Topher Grace's Minor Adventures podcast - Stacey Donovan and Iliza Shlesinger in elevator

Update: here’s the link to the podcast! I come in at around 13:45.

The weekend before last, I was leaving a coffee shop when I got a call from a friend of mine. Someone had called her and invited her to be a guest on a celebrity podcast based in L.A., but she said no, because she lives in Kansas City. Did I want to be on the podcast? I said sure.

Two minutes later, a woman called to invite me to be on Topher Grace‘s Minor Adventures podcast with a guest, comedian Iliza Shlesinger. It was a quick call. I got the time, the place, and the basic idea: I’d talk about being a greeting card writer (which I was, in the past) and get them to try writing some cards.

 

I felt like I’d be going in kind of cold, but I wasn’t worried about it. I figured it wouldn’t matter if I was super witty or not, since they’d have that covered.

 

Who Are These Guys?

I work all the time, I watch very little TV other than old Friends episodes and Hallmark movies, I don’t read celebrity news, and I don’t even go to a lot of movies, so I know a lot less about famous actors and entertainers than most people do. I don’t say that to be cool, because I don’t think it is cool. It’s just kind of the way it is.

So I wasn’t positive who Topher Grace and Iliza Shlesinger were, even though they are big deals. Topher was on a very popular sitcom, That 70s Show, and has starred in a bunch of other things. Someone I work with said Topher was scarier in Predators than, well, the predators. He delivered this one line in a particularly terrifying way, and sometimes out of nowhere, my coworker repeats that line to his husband, just to creep him out.

More recently, he played David Duke in BlacKkKlansman (an even scarier role, I’m guessing), and I watched the Black Mirror episode he was in and he was amazing. I wish I could find one of his scenes from Black Mirror on YouTube, but I can’t, so here’s him on the Late Show.

 

 

Some guys I knew, namely my nephew in Boston and my actor friend in Chicago, were really jealous. This is a guy that guys really want to hang out with. (Important update: also, an executive at Hallmark, in her email to me, just described him as “dreamy.”)

And it turns out that basically every woman I know is a huge Iliza fan, and with good reason, because she is very, very funny. So when I told people on Facebook about the podcast, as one does, I got a lot of “OMG I LOOOOVE HER.”

I’d love to share her most recent clips, and I recommend checking them out, but they’re R-rated and I try to keep this blog more or less clean, so here’s a classic one.

 

 

Timing

I was a little nervous about my scheduling for that day, because I had a second podcast coming up right afterward, followed by a meeting with the CEO of my company. Most of my days aren’t like this. For instance, I can’t stress enough how many people do not want me on their podcasts.

The podcast is in a building on Hollywood and Vine. It’s close to this terrifying funhouse thing, which is promoting the second It movie, so fortunately, it’s temporary.

 

Hollywood Topher Grace's Minor Adventures Podcast Stacey Donovan Bryn Donovan

 

I was in the downstairs lobby a half hour early because I’m from the Midwest. I saw Iliza come in and sit down. By the way, Iliza described herself once as “a seven without makeup,” but I have to be brutally honest and tell you she is a solid eight without makeup.

I decided to wait until we were properly introduced instead of just pouncing on her. This turned out to be a good thing:  I soon learned from a text from the woman who’d called me that Iliza didn’t know she was going to be writing greeting cards. The “minor adventure” really is a surprise to the celebrity guest. So someone came down and brought Ilizia upstairs, and they escorted me up a little later.

 

The Podcast!

They brought me into a small room with Topher, Iliza, and the producer, and I got a handheld microphone. A couple of minutes into the conversation, Topher said I was so charming and smiley and exactly like he would’ve imagined a Hallmark writer to be. I happen to like it when handsome movie stars tell me I’m charming, so I was happy.

We talked about Hallmark movies first and then Hallmark card writing. Of course I had to be careful about how I responded to some things. The whole session was, unsurprisingly, pretty blue. Anyone who’s read my fiction under the Bryn Donovan pen name—which is at least, like, ten of you—knows I deal with grittier things there, while in my job, I have to keep things very wholesome. Topher assured me a couple of times, “We’re going to edit all this,” but I’d expect the final version to still be edgy.

After talking a little about greeting card writing, it was time for Topher and Iliza to try their hand at greeting card writing, and I evaluated the results. The only spoiler I will add is that several of Iliza’s ideas were what we would call at work, “funny but no”—things we would never print on a greeting card.

Topher was happy with the way the session played out. I don’t know yet when it will air, but when it does, I’ll update the post. They took a picture afterwards of the three of us, and if I see it show up on the Internet I’ll add it to this post, too. On the elevator, I was telling Iliza about how many of my friends were fans and she offered to pose for a selfie, which was very sweet.

 

Topher Grace's Minor Adventures podcast - Stacey Donovan and Iliza Shlesinger in elevator

 

The whole idea of the podcast, in which people try things for the first time, is so fun and inherently positive. I love trying new things, so the concept really resonates with me.

Do you want to share your hanging-out-with-celebrities experience? Do you have thoughts about Topher and Iliza? Or do you want to recommend a podcast to me? Let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re having a great week!

 

 

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