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[0:00] Ken Davenport: Hey everybody, it's Ken Davenport, and I wanted to say thank you for listening to the Producers Perspective podcast.

[0:05] Ken Davenport: You're now listening to a special mini-series, the Producer's Perspective Podcast Live from the Pandemic.

[0:13] Ken Davenport: These are recordings directly from the Facebook Live series. I started during the coronavirus pandemic, where every single night I interviewed a Broadway luminary and chatted about what they were going through, how they were dealing with it, and what they expected Broadway and theater to look like when it was all over.

[0:33] Ken Davenport: So join us for this very special episode of the Producers Perspective podcast live from the pandemic.

[0:43] Ken Davenport: Get the boy to rock to rock again.

[0:47] Ken Davenport: Get the band back together.

[0:53] Ken Davenport: Some months from the summons.

[1:00] Ken Davenport: Get the band back together. Please welcome to the live stream, Mr. Jordan Fisher.

[1:05] Ken Davenport: Welcome, Jordan.

[1:07] Jordan Fisher: Hello.

[1:10] Jordan Fisher: Hi. Thank you for having me, Ken. I appreciate it.

[1:12] Ken Davenport: Of course. How well, you know, look, first thing I have to ask you is like, can you see these comments?

[1:20] Jordan Fisher: Yeah, it's the moment.

[1:22] Jordan Fisher: Does this does this happen like wherever you go? Just like love, love, love, love.

[1:28] Jordan Fisher: Man, listen, I'm I'm I'm I'm glad it's that than anything else. You know, it's funny because in the comments and the live comments, I see a lot of familiar names. I stream on Twitch every day from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. and there are a lot of names and these comments here that look very familiar to me. So it's good. It's good to see the love. It means a lot. It's amazing.

[1:52] Ken Davenport: So Twitch, just so this 47-year-old dude understands this correctly. You can maybe this could be about you explaining Twitch to me. Twitch is a video game streaming. Is that what this is for the most part?

[2:04] Jordan Fisher: Or yes and no, for the most part, for the most part. It's a streaming platform, right? There are a handful of these, right? You can go live on YouTube, you can go live on Facebook, you can go live on all sorts of different things.

[2:21] Ken Davenport: Every day from what hour to what hour?

[2:23] Jordan Fisher: 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time is West Coast time.

[2:27] Ken Davenport: You're streaming for that entire eight-hour period.

[2:30] Jordan Fisher: Eight hours.

[2:30] Ken Davenport: Yeah.

[2:31] Jordan Fisher: That's my full-time job now. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's great.

[2:34] Ken Davenport: What are you streaming? Play, video, everything?

[2:37] Jordan Fisher: Yeah, a little bit of everything. So I typically start my streams off with a just chatting portion. So for you know, half an hour, an hour, just kind of it kind of depends on the flow of conversation and whatnot. I'll just chat with my community. We'll watch videos together. I've fully believed in that for a very long time that gaming, you know, and content creation in a live way, is a I mean, yes, it's probably a newer form of entertainment to a lot of people. It's been a thing for about nine years now. People have an opportunity to pursue their dream and pursue their passion in terms of creating content every day.

[3:10] Ken Davenport: How do you think, because now you're obviously a big theater fan as well, right?

[3:14] Jordan Fisher: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

[3:16] Ken Davenport: How do you think this affects how your generation of theater makers, like what are you gonna create tomorrow? You are not gonna write, like your generation of theater makers is not gonna write like Chekhov plays. What do you think theater for the video game generation looks like 10, 20 years from now?

[3:34] Jordan Fisher: That's a really great question. I mean, I think that we could probably dilute this down to a handful of different points. I would think that the main point where generating art in real time is concerned is that it's, you know, where tangibility is. Let's use Twitch for example. There is nothing like, you know, sitting down in the comfort of your home, you know, laying down in your bed with your phone out or whatever, being able to connect with somebody in real time. Now the conversations and the flow of conversations that obviously varies creator by creator. We can talk all sorts of different ways about like what this person is doing for art and creating art in real time. We could talk about all, you know, different different.

I've got DJ friends, I have producer friends, recording artist friends, painter friends that are all video gamers and that all also stream in real time. I think that one of the main things that we talk about here and what I love to talk about where gaming is concerned, why I'm so proud of it is the social aspect. I've had some of my most revelatory conversations not streaming playing Call of Duty at 2 a.m. with a handful of buddies of mine after I got off set, you know what I mean? Like there was a world of mine like the I for a while, this was years ago, God this is probably I don't know, we're creeping up a probably 10 years or so ago I worked on an ABC family show called Secret Life of the American Teenager.

My life at this point, Ken, was wake up, go to set, film all day and then go home, not go out, not go hang with friends. I had a raid that night. I was an officer in my guild on World of Warcraft. But I get all the and what's cool about this, it's the different shapes and sizes and colors and orientations of different people that I met from all across the board. I think that unification is the thing. The gaming is, I mean, it's a language that a lot of people speak. It's a language that most people speak, to be frank. We could talk about the numbers. There are records that were broken back in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. And we're continuing to do so every day. But I think the one thing that continues to make gaming so great and so beautiful that a lot of different content creators like myself can think about as we move forward generating art.

I'm writing a musical right now. One of the main things about this musical that I'm writing about is a character. And this guy, and this is a very small part of the story, but I think that in the grand scheme of things, much like Evan Hansen, everybody wants the place to fit in. Everybody wants to be able to call something of theirs theirs. Home, their friends. They want a sense of belonging, right? We're humans and by nature, we all yearn for community, first of all. And we need to be needed somewhere. I can see a handful of people in here that have friends that they have met in real life because they're all mutual fans of the content that I create and things that I do, that all got together and came to see Dear Evan Hansen.

You know, and I think that there's all that's that's what I'm saying. Like there's there's a much broader conversation we could talk about where we're building community is concerned and how this will affect like I'm a millennial. You know, we have an interesting I didn't grow up with high speed and I mean I had dial-up as a kid, you know. I look forward to going home and watching TRL after school. Like there's a weird kind of gap in there where my little brother is seven years younger than I, and he's a zoomer, and it's a totally different, he had a completely different childhood than I did where technology and social media and social interaction are all concerned that I think, you know, is constantly evolving.

And I think that Twitch right now is something that brings a lot of people together. I had fans in my chat every day that range from eight, nine, ten years old to early mid-50s. That a lot of them don't even play video games, but they like to watch them and they like to feel a sense of community, be able to connect with people.

[7:27] Ken Davenport: I'll be there tomorrow.

[7:28] Jordan Fisher: Say that again.

[7:30] Ken Davenport: You should.

[7:30] Jordan Fisher: I will be there tomorrow.

[7:31] Jordan Fisher: There's usually I should.

[7:33] Jordan Fisher: 7 a.m. PST.

[7:34] Ken Davenport: I love it. There's an argument to be made that gamers, because you play and connect with people all over the world electronically, were more prepared for this pandemic.

[7:45] Jordan Fisher: 1000%.

[7:50] Jordan Fisher: So it's funny. We have a text thread at Dear Evan Hansen, we have all of the cast. And the way that we found out Broadway was shut down was a play. I'm sure you saw this infamous playable article that came out just right then. And there was no warning. It was just, hey, Broadway shut down tonight. None of us knew that that Wednesday night show was going to be our last for however long. It was a beautiful show, thank God. It was we got to kind of, you know, begin our hiatus after a really great show. The whole cast was on that night, it felt really great. We sent this article all around our text thread. Fifteen minutes later, we were on a massive call with the production company basically, just saying, hey, if you're not based in New York and you want to travel, you want to go home, now's the time.

[8:35] Jordan Fisher: Yeah, exactly. So I have a place on the west side and home for me is LA. This is my house, this is my castle, this is my favorite place, and I don't get to be here as much as I would probably like to be here. I do kind of wish that Broadway was in Los Angeles, but I digress. I immediately called my team. Immediately. One thing that you'll know very quickly about me just from having a conversation is that I love my work. I love all of the different things that I do. I wear a lot of hats. I'm very grateful for that. But the one thing that really makes me tick and keeps me happy is working. I like to work. That's the thing that I'm I look forward to doing every day, whatever that is. If it's producing a film, if it's writing a song, if it's, you know, in a rehearsal space at New 42.

You know, I like I love the work. And that for me now and has been for the last two years is gaming and kind of creating content every day and streaming. And so I immediately called my team. I said, we need to figure out what my daily life is going to look like for this period. I have five films I'm producing over the next year and a half that are all just quiet right now. You know, there's not a lot that we can do, or in writers' rooms and looking at casting tapes and that kind of thing, but we can't talk about production yet. I had had an associate in Vancouver location scouting, had to fly them home. There's all sorts of different things that were bubbling and whatnot that all just went silent. And that can be very freaky. That can be very scary for a lot of people.

[10:12] Jordan Fisher: And the one thing I actually was just telling my community about this, I did a special very rare Friday night stream this past Friday, and had a bit of an emotional moment. It was a Twitch sings thing, which they had very much convinced me to do. Daily, I'll have people come in my chat and say, Sing for us, Jordan, sing! And I'm like, I'm not a dancing monkey. If you stay here for three minutes, I assure you that I will burst into song at some point in time. And I basically gave them incentive. I was like, listen, if we reach this sub count, this subscriber goal, I'll do a Twitch sing stream for you guys. Two hours, I'll pour some drinks. I invite you, if you were of age, to do the same. This will be like Haraoki, we'll have a great time.

Somebody donated, and basically what I did for this night is if you donated $100, you could request the song. I would sing the song, put all of that towards COVID-19 relief, all that's going to the Brother Cares Act, We Fights AIDS COVID-19 relief fund. And somebody that requested "Words Fail." This is the first time. I'm not sure if you've seen the show. Yeah, so it was the first time, Ken, that I sang the song since the show closed. And it was a very full circle moment for me that really I'm gonna get emotional talking about it now. It was a really full circle moment for me. Where that's obviously, if you've seen the show in chat, guys, if you anybody that's watching right now, you know what a behemoth this song is, and how difficult it can be.

I'm a very I have a very emotional Evan. He's very in touch with the floodgates, if you will. There's a lot of snotting and sobbing and screaming and whatnot that happens, and it's a behemoth of a song that happens at the end of the show, and there's a lot of catharsis there, obviously, because you're human and you're gonna experience that. I had not done it, I had not sung the song, I hadn't even hummed the tune since all of this happened. And right then and there, in this magical moment, I had 5,000 people, gamers, non-gamers, theater fans, music fans of mine that had not heard the song before, all there to experience this moment together. And I told them, I said, this is very full circle for me.

I have to learn how to land the plane. I'm very long-winded. I hear I've been told. But the first thing that I knew that I could turn to in a time where there's a lot of fear and a lot of unknown is my community, my Twitch family and the people that are there every day. And that's that, you know, this is me kind of retelling the story. I was like, that's you guys. And it was a really beautiful moment. It was a really beautiful moment that really shed light on how cool all of these bridges being gapped are and how that was happening in real time in that moment. It was it's yeah, I should I should we should probably move to the next thing because I'll start to cry.

[13:22] Ken Davenport: We bring up a well, maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna really try to get you. This is gonna be my Barbara Walters moment that I'm gonna try to do that.

[13:28] Jordan Fisher: I love it, I love it. Bring it on.

[13:29] Ken Davenport: Lorelai Soper asks, along these lines that you're in here, Evan Hansen's very emotional role. Did you do anything to mentally prepare to play him? And of course, she throws in a love you, Jordan.

[13:40] Jordan Fisher: Like much love to you, Lorelai. I appreciate that. That's a great question. I've got I have I have my own relationship with anxiety and depression.

[13:51] Jordan Fisher: I am a mental health advocate, and I have a therapist, an incredible man that I adore and trust wholeheartedly. And you know, I think that even if you feel like you are the best, you know, the most sound mind and spirit, and you're happy, it's good to have a—I call them brain mechanics. You know, we go to the gym, we go out of our way to eat well and eat healthily and get good rest, get good sleep. You know, we take our car to the shop, we take our guitars to get tuned up. We fix cracks in windshields and we fix smudges on walls, but we don't speak to someone who is professional that has the ability to help us sort through things that we don't know are broken that we don't know need to be touched on.

And then, you know, oftentimes I find that all of a sudden it piles up and then you reach kind of a tipping point. And I experienced that. I experienced depression. Oddly enough, last fall, I was in a moment, this moment of my life where everything was going very well on paper, everything was great, I was in a really good space. But I wasn't, and I didn't know why. And you know, immediately I was like, I need therapy. I need to be able to talk this out with somebody and do the thing. And the very first thing that he said to me was if I can do anything at all, it's gonna be to help you figure out how to have a good relationship with depression and anxiety, because these are things that you will deal with and you will constantly have to deal with.

But if you can figure out how to have a friendship with them, know how they function, you can figure out how they work where you are concerned, then they won't be so daunting and it won't be so terrifying. And he said, frankly, you as an artist be able to use that. And boy have I.

[15:46] Ken Davenport: That's amazing. So speaking along though, this is a time where a lot of people, whether they've experienced it before or not, a lot of people are having depressed thoughts or feeling anxious during this time. You obviously have made it—you like, I need to work. What am I gonna do? What does my day look like? Is the answer trying to keep busy? Like what tips do you have for all the folks watching out now to stay positive and come out on the other side of this okay?

[16:20] Jordan Fisher: That's a great question. I think that that varies for people. I'm not sure that the answer always is to keep busy. I think that that can oftentimes suppress emotions and maybe even medicate them, you know, by keeping yourself distracted. I think that there's kind of a fine balance in there. Finding balance for me was a big part of it. I—anybody that knows me knows very well I am a workaholic, I love to work, I enjoy the work. You know, my fiancé knows this, my family knows this, my good friends know this. I would even say a good chunk of my fans that have even gone out of their way to read articles or interviews or whatever. That's one of the things that I talk about constantly is the fact that I do love the work that I do and I'm very grateful to have the work that I do.

But balance is everything, balance is key. I think that if you can—if I could give a tip, it would just be to figure out, spend some time with yourself, figure out what makes you happy. For me, I know that that's work. If I did it all the time, then I would—I think that that would become the new norm, and I would probably burn out on it. So I have to separate some things. You know, I have obviously I stream every day, I'm writing music a lot. You know, there's different phone calls, there's different interviews, there's different opportunities like this to be able to sit down and talk about these kinds of things, talk about the state that we're in currently. But some of the best moments that I have, honestly, are just sitting on the couch with Ellie, my fiancé, my dog, and we're going through all the Marvel movies right now.

My immediate family lives 15 minutes from me, and they're part of our quarantine cell, if you will. They'll come over, play poker. It's just that I think it's that stay-at-home mentality that is very important, I think, especially right now. You were just talking about a little while ago. As things are starting to ease up, we have to be extra careful. And I know that there are a lot of people, much like myself, there are things that I miss. I miss going to the bar with a buddy, I miss going to the movie theater, I miss being able to go to a friend's house and play games and watch films and go to shows. I miss Broadway. I miss that work. I miss putting on that blue polo every night. But you know, should we rush into the thing, you know, and at what cost?

I think that that's the really tricky thing. Pulling the parachute too early is—or too late, you know, neither of those things will pan out very well for us as a society. But I do think that right now as we lean into the unknown and start to try to move away from the fear of everything, quote unquote, it's important to really take advantage of this time that you have with yourself and with people that you're around, if it's your partner, if you're parents of kids, if you're the kids with parents, whatever the case may be. I'm sure everyone's getting sick of each other and would love nothing more than to be able to hop in the car and go to the beach. But you know, that will come, that will come with time.

Right now is a really beautiful opportunity for not only the earth to take a big inhale and exhale, but for us as humanity to do the same thing, recognize the things that we miss, really cherish them when we get them back. And in the meantime, just take time, reflect. Figure out what makes you tick, figure out what makes you happy. If that's keeping busy, be busy, keep yourself busy, do the thing, find projects. You know, I'm sure we all saw that meme of here's all the things that you don't need to do, you know, to overwhelm yourself during quarantine. But if some of those things on that list apply to you, then freaking do them. Absolutely. Go out of your way, do the thing, but find balance. Find balance, don't burn yourself out too much. Read a book, watch a movie, go for a walk, wear a mask, go for a walk. Take a video about it, submit it to the case.

[16:59] Jordan Fisher: Take a video about it and submit it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Start your commercial production career. I love it. So you wear all these hats, you do all these things, and obviously you do so many things unbelievably well, which is what I was always amazed me from music career, television career, theater, gamer, producer, movies. So this is Christopher Julian, it's not my question, but it's amazing. What do you hope to be doing 20 years from now? And I'll add my own little Kenism on that. If you could only pick one of these things to do, only one, which one would it be?

[16:59] Jordan Fisher: Of the things that I'm currently doing, or the thing that I've—things that I'm currently doing?

[20:38] Ken Davenport: That you're like, you know what? Someday I'm gonna become a grandmaster chess player. That's gonna be fun.

[20:41] Jordan Fisher: I believe you could do it. That's great. I appreciate that. Yeah, um, I'll start with the Kenism, if you don't mind. It's really difficult for me to answer this question. The way that I have navigated my career and I have an incredible team. It really does take a village. And if I didn't have these people in my life, most of them are women, actually. I could say, you know, all these strong women and some men in my life that help me kind of navigate the ship. I wouldn't function. I would—I don't know where I would be. So I'm very grateful for that. I think that I have a fear of having to pick one thing over the other. So I don't because I don't need to do that, because I've never needed to do that.

I've managed to figure out how to continue putting hats on and trying to do them all but to the best of my ability and with the most heart and soul that I can possibly muster. I don't necessarily know that I would ever want to pick one. I don't, you know, I think even hypothetically, Ken, it's like a—it's a hard question to answer. I don't know that I could. I think that the constant shifting of my life is one of the things that keeps me so happy in all of it. You know, it's one of the things that keeps me so energized. You know, if I'm filming a movie somewhere, I tend to really miss making music when I'm in the process of making music constantly. I really miss being in a rehearsal space and being on stage somewhere.

I, you know, when I'm doing that, I can't wait to stream the next morning. It all kind of goes together. The big—I guess the roundabout way of answering your question as well as it—was it Christopher? Twenty years from now. The dictation of time, I think, is the main goal for me. I'm not a remarkably complicated person. I'll show you one of my devices is this barrel right here. I've got some great whiskey right there. It's one—that's one of my vices. I love that. I don't need a lot more in my life than my people, my family, my friends, the ability to create, the ability to do, and whiskey and wine. I say all of that to say my main goal in my life is to be an excellent father. I want to be a father.

I can't wait to have a family. Ellie and I, we met when we were kids. We were nine and thirteen years old. We grew up as friends. Oh my, yeah, we were kids when we met in Birmingham, Alabama. We were part of the theater conservatory there, and we met out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So grew up friends already, like eight times longer than most marriages.

[23:31] Ken Davenport: Yeah, right. It's interesting. I think that having the over decade-long friendship before we started dating is what allows our relationship to be so healthy and accessible, and it's a really beautiful thing, but we both very much look forward to having a chaotic household full of a bunch of kids just running around and doing the thing and to support them and all of their dreams and guide and lead and love and all of that. I think that that's the main goal of my life. And you—the way that I really want to be able to take care of all of that, and again, like I'm from the South, she's from the South. That's why we're young and we want to start young because we want a bunch, we want to be able to have as much energy as we possibly can so that we can also be young, energized grandparents one day.

You know, we're kind of very big picture-oriented people, and I think that the dictation of time is the thing that I'm really working so hard towards right now. It's why I do all of the things pretty much simultaneously, so that one day, one day we can live the life that we want to live, have and have the capability of being able, like for me personally, have the capability of being able to say, okay, listen, I'm gonna have my name on this project, this project, this project. I'm gonna actually be on the ground for this one, but I'm gonna take this break so I can go home because that's when my daughter's recital is. And then, you know, be able to just kind of run my production company out of LA and really do the things that I absolutely am dying to do. I think that that's the thing that I'm really working towards right now.

[25:11] Ken Davenport: Well, there's a guy in his 40s who waited until I was 45 to have a kid. Let me tell you something. If you want a bunch of them, have them early because like I fall asleep every night. My wife likes yells at me for falling asleep on the couch because I'm just all fast out chasing that little one around.

[25:28] Jordan Fisher: So funny.

[25:28] Ken Davenport: I love that. Well, I'm already a morning person. I'm up at the crack of dawn and I'm looking at bed at around 8:30. So I think that as long as I can keep that kind of—it's different on Broadway, obviously. You know, I'm not even getting home until 11, 11:30 sometimes. But you know, we adapt. That's what we do as humans, right?

[25:48] Jordan Fisher: Well, I wear a bunch of hats myself, and I will tell you my shrink said to me years ago for like—because so many people were telling me, like, focus on one thing, focus on one thing. And so I was like, I should maybe I should focus. Everyone's told me to focus. And she said, you know, like you're always gonna be one of those people that does many things, and that's okay. And obviously, it's working very, very well for you.

[26:09] Ken Davenport: So yeah, don't listen to my stupid question. It was a trick question. You're supposed to say, I'm not doing something on one thing, you idiot.

[26:17] Jordan Fisher: But they are—they—I think one thing, you never know how.

[26:22] Ken Davenport: I love it. I love it. Well, listen, I can't thank you for spending all this time with us tonight. It's almost—well, you're on the West Coast, so it's not your bedtime yet.

[26:29] Jordan Fisher: No, no, no, true. It's Manhattan o'clock for me.

[26:33] Ken Davenport: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm thankful for you being here. I will see you on Twitch. I'm gonna sign up for this thing.

[26:39] Jordan Fisher: Please do. I mean, please do. I gotta check this out.

[26:42] Ken Davenport: And thank you so much just for your energy, your positivity, for inspiring all these people and all of us tonight, and for being here. It means the world. And I look forward to being back on Broadway soon.

[26:49] Jordan Fisher: Thank you, Ken.

[26:52] Ken Davenport: Thanks again for listening to this very special episode of the Producer's Perspective Podcast live from the pandemic. If you enjoyed tonight's episode, do us a favor and subscribe on Apple Podcasts. And hey, while you're at it, leave us a big standing ovation review, will ya? And check out my Facebook page at Facebook.com backslash Ken Davenport for more live stream interviews just like this one. Except on the Facebook page, you can actually see our faces. So check it out at Facebook.com backslash Ken Davenport. We'll see you there.