Daniel Stern. He was there to guide us through it
and you Also, the other interesting skills that that I
(23:00):
you guys probably didn't have to learn is because of narration,
is that when you're not the one having the thoughts,
you just have to kind of suspend yourself in that moment. Yeah, right,
suspended where you are as Bread was getting to act
the thought that we're hearing.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
Correct, you couldn't even act it.
Speaker 7 (23:17):
Yeah, why I wasn't having those thoughts. I was just right.
It's like an avatar that's kind of waiting for the
next instruction. Hey, in the moment, there's almost like, you know,
like you're shooting something and they're like, wait, come in,
we fix a hair like wall, but you're still in
the middle of the scene and they walk off there
and continue. It's like being that suspending moment. So that's
a lot in those kinds of situations where there's some
(23:40):
shuan set that fixed something in the background. We have
to keep shooting, and I just have to stay where
I am.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Well, something we all had to learn holding for laughs
because that's c you have to sit there. And what
you realize, you know, especially as a kid or an
actor who's never done that, you just want to keep
playing the scene. But what you realize is that everybody
sort of like turns off and just holds for to
laugh because if you keep playing the scene, the laugh
will actually stop. They'll think something else is going to happen.
Speaker 7 (24:04):
Right, And at the beginning of whatever you were saying.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
You know, and I've seen it now, like you work
with you know, new actors that haven't done it, and
you have to teach them like no, no, no, no, it's
like it's like reality stops and it's actually more realistic
for you to just hold your facial expression for thirty
seconds or whatever. It's so weird.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
You come to realize though, that that's that's the audience's line.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yeah, so, I mean, that's that's the laugh. Is their line.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
So you're just essentially reacting to another to their yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Giving their line out and all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
But I'm curious, So you the show is obviously a
smash hit, but this is all pre internet and pre
social media. When did you realize kind of what you
were doing in the culturalegeist.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
It's funny because in six seasons and the last season,
somebody on set asked me what it was like to
be America's sweetheart. And I had no idea what they
were talking about. It was clueless, Like what what do
you what do you mean? I mean, I was so
busy working, but mostly going to school, you know, a studying.
I mean I I you know, I went to this
(25:09):
difficult I mean, Harvard was no walk to the park
and and you know it prepared me for being a
math major at U c l A afterwards and all
all the rest of it. So it was it was
I was so busy doing that and I was not.
I was a very I was a good girl. I
was I didn't go to parties and stuff. I was
just And even if I did go to a party,
like nobody was offering me drugs, Like nobody because they
(25:30):
just could tell I really couldn't.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
This is this is a waste of drugs.
Speaker 7 (25:41):
So it's sorority party is at U c l A.
I was like, and I would go to a fraternity
party like maybe once a year, and like, oh, this
is why I don't usually go. I would take a
beer cant like because I was so people would just
pressure you, Oh why aren't you drinking? So I take
your can, dump it out filled up with water, in
the bathroom with one of these frat houses, and then
drink that all night. And then people would not write.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
People wouldn't bother you.
Speaker 7 (26:03):
Then they beat they'd leave me alone. Yeah. So I
was just always a good two shoes, which I have
no problem with. I e. I wasn't mean or judgmental people.
I just like to you.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Didn't even like cigarette smoking. I remember that distinctly.
Speaker 7 (26:19):
Yes, Oh my gosh. Okay, so there was So we
have a mutual friend Jason Marson, who I think was
trying to set us up. But you smoked, and I.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Told you, yeah, You're like I'm not going to date
you because you smoke cigarettes.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
And I was like, all right, I will continue dating
camera lalth.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
Not you don't get any of my camel.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Bucks, then exactly I could have showered you in camel cash,
but whatever. Yeah, it's fine. I could have made it
rain with the camel cash.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
But no, it is like no yet, No, I remember that.
It was like, it's not it's not going to happen.
You smoke, and I was like, all right.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
You'll be happy to know Will is ten years free
of cigarettes, so everyone can enjoye ten years.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
It's been really difficult. Breathe better.
Speaker 7 (27:02):
You probably exercise more, Yeah, but at what cost? So
I tried a cigarette once when I was eighteen, and
it was like so good and nutty and satisfying. I
was like, okay, I'm never touching that again.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
It was exactly the opposite reaction.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
I supposed not like it the first time you try it,
and its like if I like it the first time
I try it, then that's bad news.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
That's bad news for you.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
I can see why people do this.
Speaker 7 (27:32):
Yeah, I feel this, and I have been I better
not yep.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
So when Wonder Years ended, did you find it hard
to be seen as anything other than Winnie Cooper? Did
you have a hard time breaking out of the like
child actor stigma?
Speaker 7 (28:00):
Well that's a good question. I mean, I I still
am recognized Cooper like that's so. Did I have a
hard time breaking out of it?
Speaker 5 (28:07):
I never did, never did, but it's okay.
Speaker 7 (28:10):
It was. It was confusing when I first went So
I the Wonder Years ended and I started UCLA within
a few months of each other, and so I was like, Okay,
new chapter of my life. I'm moving on with my life,
and everyone else will do that with me too.
Speaker 5 (28:24):
They're all going to move on to.
Speaker 7 (28:26):
Everywhere I went on campus whatever, people like, oh my gosh, hey, Whinny,
where's Fred? And you know the riche Kevin and and
uh and that girl friend that show. Oh my gosh, dude,
look it's that girl from that show. It's like over
and you guys are I'm sure that guy from that
show that girlfriend right, yeah, oh yeah, you're like grew up,
you know, and you're you're that girl played Winny and
and so I had a big turning point at UCLA
(28:49):
where I kind of like I just needed to know
who else I was. And at the time I was
considering being a film major. And then I had taken
a math class. I always loved a good challenge, and
so I took this mathlas multi variable calculus because I'd
taken single variable calculus in a Harbor West life, and
so that was the math that I passed into. I'm like,
oh my gosh, college math, this is gonna be so hard.
(29:09):
But just I just I just have to see what
it is like. Let's just see what that would be like, right,
And I did really really well, and uh the first
midterm I studied so hard too, I really I put
everything into it and it paid off. First midterm, Remember,
I thought, oh my gosh, I failed. Right, I got
a twenty two out of forty. But apparently it was
(29:29):
some sort of weader test because the professor like grafted
the scores on the chalkboard. There was one twenty two.
This is a class of one hundred and sixty three people.
There was one twenty two if there were two fifteen's
and the rest was nine and below. I'm like, I'm
looking at my test, like that's that's me, And there's
all these people who looked much more like math people
than me. I don't know how to say it, but
(29:50):
they just I thought, well, those people, I'm sure I
can tell that they're gonna.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
Yeah, they're gonna aice this.
Speaker 7 (29:54):
Yeah, exactly. They all look like they belong here, and
I do not feel like I belong in this class.
And that was a good lesson for me, like, oh, okay,
I guess maybe I do belong to this class. The
next day, I had someone tap me on the shoulder
in that class and say excuse me under that girl.
And I figured they were gonna say from the morning,
who got the twenty two? I was like, it is me.
(30:16):
And that teacher told me, he's like, you have a gift.
You need to pursue this. You know, you guys weren't
supposed to do this well and what's going on? And
so it was like it was just music to my ears.
I felt so from from being associated with something. It
was over. It was the one years was done and
so and it makes you, as you, guys, I'm sure
(30:37):
have experienced to some extent at some point. Who else
would I be if I didn't have this character? What
would my value be if I didn't have this show
and this character that everybody loves, like who also want
to be? And so I got to find out by
I just I decided to quit acting because I was
still trying to do like I done a TV movie
up in Vancouver and the Moment of Truth movies on NBC.
(30:59):
You guys did any of those anyway? I did one
and then I came back and it was this was
before I took that math class, and I was like, okay,
I'm ready to to do a makeup mid term and
they're like, no, you can't do that. We give you
an incomplete I'm like what I was like, Oh wait,
maybe you can't really straddle these two worlds. So anyway,
as I really fell in love with math, I was like, Okay,
I'm not going to be a film major. I can
do that later if I want to, and you know,
(31:21):
learned behind the scenes, behind the camera stuff, and I'm
just going to do math. I'm just going to see
what that is. And it felt so good. I wore
no makeup to school. I would wear like jeans and
a T shirt and my hair and pointing tail, and
I wore my backpack with two straps and I was over.
And I would walk to camp like across campus, and
I just felt so a lot of the professors and
(31:42):
then the math apartment didn't even have TVs. They had no
idea who I was. And it was perfect. I went
from that girl on that show to like that girl
who helped me pass calculus because I was I was
a tutor in the math apart I met at that
point and it just felt so right. I felt really good,
and it gave me this whole other base. But I
remember it was interesting when I came back to acting
and I would go into auditions and I would have
(32:04):
these casting directories. I'm not going to name any names.
I won't who were like, oh, so, how have you been?
You know. That was the time of I'm not a
writer and like the shoplifting and all that stuff and
the child stress did not have a good name, right,
you've been like everything? Okay, I'm like, yeah, no, no,
we haven't seen you in a while. I'm like, yeah,
yeh know. I was at college like, oh, that's that's great.
Speaker 5 (32:27):
For you, for you who are.
Speaker 7 (32:29):
Like a theater major. It was like and I loved
this moment, just this little moment in time so delicious,
Like actually, mathematics and I it's like, what you know,
for some reason, I just loved that stilly. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Well, I'm curious. I have to ask why maths.
Speaker 7 (32:47):
Because it gave me this other sense of identity. It
gave me because it's hard, it's challenging, and I was
doing well at it. So I felt valuable for something
that had nothing to do with winning Cooper I got.
I felt the value of like I felt like kick
ass for something that's just in my brain something that I.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
I mean, were you were you attracted to math your
whole life, because again I mean, you could.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Have done that with it. You could have been an archaeologists.
You could have been And so why maths?
Speaker 7 (33:12):
Well, I love puzzles and any times I love solving things,
I always have to this day I do all The
New York Times calls you the connections and Wortle and
me too, selling me yeah all that stuff. Connections is
actually right now my favorite. I pretty much addicted to it.
And if I do it after a minute, like turn
it the next day, I don't have it. I've already
done it. Anyway, I love puzzles. I love, I just love.
(33:36):
I love the beauty of math. Math is not a science.
It's a language. So it's much more fiwer than the sciences.
Sciences are like open term interpretation. People keep discovering things
that disprove what they used to know, and like that's
that's kind of defined science. And so with math, it's
really an exploration of the human mind in a lot
of ways. It's the patterns and the games that we
(33:59):
get to play. It's like check simple rules, but the
strategies are endless and so with math, it's these simple rules.
There's like seven axioms or something, and then everything is
built from there. And I homeschool my son, Draco, who's fourteen,
and we're now doing algebra two. It's so much fun.
By the way, I've written math books now, but I
read that night to my son.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Bathtime math time is a regular in our house.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Really.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
Yes, I love that.
Speaker 7 (34:24):
I love that. Yes I have. I have eleven math books.
They're all at mckellermath dot com. You can go there
and you can there's this big slider button. I'm very
proud of where depending on the age of your child,
I have the book that I recommend her books and yeah,
I've got I got let's see, do I have that.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
One bathtime math time? My son loves.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yes, there it is, that's where has to start.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Yeah, I'm still there.
Speaker 7 (34:47):
Yeah, and I teach I have like this one is
for multiplication and division, so third and fourth grade, the
times machine, times tables, and yes there is time travel
because you know, I mean, I'm an entertainer, so I
like to make math entertaining. It's it's about you know,
stories and just you know, like I come up and
(35:07):
have like different rhymes and things to help kids memorize
their multiplication facts, which is super important.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Four did you get rid of that?
Speaker 8 (35:15):
One?
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Was?
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Four? Yes?
Speaker 7 (35:20):
Trust you?
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yes it was full.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
Never trusted. I've never trusted math.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Would you say you have like an expertise in math? Like,
what would your expertise be if you had to say, one.
Speaker 7 (35:32):
Teaching math to kids, making math fun, and teaching math
through stories and characters and making it not scary anymore,
it would be what I would say. My my superpower is.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
See my mom would have really benefited from you had
you been able to help my mom when she was
a kid. My mom somehow ended up in the wrong
math class in high school. She like, I think, walked
into the wrong classroom and no one ever or noticed
she wasn't supposed to be there, and the teacher it
was like algebra, and and she literally thought it was
(36:06):
a joke. When they started adding letters into this, she
was like, Oh, that's funny. Is what's that X doing
in there? And then she was like, oh, other people
are answering this. And she just thought she was She
hadn't taken the class that led before it. She just
thought she was incapable of learning, and she just stayed
the entire year and failed, and from that moment on
(36:27):
truly traumatized by math. She was like, I'm afraid and
I can't do it well.
Speaker 7 (36:33):
Like I said, it's a language, and if it's not
translated properly, then it's like reading Chinese, and it's scary.
It's scary when you're doing something that's so foreign. So
that's why I try to make it like not foreign
and make it just bring it into the world of kids,
make it feel like kindergarten, even when you're learning algebra.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
And I read I read the other day that in
heart at Harvard they didn't teach calculus when Harvard was
founded because Isaac Newton hadn't actually invented it yet, which
is just crazy when you say, really, yes, apparently this
is a this is a true statistic.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
So it's like, that's the thing about math is it changed.
It changes. I mean there's still discover for.
Speaker 7 (37:13):
New ways to to find patterns and calculat I that's amazing. Yeah,
I mean, calculus is basically the way to do It's
like you get to do infinitely many, infinitely small things.
It's kind of how I would describe calculus is it's
a better way to calculate things, Like you can you
can estimate the area under a curve, but if you
(37:34):
have the form find the exact area, which is useful
for things like if you're going to paint an area,
right you need to know how much paint you need
or whatever. And it's got a nice creamy line to it.
There's there's that calculus kind of a rudimentary explanation. That's
integral calculus. Derivative calculus is finding the slope of like
if you have a curve, like you know the silp
(37:54):
of the line is you know, run over ris or
run or whatever. But a curve. How do you define
this slope of a point on a curve, Well, it's
defined as the slope of the tangent line that touches
that point. Only think about only one line will touch
the curb at that point. If you try to like
touch a different point, well, now it's a different point,
different different slope.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Right.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
So that's that's that's the first calculus that you learn
is derivative calculus. Then the integral one that teaches the
area under a crib. I mean, I could talk about
this more than my brain. You brought me on to
talk about I've not written a Caculus book. Maybe someday.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (38:31):
Now you're written up through high school geometry.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
So okay, Well you've got plenty of time, so you can.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
You can.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
Maybe the next one will be calculus. You can.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
You have your whole life ahead ahead of you to
write as many books as you want.
Speaker 5 (38:45):
So going back to Winnie.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Cooper just for a second, I wanted to ask you
if you we have another thing in common that's not
necessarily a negative thing, but I do wonder your thoughts
on it that our characters were written by men to
be kind of these perfect, dreamlike characters meant for the
main characters. Looking back, now, what are your thoughts and
(39:08):
feelings on Winnie Cooper.
Speaker 7 (39:11):
Well, she I don't actually see her as perfect because
she had a lot going on, like her parents separated
in one of the episodes.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
And oh really, yeah, I'm just look.
Speaker 7 (39:26):
Yeah. And she and Winnie Cooper had that one episode
called the Accident where she starts dating somebody who's not
necessarily from the right side of the tracks, and he's
a little reckless and they get in a car accident,
and uh, and and and that was kind of played
as when he is trying to deal with her parents,
you know, separating and doesn't really know how. But I
(39:50):
think Winnie Cooper was mostly I think whether she was
perfect or not seen from afar definitely put on a
pedestal and not and not understood. But I think Kevin
not understanding when he is. Part of what people can
relate to is it's difficult to understand the opposite sex
at any age, especially when you're just first entering into
relationships with the opposite sex. It's like, what, who is this?
(40:13):
Why do they not respond the way I do to things?
And hack when I said this, it was misinterpreted and
I don't understand. And it's like remember that book men
are from Mars, women are from Venus, that that whole
thing of weight. We're speaking different languages. It seems like
we're speaking the same language, but we're not. That whole
revelation starts, I guess in middle school, and that I
think is part of why when he was put on
(40:35):
a pedestal. And and yeah, like to your point, Daniel,
it's it's the guy's point of view in both our shows,
how like, how how do I deal with this alien?
Speaker 8 (40:45):
Female race, Yes exactly, but I think importantly, like you know,
the Cory tapang of storyline, pretty quickly became that they
were meant for each other.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
And so in a lot of ways, that's a completely
different art. Because Kevin and Winnie did not get enough together,
which were great, I mean, that was just yeah, but
I was that always the plan.
Speaker 7 (41:07):
I mean, in my fans, fans still upset on me,
I'm like.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I'm sure, like it's your fault, yeah, like how come.
Speaker 7 (41:13):
You didn't you and Kevin didn't have together? Like oh
my gosh, oh my god, we're still talking about this. Well,
you know, it was it was the wonder years was
I think also because it wasn't like a three camera
show and it wasn't as like everything didn't all work
out on the end. It often didn't work out. I
think it was trying to show something that more people
(41:35):
can realistically, I guess relate to, because most of our
lives don't out the way we wanted them too or
thought they were going to. And so in that same way,
Kevin and when he did not end up together, I
like to say, though, look, all we know is what happened.
That what the narrator said happened, which is that when
he went off to the Savonne and got her degree
(41:55):
in art or whatever, and he had a baby with
his wife, and I was the first to you know,
they were the first to greet me off the plane
and all the rest of it. Yeah, well that's only
the beginning of this story. Personally, I am divorced and remarried,
and a lot of people are. And maybe Kevin and
Winnie ended up together after all.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
You never know, Yeah, you never know that.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
Yeah, it was the thing that I mean that struck
me about that show and still does so. Television is
hugely important to me, and this was one of the
first shows I can remember my mom and I every
week hopping on the couch getting under a blanket because
the show was one thing to her and something else
to me.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
It seemed to.
Speaker 4 (42:34):
Straddle that line of it had something for everybody. And
I'm curious when you were doing it, was there a
sense on the set that it was a kid show?
It was an adult show? Was I mean, was there
a vibe that you guys were feeling or was it
just the show?
Speaker 7 (42:51):
I mean, from my point of view, it was a
kid's show. I didn't get how important. The nostalgia aspect
was for adults until later. And also people would recognize
me on the street and say, oh my gosh, I
grew up in that era and they're nailing it. That's
exactly the music I should listen to. And this the
car we had. My dad had the same car, and
(43:11):
we had that same TV or like so. So I
did have a sense that they were doing a good
job of being accurate, but I didn't realize how much
it meant to people who grew up in that time.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
So we are currently very deep into a Boy Meets
World rewatch for mostly the first time. Will and I
watched the show when it was on in the nineties.
Writer never watched it, so that he's seeing it for
the first the first time. When is the last time
you watched the Wonder years?
Speaker 7 (43:37):
You know? I tried to show it to Drake. I
showed him one episode, but it was probably like four
or five years ago.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Yeah, not interested.
Speaker 7 (43:46):
That was me, Like, I'm like, no, that's that's me.
It's like really, I'm like, yeah, how come everybody else
thinks I look the same? You don't even recognize me?
Oh wait? Because we all got older and so we
all like understand the translation of what we look like now.
But yeah, he wasn't that interested. And then I did
during COVID. I remember, like when the first lockdown happened,
(44:08):
I did this thing where I had this old de
I was like desperate to help entertain people I don't know,
and I had this old DVD player, like a little
portable DVD players. So I showed the Wonders on that
and like, I think it was just the first episode
or the first few episodes, and I would like talk
about it behind the like pause it and talk about it.
I'm sure that was not like I wasn't licensed to,
(44:30):
but it was a tiny little screen. It was sort
of not necessarily in focus. And so yeah, but I haven't.
I haven't. Really. It's funny because some there there are
shows that that that mean a lot to us growing up,
and like that I would probably watch if I had time,
But I don't ever feel I don't ever crave going
back and watching that show. I don't know, but I
(44:54):
like Dan Laurie and I are good friends, and he
played the dad on the Wonder Years and I so
we keep in touch. I try to keep touch with
everyone's it's tough though, but I went out in June
to see him in a play, an off Broadway play
that he wrote, and it was in And so we
try to keep in touch in terms of watching the shows.
I should. I mean, Drake was fourteen. Now maybe he
(45:15):
would like it now.
Speaker 5 (45:15):
Yeah, maybe he didn't.
Speaker 7 (45:16):
Try.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Dan was actually on our show. Dan was on our show,
and Fred was on our show. We had had a
lot of the cast of Wonder Years came on board.
It was cool.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yeah, well we pretty much only existed because of Wonder Years.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Oh yeah, yeah, but that's what I'm wondering.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
See you finished Wonder Years and they were like, get
us another Savage, let's do another show.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
But that's what I'm wondering. I'm wondering how much Tipango
was actually kind of modeled on Winnie. Yeah, I mean
the similarities are so kind of glaring that you wonder
it's like, Okay, let's just this worked. This is going
to be the new Kevin and Winnie. Let's go from there.
Speaker 8 (45:48):
Yeah, who knows.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
I mean, it's just coming of age, like the story.
I mean, like you're always going to have a crush er,
you know, you're a character. But yeah, to keep it
going for the whole series is pretty I.
Speaker 7 (45:57):
Was jealous of Danielle like a View and like Milano
and all those people who got to a Candice Camera Brick,
who got to like wear cool, fashionable things and putanaclips
in your hair and stuff, because I was like, I'm
stuck in these nineteen sixties wower hands. I was. I
always felt so uncool. I'm like, look at them, they
are feathered bangs, and I don't have any of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Oh I bet looking back now, it's it's pretty enjoyable
to see that fashion. And you have a new Christmas movie,
a Cinderella Christmas Ball, premiering on Great American Family this month,
So tell us about that movie.
Speaker 7 (46:31):
So my new movie, my new Christmas movie, comes out
really soon. It comes out November twenty ninth. It's the
day after Thanksgiving, which for some people is the first
acceptable day to start celebrating. And it's called a Cinderella
Christmas Ball. And it's just as Christmas being magical as
you would think. I play a dance teacher from Chicago
who doesn't who never knew her birth father. My birth
(46:52):
mother like literally didn't put his name on the birth certificate.
And then she died when I was young. So at
the beginning of the movie, I find a picture that
has it's my mom that I've never seen, my birth mother.
She's wearing a wedding dress, she's holding a hand of
a man that we can't see in the picture, and
on the back it says our place, haven Shire and
the date is nine months before I was born. So
I'm like, oh my god. So it's like solving a mystery,
(47:13):
and I go to having Shire to try to find
my family, and I end up as a dance teacher.
I end up getting a job teaching the Prince of
having Shire a very important waltz for an upcoming event
that is called the Cinderella Christmas Ball, because at that
event he is to dance with different royal ladies and
then choose a bride, which is what happened in Cinderella.
So that's how I got the name. So he's helping
me with my emotional search for my family. I'm helping
(47:34):
him learn this waltz, which I used all my Dancing
with Stars knowledge to do, and so I was on
that show ten years ago. And then it's a beautiful,
happy ending that's cathartic and amazing and people are gonna
love it. And again the day after Thanksgiving November twenty
ninth on Great American Family Channel. And if people find
me on Instagram, You'll be getting ulters of updates and
I'll be posting on x during the premiere live posting
(47:57):
so people can join in. Just on the commercial break,
so someone should have watch the movie. I'll be like
giving bts and stuff.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Is he is he British? Or is this a fake
land that he's the prince.
Speaker 7 (48:10):
Of well Hanshire is a made up city, made up
country in Europe. But he actually there is a country
where everyone speaks English with British accents of chess and
he is so Oliver Rice, my co star, he's actually British. Usually,
you know, we shoot all these movies in Canada mostly,
and so we usually get some great Canadian actor who
does a pretty darn good British accent. This is an
(48:30):
actual he grew up in London, he moved to Canada
ten years ago. Who was super legit. If you're in
the New York area at all, you have to check
out the Great American Family Christmas Festival. It's like an
immersive Christmas experience, like dropping into a Christmas movie. There's
ice skating, there's Santa, there's gourmet food and beverage, and
then we have special screamings with Q and AS and
you can meet the stars of Great American Family. And
(48:53):
that goes from November twenty second through December twenty ninth,
different celebrities going each weekend.
Speaker 5 (48:58):
So so fun.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Do you have any other holiday movies or holiday themed
episodes from TV that you love to watch around the holidays?
Not that I was in, but just that just generally, Yeah,
like anything that I mean, Elf is so great.
Speaker 5 (49:12):
Oh, yes, my mom's favorite.
Speaker 7 (49:14):
And a Christmas Story. Yeah, Actually, I remember when we
were shooting, right before we shot the pilot, they had
Fred watch a Christmas Story because the whole narration thing.
They wanted him to understand kind of what it was,
and so that I remember that that was the first
time I ever heard of a Christmas Story.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
It's such a good movie.
Speaker 5 (49:31):
Every year, those are the.
Speaker 7 (49:32):
Two movies that we always make sure to watch it
at least once usually a few times during the holiday season.
And then Wet and then we have Great American Family
on all the time because I've got so many friends
doing movies on the channel, so watched.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
I wanted to ask you too about Swinging to Romance.
What can you tell us about that movie?
Speaker 7 (49:48):
Swinging a Romance is a movie that was came out
last year on Great American Family but now just dropped
on pure Flix. So this is another dance movie. So
like my new the upcoming Christmas movie, it's into really
Christmas ball. I do a wall A couple waltz is
in it, and that was choreographed by globs of Schenko,
who's a pro and Dancing with the Stars, but he
was actually in a Swing into Romance last year. He
(50:09):
also choreographed the swing dances or the jives in Swinging
to Romance. But then he played my ex fiancee and
my ex dance partner in that movie, and that was
a blast because I got to dance on screen with him,
which is amazing because he's like so good. It was
like doing Dancing with the Stars, but without the eliminations
and without a live pressure so you could do it
a few times. And then also without the broken rib
(50:31):
because I did break a rib on Dancing with the Stars. Anyway,
Swinging to Romance per fun movie, and yes, it's like
reliving and Dancing with the Stars. It's on pure Flix
and you can stream it anytime.
Speaker 5 (50:40):
Wait, how did you break your rib?
Speaker 7 (50:43):
Repeated trauma Week three actions when the trauma started because
of there was this move so Val Traumakowsky was my partner,
and there's this move where it was a contemporary dance.
He throws me in the air and I do a
three sixty spin and it catches me.
Speaker 5 (50:56):
Oh god.
Speaker 7 (50:57):
Eventually we had to change it into a one eighties
spin because six I was never quite getting around all
the way and so I kept landing in his on
his hand on this one rib, and and I was
so determined. I was like, yeah, it hurts, but you
know what, I'm a dancer. Dancers, you know, you work
through the pain. You just dance through the pain. Just
be tough. At the end of week three contemporary dance,
(51:19):
my rib hurts so much. I went to the doctors, like,
get way, did I break it? Like's, let's no, but
it's weekend sore. Wear a brace. Wear a brace for
the next couple weeks. So I did so from then on,
you see, you don't see my stomach and any of
those dances because I need to wear those braids. Well,
for week six. After week six, for week seven, that
was like, okay, do you think you know it's feeling
better yet feeling better, Let's go ahead and do a lift.
(51:41):
And there was this one lift thing we tried to
rehearsal and it snapped. Oh god to hear it snap,
and then flooded. So when I danced for two more weeks,
I danced week seven in week eight, and so I
danced eight out of ten weeks two which I danced
on a broken rib. And that's because because that's what
you do do. Yeah, that show really taught me resilience.
(52:05):
Have any of you guys done it?
Speaker 4 (52:07):
No?
Speaker 7 (52:07):
No, it's it's a ride of passage.
Speaker 5 (52:10):
Yeah, no, we have not done it, but I will
say you have.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
If there's anything we learned about you in this episode,
it's really that you can commit to a bit, just
more than just about anybody you were like math, Yeah,
watch this, oh acting, child acting? Yeah, watch this, Oh dancing,
Watch this. It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 7 (52:33):
It's called stubborn.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
Stubborn and.
Speaker 7 (52:37):
We'll see it's a guy you know, good in bed,
but it's it's.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Who I am.
Speaker 7 (52:42):
And I try to try to live life to the
fullest and help people along the way. You know, my
math books. I mean, that's something I'm super proud of
because you know, I want other kids to learn resilience.
I want kids to learn that, Like when math gets challenging,
that's you don't give up because that that's when you go, oh,
this is when I'm getting stronger. Yeah, this is when
(53:02):
things are challenging, that's when you're getting stronger. It's like
lifting a heavyweight at the gym. If you lifted easy weights,
like who cares. Yeah, but when you're struggling, when you're
struggling with anything, that's when you're getting stronger. Like embrace
those moments, go oh wait, this is actually good. I
still her the first time that math professor told me
because I was like, I'm just I'm confused. I'm trying
to figure out. He goes, that's good, Am I what?
(53:22):
Because you're in it, yeah, working it out, and you're
going to remember what you learn right now much more
than you remember something that it was easy that came
to you.
Speaker 4 (53:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (53:31):
Yeah, so resilience.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Well, Danica, thank you so much for being here with us.
Thank you for spending your time with us. It's always
such a joy to see you. Hopefully we will see
you at another nineties con or somewhere eventually, but it
was always it's always so good to see you.
Speaker 7 (53:47):
You see you, Danielle. Thanks guys, Bye bye.
Speaker 5 (53:49):
Hy Wow. I mean she's a smarty, she's as smart.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
She's definitely a smart.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, she's definitely a super smarty. We my kids love
bathtime math time. It's very sweet. Every time she writes
a new little kid math book, she sends it to
me and she autographs it. And so I've read it
a few times to Adler and he's like, what is
this here? I'm like, that's the author's autograph. That's her
sign that she cares whatever.
Speaker 5 (54:18):
Two plus three fast job, that was so fast.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (54:27):
Wow, you don't even need Danica's math book.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
I sure don't.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Thank you all for joining us for this episode of
Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us on
Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us your
emails Pod meets World Show at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
And we have merch A squared plus B squared equals
merch alt. What would you do if you're trying to
calculate the area underneath the curve?
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Merch Pod meets worldshow dot com will send us out.
Speaker 5 (54:59):
We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 4 (55:02):
Podmets World is niheart podcast producer and hosted by Danielle Fischel,
Wilfredell and Ryder Strong executive producers, Jensen Karp and Amy
Sugarman Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor,
Tara Sudbaksch, producer, Maddy Moore, engineer and Boy Meets World
superfan Easton Allen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton
of Typhoon and you can follow us on Instagram at
(55:23):
Podmeats World Show or email us at Podmets Worldshow at
gmail dot com
Hosts And Creators
Will Friedle
Danielle Fishel
Rider Strong
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