From The Comic's Comic

We’re not in Kansas, anymore!

I don’t know how I didn’t know Niccole Thurman before last year, but if you’re like me and didn’t much watch The Opposition with Jordan Klepper on Comedy Central, then perhaps you didn’t know, either.

Thurman worked as a correspondent on that show, where she played herself but as an arch-conservative in parody, much like Klepper and “Stephen Colbert” of The Colbert Report. The show didn’t captivate audiences quite as much as The Colbert Report had, and really, nothing else ever quite worked in that 11:30 p.m. E/P slot following The Daily Show, so much so that Comedy Central finally threw in the towel and expanded The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to a full hour this year.

Here, though, was a field piece in which Thurman traveled back to her native Kansas in 2018 to find out why so many teenagers were running for…checks notes…governor?!

Thurman hit my radar only during the pandemic, somewhere in the time between the Upright Citizens Brigade closing up its theaters and the alumni from The Second City writing an open letter to address longstanding problems in dealing with non-white and non-male performers in the system. I found Thurman’s Twitter, and then her Instagram, and immediately developed a comedy crush on her. Her social media presence was and is, just so charming and winning. And funny. Can’t get enough of her Stories.

Then I saw her in a picture frame last winter on NBC’s Kenan.

I had to know more. So glad she could join me for this podcast. If you don’t have a comedy crush on Thurman yet, now’s a great time to start!

If you’re not already subscribed to my podcast, seek it out and subscribe to Last Things First on the podcast platform of your choice! Among them: Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Stitcher; Amazon Music/Audible; iHeartRadio; Player.FM; and my original hosting platform, Libsyn.

Here is an edited and slightly condensed transcript of my conversation with Niccole Thurman!

Sean L. McCarthy: Last Things First, congratulations on so many things! I mean I know we’re still in the middle of the pandemic — I don’t dare say we’re near the end, who knows when the end will be. But for as long as a pandemic as we’ve had your career has been on fire.

Niccole Thurman: Oh my gosh, thank you. Very nice of you to say. I’m such a, like I don’t even know I’m such, I get so, tunnel vision that I’m just like, oh it’s been okay, but no it’s been good. It’s been good considering it’s been a pandemic, yes.

Me: Let’s Be Real. That’s just one of the shows you’ve worked on. Robert Smigel’s puppet parody which, if you blinked, you missed it on FOX. You also have written on season two of Sherman’s Showcase, which is great, on IFC. You’ve been onscreen in both Grace and Frankie on Netflix, and pictured if not also seen speaking on NBC’s Kenan.

Thurman: Oh yeah, I was I was on screen for that, too, just two very short scenes.

Me: And then you’re also a voice in the new HBO Max animated series Jellystone, and you’ve been working on various other projects. Is that why you’re back in New York now, working on something else?

Thurman: No, actually, New York was a really interesting thing where I just came here on vacation in June, and it was so nice to just not be in LA honestly, and I used to live here, and just being back in New York and seeing some of my friends and family. I was like, I’m gonna sublet an apartment and I’ve been subletting here for a few months I’m going back next month. So yeah, just hanging out. No work.

Me: So you prefer autumn in New York to autumn in Shawnee?

Thurman: (Laughs) Yeah, I guess I haven’t been in Shawnee for autumn, in, I don’t even know, a million years but yeah, I think autumn in New York is pretty magical to be honest, so yeah.

Me: So I know this might seem too trivial, but did we ever figure out What’s the Matter with Kansas?

Thurman: You know, I did not personally when I was there. I wish I had time to figure it out. I was lucky enough to, I feel like, avoid most of the things that were wrong with Kansas.

Me: But that’s the title of a book that a journalist wrote in 2004, when I guess you were there then, right?

Thurman: I was in school then, so yes I was there, still. I don’t know what was wrong with Kansas. It was something about politics, right?

From Wikipedia, paraphrasing:

What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004), by American journalist and historian Thomas Frank, explored the rise of populist anti-elitist conservatism in the United States, by focusing on what happened in Kansas. The book spent 18 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Frank describes the rise of political conservatism in Kansas during the recent rise of “culture war” politics, and how it prompted conservatives to promote and legislate economic policies that didn’t benefit the majority of people in the state. The divide between moderate and conservative Republicans in Kansas also foreshadowed the split that would happen nationwide as the right-wing pressed for more extreme issues and legislation.

Thurman: Kansas is definitely a lot of small towns, but it’s also just like chill suburban life and, yeah, I, it was interesting growing up there but I liked it.

Me: The University of Kansas does have a pretty decent tradition of actors coming out of that. When you went there were you thinking of yourself in the Paul Rudd mode or the Mandy Patinkin mode?

Thurman: Mandy Patinkin mode. Because I remember when I was in college, I was way more into drama and theater, and I thought — because when I graduated college I moved to Chicago, and I always thought that I would be doing more like onstage drama stuff. So yeah, I wanted to be more of a Mandy Patinkin. But I soon got plucked into the comedy world, and that fit way better.

Me: I also discovered that Nikki Glaser — another Nicole but she’s a Nikki with two Ks, you’re a Niccole with two Cs. And as a Sean, I find it very important to get these things right. Did you happen to cross paths with Nikki Glaser?

Thurman: No, she went to University of Kansas?

Me: She transferred there, yeah.

Thurman: I did not know that and no, so we never crossed paths. That’s so interesting. She was probably there before I was but I didn’t know that, that’s so cool. Where is she from?

Me: She’s from St Louis.

Thurman: Cool. I did not know that. Fascinating.

Me: Like you said, when you went to Chicago, you weren’t initially expecting to be a comedic actress.

Thurman: No. I don’t know if it’s just growing up. I did some improv and some sketch in high school, of all places. We had, like, my high school theater program’s actually pretty good and so like, my senior year, I had to audition to get into this comedy troupe. But other than that, my experience with theatre was acting, drama. Like that was to me real acting. So, I had not planned — I had never planned — my goal was never to work in comedy. Like a lot of people that moved to Chicago, that I met at Second City that had been their whole goal for life, and I was like I didn’t even honestly know that was much of an option. I never considered it until I kind of stumbled upon it.

Me: You were thinking more dramatic theater companies, of which there are a few in Chicago as well.

Thurman: Oh yeah, I interned at Steppenwolf (co-founded by Gary Sinise in the 1970s). And that was like, what I wanted to do is perform at Steppenwolf someday, in that company. And when I had interviewed for the internship, I had also interviewed at Second City because I had heard they were another good theater in Chicago. Honestly that’s all I knew. I ended up going with the Steppenwolf internship because it was more of a program, and more structured, but then the woman at Second City was like, ‘if you ever want to work for me for a few hours a week, then you can take a free class,’ and I was like, of course, that would be great. So I took a class and then after the class she was like ‘if you ever want to maybe audition for us, I know it’s not really your thing, but you can give me a headshot and try out one time,’ and I did, and then I ended up like getting jobs with them and once I started working with them, it’s like, that was the path and that was part that made so much sense for me, too.

Me: When the pandemic happened. And then George Floyd’s murder. Both of those things combined had a lot of people in the comedy community reassessing how well we’ve been doing in terms of like lifting each other up, or pushing people down. And I know Second City kind of fell, as part of that. What was your whole perspective? You said your first introduction was very nice and very pleasant and you were almost kind of recruited.

Thurman: Yes, because I was recruited by Dionna Griffin-Irons, who is the outreach and diversity program leader, at least she was at the time. I’m pretty sure she’s still is. So it was very much like in that vein of like, diversity, inclusion, it was an interesting experience. I feel very lucky to have worked with Second City so it’s like, I completely 100% credit them for me having a career, to this day. I don’t think that I would actually have the career that I have were it not for Second City. I think working there was my first taste of like how limited comedy, and just even Hollywood or entertainment how limited the industry can be in its thinking of people of color. I think other people maybe felt — I don’t know what their experiences were but for my experience personally, I felt welcomed into Second City. But I always felt like, I was told at one point by a certain director, that you have no point of view. And I was like, well that’s crazy because it’s not possible to be a human, and have no point of view. That doesn’t make sense. But I realized quickly like what they meant by that was, you know, then the next thing they followed that up with was like you’re black and Jewish, why don’t we talk about that. And it was like why don’t you, you’re white, and a man, why don’t you talk about that? Like, that doesn’t need to be on the surface at all times in my opinion. It doesn’t need to be what you lead with. It shouldn’t be your only way into a room or your only way for people to talk to you. And so I felt like that was the experience I had that was frustrating, was that I felt like they wanted to kind of box people in. This happens a lot I think, too, honestly. People in any entertainment, TV, anything, they want to include people of different colors or backgrounds or sexualities or whatever it is, but they want you to fit their narrative of what that looks like. And that is something that I’m probably never going to be able to do. Because I think now it’s changing and adapting and people are getting like a little bit more hip to the fact that like a black woman can like heavy metal or you know, black women can like rock or whatever. There’s they’re realizing there’s more of a spectrum but back then, especially, it was very limiting. So I think a lot of people of color felt frustrated by the fact that they had to act and be a certain way in order to get success at that theater. I don’t know. I feel like they’re hopefully more open minded now. I think that they obviously had such a shake up and so many people calling them out that they had no choice but to be. That was the only thing I did find frustrating about that experience but I think that experience was a microcosm of the industry as a whole. It’s not necessarily all that different. Once you get out into the outside world with the bigger industry in Hollywood, either. I think that that’s changing and people are more willing to listen now. And like you said, because of especially the events of last year, they’re more willing to reassess how they deal with people of color and they’re definitely listening more, but that was definitely when I was there a very frustrating aspect to it.

Me: Right, you remind me that there’s been this prevailing sense. And of course I’d say this coming at me straight white male. But even from my perspective, I’ve seen so many people take the word diversity to just mean, oh, we have this box, and this is where all the diversity goes, into the diversity box. And the diversity box is somehow not in the same box with everybody else. It’s in its own box. And never the boxes meet.

Thurman: They started programs where they would teach classes to people of color and it’s like, that’s great, but like why don’t just if anything give them a scholarship. They don’t need their own program. And also I think that diversity, a lot of times means, it’s like, oh, we’ll just throw a person of color in there but they don’t necessarily they’re not necessarily sensitive to their needs, or their experience, and they’re not necessarily ready to listen to those experiences and include it. I think that’s the thing that tends to be missing is the actual inclusion of people, and letting them have whatever their opinion is. I’ve always found that like, obviously boxing people in is not going to work or making them feel like you’re filling that slot. It’s not going to do anything for anyone because it’s going to make the people who feel like you stole a slot from them angry, and it’s going to make the person who’s in that slot feel like they have some kind of like spotlight shining on them for no reason, when they’re just as talented, and can easily just collaborate without having to be about that.

Me: I’m also a little, dare I say a little cautious about the changes in Chicago, in particular, because even though The Second City, Andrew Alexander is out. All the other old guard are either out or dead. ImprovOlympic, Charna Halpern has let go of iO. But the new owners are all like venture capitalists, so I’m a little cautious about what that’s going to be like.

Thurman: Yeah I really haven’t been following along since Andrew left. It’s really strange. It feels super corporate now, so I’m interested to see how it’s gonna go moving forward. And also, part of me thought like, there’s a part of me that always kind of has a problem with someone stepping down, when it gets like really hot and the spotlight is turned on them, I’m kind of like, it would have been cool to, I mean, I liked Andrew. I only met him a few times maybe, but he was always nice and chill. But I think if I would have appreciated more like seeing him stick with it and seeing him say what changes can I really make, and, like, I’m willing to like sit in this and make some real change, as opposed to just being like, OK, well, you know, everybody’s getting on my case, I’m gonna go. I thought that was a little bit of a strange move especially because then you put a black man in the interim, person in charge, and it’s kind of like, first of all, they’re not going to just solve all the problems just because of the black. Second of all, it’s a lot of pressure to put on someone, after you’ve had scampered off into the night. It was a little bit weird but yeah I’ll be interested to see what happens within forward because it does seem very corporate now, so I don’t know, maybe it’ll be a good thing but yeah it definitely seems like, what’s going to become of the art?

Me: What you just said reminds me of — Andrew stepping down and not sticking around — it’s like when George Bush left everything for Obama to clean up. Where critics go, well now we have a black president and everything’s trash! Not realizing, well, it was trash when we got here.

Thurman: Yeah, it’s like he left the trash at the front door and then the guy’s like, well now I’m holding it because I have to, and you’re getting all this shit for it. And a lot of times too, it’s like, then people are steamed. And they’re like, oh, he just got the job because he’s black. No, he’s a very smart guy. He’s been working for Second City three years. He has the skills. But you that person in a really weird position for sure.

Me: Before Second City, you were a dramatic actress. Second City changes that completely. When you left Chicago in 2015, how did your expectations of your career change even at that point?

Thurman: It was an interesting transition. I was very lucky because of working at Second City that I got a manager who, you know, had those connections to like bigger industry types, jobs and things like that, so I felt very like tuned into that world already. But it was interesting for me because I had primarily done stage work. Been onstage, almost all the time. Any on camera work I had done was mostly commercials, maybe like standing in the background of an episode of some other TV show that shot in Chicago. Because back in the day, they didn’t, even in 2015 they weren’t shooting that many shows in Chicago, there wasn’t a lot of TV work there. So it was interesting because then I had to really pivot to, OK, how am I going to work in TV? Having to like learn that skill set, that I’m still learning of how to act on camera, because you get so used to just kind of playing super big and loud when you’re at Second City. So it was a lot of it was a lot of adjusting to just be on TV, really.

Me: But then you end up getting this job in New York with Comedy Central, The Opposition with Jordan Klepper. I mean, that’s another complete pivot for you, right? Because now you’re suddenly on camera as a comedian, under your own name, but then playing a fake persona, like Jordan was, like Stephen Colbert before that. That’s going to be so confusing, but also kind of making you question what you want to be doing.

Thurman: Yeah, it was really interesting. It was the same way with Second City. I had all of the skill sets except for improv. I had never improvised before. I have all these skill sets like playing music, singing, being a funny person. I had had the skill set, but I’d never known how to use that. And then when I started on The Opposition it was the same kind of thing, like I have the comedy skills. I’ve always kind of been a good host. I’m good at reading teleprompters and good like reading straight to camera and things like that. And so it was like the skill set was there, but I had never really written all of all that much, creating my own material, I didn’t really write that much, and I didn’t do a lot of political stuff, so it was like this whole new world that I had to develop that skill set, and also doing field pieces was something I honestly didn’t even know I was going to do until the job started. I was like, oh my gosh, I’m going to have to interview people. So yeah, it was a big adjustment, and even just the mindset because we were all playing conservatives and I’m not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination. So, even having to wrap my head around how to kind of think from a conservative point of view, but make it obvious that I’m a liberal and I’m parodying and I’m satirizing this kind of culture. It was really a whole new way of thinking. It was challenging. It was definitely a big challenge.

Me: How did it change would be one of the look for next, after that?

Thurman: It’s interesting, because it’s like I got I say like, oh God, Second City said I had no point of view. But it helped me to like, advocate for my own point of view more. By making it so that when I had to pitch ideas, they had to come from a specific place of like what I wanted to talk about, how I wanted to talk about, and I had a lot of control over how it was presented, and I think after The Opposition, I realized how much power I had. Because I think a lot of times as an actor, especially as you come up, even though I had worked at Second City for like five years, consistently, I still didn’t really realize how much power I actually had until after The Opposition, and I didn’t realize how like, I didn’t know how to pitch. I didn’t know really how to write. I didn’t know how to like speak to my point of view. And so I think that that helped me advocate for myself more and also understand the importance of creating my own material and writing. Like I wrote a pilot and I started to write things just in general, because I realized that like the more I put out of my own stuff, the more people are going to know who I am and like recognize me for what I want to be recognized for. And so it’s like, even it even started me making silly internet videos, Tweeting and just doing things that were going to get me more attention, that were coming from very much me. As opposed to like looking at a script and just kind of going with whatever was there.

Me: I for one, I love your Instagram stories. So, yeah, like, when you’re talking about, like, showcasing your point of view by doing your own thing. That has to have been a big part of it, is understanding how you relate to people one on one or one to 35,000, depending upon the platform.

Thurman: Exactly. It was really, it really helped me to be like, this is me unapologetically, because I think you get used to or sometimes you worry so much when other people are gonna think or you want to make sure you make everybody happy and don’t make anybody angry, and I definitely don’t want, I would never, you know, my internet persona or my personality in general is, I don’t want to offend people. But I like to show people like the real me and relate to them in a way, and I think that yeah a lot of my comedy comes from interactions that I have on the street, or, you know interactions with people just in general, and people can find that relatable and they enjoy it, and follow me because of it. And so that was definitely something that came up for me after The Opposition. Because when the show got canceled, it was canceled after only one season and I didn’t know what I was gonna do because I had never been on a show regularly like that and then had it get cancelled. So I was like what do I do now? Do I go back to waiting tables? Like, what am I doing with my career? And it became like post on the internet, tell people who you are, be yourself, have fun and then it ended up being really rewarding because it got me into writing. It got me into just a lot of different paths. It gave me a lot of opportunities that I wouldn’t have had if I had just been kind of waiting by the phone for somebody to call and give me a part.

Me: It’s interesting that your first thought wasn’t, oh I should fail upward, because that’s what I think, that’s a typical mediocre white guy thing to do is like, I’m gonna take this experience and I’m just gonna level up. I know I should be leveling down, but I’m gonna level up.

Thurman: Yeah, I feel like maybe us black women don’t get to think like that. I don’t know. I don’t know why it was like that. I think women in general you know we’re, what is it like when women are applying for jobs they won’t apply for a job if they don’t have every qualifications for it, whereas a man would typically go for it. Even if he only had one qualification. And so I think it’s just that kind of thinking of like, OK, shit, I mean I still was like, you know shit is bad. I don’t really have a job. I don’t know what to do, but I’m gonna find a way to make something happen for myself because I’m just sitting at home and I’m bored and my savings account ain’t gonna last forever. So it was a lot of that thinking. And it wasn’t like me sitting around thinking the next job will just come because I deserve it because I can fail up. It was more like, let me figure out how to make something happen for myself.

Me: Or even not failing upward, but something that I’ve heard from talking with enough people from Hollywood, is that there’s this idea that even if your project fails, every step of the process allows you to advance automatically to the next step. If you sell a script but don’t get a pilot, you still get into the system enough to be able to pitch a pilot next. So it is failing upward in a way, which is such a weird form of capitalism.

Thurman: I felt like when the show ended, I was like, nobody knows who I am, like the show didn’t do what I thought it would do for me. And so I was, I didn’t necessarily feel like that. I was like oh my gosh I might have to go back to square one. Because I had also moved to New York for the show. So then I had to move back to LA and I was like oh my god like casting directors don’t remember me, nobody’s gonna remember me. It ended up working out, but it was rough for a little bit there, trying to kind of figure out where I fit in.

Me: One of those gigs that you got in the meantime was Haute Dog.

Thurman: Haute Dog was an interesting experience because that was my first writing job. And that was a job that Robin Thede, who is the executive producer, also A Black Lady Sketch Show. She put me up for that job with a few other women. She was the other host of Haute Dog. She put me up for that job and the way I got that job was through Tweets. Because, Neil Casey, who was the head writer for that show, he was trying to figure out which person he would pick that Robin had given him a list of and he read my tweets and he was like, ‘I liked your tweets. Do you want this job?’ So that was a cool job.

Me: And then when the pandemic started, what was your initial plan? Did you have one?

Thurman: No, I didn’t have. It was really crazy because, like I said, at the beginning of pandemic, I was still very much just an actor who made internet videos sometimes, and Tweeted. I didn’t know what to do because I had savings. I had been kind of already living this unemployed slash freelance working sometimes lifestyle, so I didn’t necessarily like lose a bunch of work. I was just kind of like, OK, but where is the work gonna come from? Because if we can’t go on set… we couldn’t be on sets. Everything shut down. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was chilling, and then I was kind of like but wait, what happened, if in like three or four months I won’t be able to continue to live in my apartment, I’ll have to move somewhere. I’m not going to move home. I didn’t know what I would do. So I didn’t have a plan. But yeah, because of honestly, because of Twitter, because of the internet because of people that I had met, I ended up starting writing. And I also was very lucky to get a voiceover job right before the pandemic started. We literally only recorded in the studio together one time, on March 10, and then the rest of the time was all either remote recording, or recording by ourselves in the studio with everybody else behind a big glass wall. So, I yeah I had no plan is the long answer to that but I ended up kind of like, I guess you could say falling into a new career in a lot of ways, voiceover and writing.

Me: Did Jellystone happen in part because you already had a pre-existing relationship with HBO and HBO Max? They didn’t hear you in the writers room and go: ‘Who’s that voice?’

Thurman: I wish it was that easy. Sometimes I’m like, you hear my voice enough. Does anybody want to use it for something? But no.

Me: That’s how little I know about voice work. I just figured someone hears your voice and they go, that would be perfect for this.

Thurman: No. It was just a regular audition. I do voiceover auditions all the time. You sit at your house, you record it, and send it in and then, you know, send in 100. And then, I don’t know maybe you book one. Maybe. But voiceover auditions are hard especially in LA, I feel like in animation they’re very hard to get. And so this was the first animation job I’ve ever had. I thought it was only going to be a couple episodes, maybe more, but I don’t know. It ended up being this job that literally lasted me through the entire pandemic we’re recording. It was amazing.

Me: And then Grace and Frankie. Did you film that during the time when the pandemic was ok?

Thurman: No, we shot that in January and February of 2020. So like right before it. Yeah and we shot I think that that the four episodes that are on Netflix right now. They shot those, and then they had to shut down and they shut down for a long time because everybody on that show is older, so yeah.

Me: So one of the things that’s great about all the credits that I mentioned in the beginning, well not that they’re all great stuff, but that you’ve managed to be both, to coexist as a writer and as a performer. You’re not just in that one box because, you know, we talked about the diversity box, but there’s also in show business this compulsion to pigeonhole somebody and go oh you’re a writer, or you’re a performer, but to be able to be both seems rare. Unless you’re writing and performing your own material.

Thurman: Yes, I think that’s very true because I do think a lot of people don’t go back and forth. I have a couple friends that truly they are like, they’ve always been my inspiration: Ashley Nicole black and Yassir Lester. They’ve always been a huge inspiration to me and I always kind of watched them and admired how they could do that. And I was like that would be the goal for me is to go back and forth between writing and acting. Acting can suck just because it’s so hard and inconsistent, and like I said, you can be on TV for a whole year on something like The Opposition, and then the show gets canceled and then you’re just taking guest-starring roles here and there and that’s only like one or two days of work, maybe a week, you know it’s not, it’s not just consistent work. And so, yeah, I feel really lucky to have found a way to manage that. I mean it’s not always easy. It’s crazy because every time I take a writing job that’s when acting stuff gets really busy and then I get totally overwhelmed, but like, it does feel so amazing and so much more stable for me to be able to always have an income from either one or the other. Because sometimes, writing is kind of a nice way to step back and still be super creative and collaborative but you don’t have to like, it’s not like your face and your body are for sale. It’s like you get to just work with your mind, just like put stuff out into the world but not so much pressure of presenting it to everyone.

Me: How much just doing one job in one inform or help you learn about the other one. Like say you recently worked behind the scenes on a show, Baking It, with Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg for Peacock. So you’re writing for them. How much do you learn about performing just by writing for them?

Thurman: So much. First off, Maya Rudolph is my idol, my everything. I have always said like my main goal was to work with her. I want to work with her as an actor and I still believe that I will. But like working with her, I literally got like tears in my eyes the first day we were shooting because I couldn’t believe it was real. And that never happens to me, I was just like I can’t believe I’m working with my idol. But yeah, like writing has taught me so much and it’s completely changed the way I work in everything, because being able to like sit back and watch people on camera, how they act, how they receive notes, how they receive your jokes, how they interact with crew has been so eye opening. And also, not with Baking It, but I’ve had jobs where it’s like, you know, you pitch a joke to someone, they’re like, I don’t like that. Why would you? Why are you trying to make me say that? It’s almost like they take it in as like you’re trying to make them look bad, and I used to think like that, too, as a performer. I didn’t realize they’re not. They’re really trying to make you look good! Everybody wants you to do well, because that means the show does well and it gets more seasons. And I just feel like I’ve learned so incredibly much about how to be collaborative on set as a performer. You can just see more of like how things really work when you’re behind the camera as opposed to in front of it. So it’s really been such an incredible experience and I’m really glad I got it, cuz I think like, I don’t know I always want to be fun to work with. I want to be somebody that people want to work with more than once. And I think sometimes when you’re just like, tired on set, or you don’t know what’s going on, because you don’t have much control over the writing or whatever it is, you can get kind of confused or like get maybe an attitude or whatever it is, but now it’s like I feel like because I know more of what’s going on when they’re making the show. I respect it more and I think I have more fun when I’m on set and when I’m there for those super crazy long days, so, I’m so glad I got that opportunity.

Me: Well, I for one, I’m glad to have the opportunity to talk to you. You’ve been an absolute delight. You’re fun. You definitely have a point of view, I don’t care what they told you in Chicago 10 years ago. Thank you so much.

Thurman: Thanks for having me.