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[0:00] Ana Gasteyer: Hi, I'm Ana Gasteyer. Welcome to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:10] Alan Seales: Hey, everyone. Welcome to an all-new episode of The Theatre Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and our guest for this episode is Ana Gasteyer, someone who knows what it's like to chase joy, fight through fear, and build a career that's anything but predictable. Ana has a really cool story because she originally wanted to be a classical voice major, but then that took her into improv comedy, which then, of course, led her to Saturday Night Live. And then all of that training in spontaneity still shapes her work today. We talk about the backstage chaos and high stakes of SNL's 50th anniversary special that just recently happened, and even get into the differences and the nuances between a scripted improv moment versus actually improvising when it's not expected.

That was really cool. And how she balances the need for her creative fulfillment with the realities of her career pressure. She opens up about fighting to be taken seriously as a vocalist, a Broadway vocalist, after her comedy fame on SNL and how hard it was to play Elphaba in Wicked after she was seen as this comedic character. She's also now collaborating with some longtime friends to write two new musicals on her own. I'm excited to hear those come out. So if you want to watch the video version of this episode, you can check it out on Spotify or Patreon. Find me on all the social medias. Tag me in your comments. Let me know you're listening. Don't forget to stream the cast album of Once Upon a Mattress that just dropped a few days ago as I'm releasing this episode. Please, everybody now enjoy this episode with Ana Gasteyer.

[1:48] Alan Seales: Today, we're joined by a brilliant actress, comedian and singer whose work spans television, film and Broadway and some of the most unforgettable SNL sketches of all time. She created classics like The Delicious Dish, home of the iconic sweaty balls sketch, and brought to life characters like NPR's Margaret Cho, Martha Stewart, and one half of the singing culps duo with Will Ferrell on screen. She's starred in Mean Girls, Wine Country, Suburb, Suburgatory, People of Earth and NBC's American Auto. On stage, she's played Elphaba in Wicked, Mrs. Peachum in Three Penny Opera, and most recently, Queen Agraveen in Once Upon a Mattress, which, by the way, just dropped their cast album. Speaking of albums, she's also a celebrated jazz vocalist known for her holiday album, Sugar and Booze. Woo, Ana Gasteyer. Welcome. Welcome to the theater podcast.

[2:36] Ana Gasteyer: Thank you, love.

[2:42] Alan Seales: You're welcome. You're welcome. I was actually surprised, and I feel like I knew this, but I didn't, that you studied voice first.

[2:50] Ana Gasteyer: Yeah. It's a weird path. I mean, it's meaning I became famous as a comedian, but so I went to Northwestern as a voice major and got there and met all the improv comedy people and started doing improv comedy. It was in Chicago, and then I kind of dumped the whole music idea and followed this comedy path all the way to LA, did the Groundlings, back to Saturday Night Live. Then after Saturday Night Live, well, basically by coming to New York and by virtue of singing a little bit, like whenever you do improv comedy, you kind of use whatever's in your toolkit. I sang a lot in funny ways in characters and stuff. Casting people started inviting me to do, asking me to be in their readings or workshops or whatever.

I did the first Hairspray reading, all the what became Jackie Hoffman's role, a bunch of ensemble. I just got to know sort of the community a little bit. Between my fifth and sixth seasons, I did Rocky Horror. I replaced Joan Jett, and that was my first Broadway credit. I kind of got my feet back in the water on that and started training again. That's when I really doubled down, started properly working to be an actual singer.

[4:18] Alan Seales: You made your Broadway debut while doing SNL. I mean, between seasons, but while doing it. Now there's more people who probably cross over, but again, it wasn't a very commonly followed path back then.

[4:31] Ana Gasteyer: That's crazy. You did 121 episodes of SNL. At least that's what IMDb says. Does that include the 50th that just happened?

[4:38] Ana Gasteyer: No. No, it would have been more than, I think it's more than 122 because I've done, it was 20 a season. I did six seasons, so that part makes sense. Then we did a bunch of primetime specials during the time I was there for election specials and things like that. Then Mother's Day special, Betty White episode I did. I've been back a few times. Yeah.

[5:01] Alan Seales: Is that just like a phone call? Lauren just blows up your phone every now and then, and he's like, Ana, we need your back.

[5:06] Ana Gasteyer: Every blue minute. Well, he doesn't call, but yeah, but you get a phone call. Then also, because it's like being in encores or something, it's an immediate rabbit hole where you're out. No matter when I was on the show, it definitely was the case. You always would start on Monday, and then it would suddenly be Sunday, and you had to listen to a single voicemail or whatever. It's still the same. Every time I'm like, oh, you've been doing the 50th. I was like, it'll be fine. Then suddenly realizing, oh my God, it's five o'clock. I haven't eaten anything but a power bar. Yeah, because you just go into the cave, literally. I was talking with Hayter once years ago. Someone such as yourself, such as him, that comes across on screen as well put together, hard to break, just developing these deep characters. He was saying before every show, panic attack, full-on panic attack, before every live show. Was it like that for you? What was your experience with the live part?

[6:14] Ana Gasteyer: Well, I mean, yeah. The bummer about it is that you don't ever get to enjoy it. One of the beauties of live theater is that you get eventually into a routine with the show. Showing up and kind of warming up and doing your thing and going out on stage and having fun with the audience. The thing about SNL is because you're, especially, I can understand why Bill would say that because you're eternally pulling it off. You're eternally seat of your pantsing it. So the creative, the fun part of the creativity for me was never Saturday night, really. I mean, I envy people that can do that. I think Kristen can do it. I think Will can do it. I think there's certain people that really are just incredibly comfortable in the setting of making mistakes, basically.

But I am not. That's probably my greatest regret about the show. I never quite got that. But what was fun was Tuesday night writing. The read-through table was fun. Thursday rewrite was fun. There were a lot of parts of it that were very kind of... The actual creative flow process is really, really fun there. And dress is fun, actually, because it is, again, you're sort of more... But then the live show tends to be a bit... It's just scrambly because there's so much information. Even when I went back and did the 50th this year and the Radio City thing, which was just totally insane. I mean, just thousands of people in the wings, the massive wings of Radio City and a million stage managers. It's not like theater where you have... You're expected at 7:30 and you sign in and then you warm up and everybody on stage... All the rules are sort of different.

So your schedule is... You're doing a lot of spontaneous, hyper-vigilant, like, wait, am I supposed to be somewhere right now? Wait, we need to make a cut to that thing. Because you're also responsible for your own material. So you're constantly like, wait, wait, wait, I got to find the writer and we got to submit changes to the booth. And there's a lot of kind of mini-producing that you're doing while you're getting ready. It's not just like you're putting on your wig and going to be... I mean, again, this year, that was Friday night for me at Radio City Music Hall because I was doing Bobby and Marty the Music Teachers and I did a bit in Nick Valentine and Bill Murray's bit with Cecily and Maya singing.

And then I did Martha Stewart introducing Snoop Dogg. So I had three different things that I was kind of juggling on my own, more or less. And that, I knew, was the highest stakes. Plus, Radio City is 6,000 people. It's huge. We followed Lauryn Hill. It was just the actual crowd manipulation and dynamic of that is really intense. So by the time I got through that on Friday night, I was like, this is going to be fun now. So then I was just like, I had to sing a little bit in Lawrence Welk and in Mulaney's musical thing that he did, which was Bond with Taron. So that was more fun. The Saturday night show was more just like, I don't really have to drive. I can just sit in the back seat and have a good time.

[9:37] Alan Seales: That's really interesting. You don't get to sit into the comfortability of the routine of Saturday night. It's one and done. But part of the beauty of I think live theater in general is even though it is one and done on that night, you get to do it eight times a week.

[9:55] Ana Gasteyer: Yeah. I mean, yeah. That's the blessing and the curse, right? It's hard. It's hard to do it over and over again. You can get very OCD about it and wanting it to be perfect and wanting to nail it, especially on a big vocal role, like an Elphaba. That would be much harder where you're constantly wondering your vocal journey on it. But in health and I don't know, do I have a cold this week or am I fighting something or am I tired? A role that is that vocal is a little bit more perilous. But no, I think for the most part, I mean, what the beauty of Once Upon a Mattress for me was that it was, I don't usually actually say yes to comedy music roles because it took me a really long time to be taken seriously as a vocalist.

So having to cut through from SNL into Wicked was really a big effort. It really was. Nobody wanted some dipshit from skit comedy to come and sing Elphaba. I mean, I understand it from the Broadway singer's point of view, right? So I had to very much earn my stripes and get that going and it was pre-internet. So even that, like the public really, unless you saw me in Chicago at the Nederlander or at the Gershwin, you really probably didn't know that I did it. So even now, there's people like, she played Elphaba? And you're like, yeah, she was like the third Elphaba, whatever. But Once Upon a Mattress is sort of more fun and spontaneous and joyful because it was this great combination of like comedy character with a little bit of legit singing. And my husband brought me my coffee in a Once Upon a Mattress mug. He knows. Just a very subtle, very, very subtle reminder to stream the cast recording.

[11:40] Alan Seales: Stream the cast album. Yeah, that was actually going to be my question was, ultimately, how did you break out of the trope of you're only as good as what you've last been seen doing? And because if you wanted to do voice first, if you are a legit singer, that is a serious role. Elphaba, like the Glinda is the comedic one in that. And there are comedic moments that Elphaba gets to have, but she's not the funny one.

[12:06] Ana Gasteyer: Yeah, I mean, I think we did find that she was pretty she's she was an ironic person, and I think she's a dry person. So we were able to find that, I think, in our particular dynamic. It played pretty well. We found a lot of jokes and things. And of course, comedy is always like common language where you connect with people through jokes. So I think Glinda and Elphaba with Kate Reinders, it was very connected around the comedy. I do. I do think that when you are it's a weird thing, and it sounds gross and arrogant. When you are born with a with a skill to sing a role as big as Elphaba, it's it's a weird, almost like calling of some sort, like people who really sing. It's like a common tribe.

And so when I started, and it's not something you like talk about, because it's literally I mean, of course, like I train, I vocalize, I've taken roles that require work. When you're doing an Elphaba, even when you're doing mattress as much as I'm like, oh, it's a light lift. It's legit. I screamed the entire show, the entire show. So it was actually like I had to warm up, I had to cool down, I had to do all the things that you have to do to take care of your instrument, you know. So when I'm working on Broadway, it's like such a relief because I'm with other people who also ended up with this weirdo superpower. And you know, and it's like, it's not something. It's so incredibly almost like religious to work with other singers and to make music.

I had the cast over we were in Los Angeles, we went from we so we closed on brought we ran through Thanksgiving on Broadway, it was live and engagement here. And then we moved to the Amundsen in LA, the whole cast. And you know, it's a lot of like the ensemble and stuff. We're away from home for the first time or younger and on their own. And so I have an apartment in LA. And so we had everybody over for Christmas Eve. And I mean, to have like 20 people 20 ensemble members from a Broadway show singing Christmas carols, oh my god, and Brit like de Chateau, like, you know, play the piano. And it was just like, like, so moving and fun. And like, on this other level of, you know, it's just something that that's another frequency or something. I mean, I imagine that it's like what, I guess, like it would feel like if you're like a really good basketball player. And, you know, you're actually with

[15:23] Ana Gasteyer: I have written for somebody else a lot in my career. I was the original Aunt Deborah in Kimberly Akimbo the Play at ATC. I immediately knew who that woman was. David's a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. It was before his Pulitzer. I was like, oh, I know exactly who this is. I know exactly how to play this. I like doing plays because there's a craftsmanship to it. There's effort being put into a book. In musicals, sometimes it's thinner and it has to be slightly more decorated, but you have the luxury of singing the most emotional piece of the story or funny or whatever when the musical sings, as they say.

[15:57] Ana Gasteyer: It's interesting because right now, Dratch and I are adapting this ridiculous Hallmark Christmas parody movie that we wrote to a Christmas musical. It's so obvious. Jeff Richman is writing the music, who wrote Mean Girls, and as we're going, it's just so evident where the musical starts to sing. You're like, well, this is the moment at which he would profess his love, and you know that that's where the musical happens. It's really fulfilling to do things that have been shaped and crafted and thought through.

[16:46] Alan Seales: How do you feel about shows that have the scripted improv moment in them? Something like Titanic, where you get to a certain point every day and you have a certain number of minutes to just riff.

[16:53] Ana Gasteyer: I did that in my very first show in Rocky Horror. That's a great question that no one has ever asked me. It's funny because I get kind of embarrassed because I feel pressure to do it differently every single day, but at the same time, you want the luxury of knowing, wait, that other thing scored, so I'm just going to land the plane. Because the audience, they pay a lot of money, and they're focused, and you want to deliver. I guess I respect that the author at some point understands. It depends. Justin Spitzer, who created American Auto and Superstore, I was shocked by how many improvisations he would use on camera in the edit, but I think as a writer, he's very confident. I know this from television writing or whatever.

As long as you get the version that you wrote, you're open to hearing other things. People who come from writer's rooms are very flexible about, may the best joke win, but on camera, it's different because you're only doing five takes of your close-up, so it's easier to improvise each time.

[17:42] Alan Seales: It's funny that you said that you get embarrassed by that sort of thing. Do you feel a pressure to just always be good?

[17:50] Ana Gasteyer: It's sort of weird. To me, it's like they've planned an eight-day-a-week spontaneous moment as an awkward moment. Do you know what I'm saying? I love a spontaneous moment. Obviously, in Mattress, we had a million. It's Brooks, Ash Manskis, and me. Somebody asked us, we just did a signing for the cast recording. One of the questions from the audience was like, when did you break? There were so many hilarious things that had gone wrong. I'd forgotten. Everybody had a different story. We had all these props and things that would break and magic tricks that would go wrong. Everybody had a million different memories of things that were legitimately insane, mistakes that were made. That cast was so sort of jolly and the text was so playful.

It is a vaudevillian show in some respects. It's 1959. It has that throwback-y, entertainer's era takes to the audience. Daniel Brick was great with the audience. There was a flexibility to do…I yelled quiet at the audience a couple of times. You could just shush them. Things that were fun, you could interact with the audience, but planning it or doing it like, now is your funny moment, I think can be clunky.

[18:44] Alan Seales: Yeah. That's what I was going to say, speaking from personal experience too, to say like, all right, right here at this beat, that's when you make something up. That's too much pressure. I don't like that, but I love improvising around mistakes. That's fun.

[18:56] Ana Gasteyer: Hilarious. The reason it's fun to do every day.

[19:00] Alan Seales: Right. I can't imagine with a cast, like you said, for Mattress, that is so quick on their feet, so easy to just flow with, that you could literally just make something up when it's not planned and it's the best thing ever.

[19:13] Ana Gasteyer: No. I played the violin in Mattress during Spanish Panic. We had this ridiculous thing where I started playing. Two or three times throughout the run, something would happen where it would come completely untuned. It would be like a barometric shift or whatever. I don't know what, but I would get out there and they would hand me the violin and it would literally be like, and people would be crying, laughing. Again, you would just have fun. We yelled at each other. I would yell at everybody.

[29:47] Ana Gasteyer: No, I don't need to do drama. I mean, I've done it. It's funny. Dratch and I were just saying the other day, I mean, again, so much of it is like, you realize at a point, all you want to do in your 20s is work. And then you work your whole 30s and you work your whole 40s. And then all you want to do in your 50s is, you suddenly realize like, all I do is work. So it's this combination of like, it has to be, I want to work with friends, I want to collaborate with people, I want it to be fun, I want it to be uplifting. I love creating things. I love making things. Right now, I have literally five things going where I'm collaborating with so many of my favorite people from so many pieces of my background from SNL, from Groundlings, from Broadway, like all these different, you know, collect, you collect these incredible humans that you've had that enormous privilege of getting to know and work with.

So I just want to keep making things. And I hope that, you know, that the world isn't tired of me and lets me, lets me keep trying them because I have written a lot, but I haven't really, like fully explored that side of myself. And I've been writing my own comedy, you know, since the beginning of my career, I just, but the nature of the way SNL is put together, I didn't even join the WGA till five years ago. So yeah, which is wild because of the way that you're accredited and things like that. So I'm just enjoying sort of having authorship over a few of these big things. And yeah, I'm wanting to do them with people who know what they're doing and having a good time doing so, you know, so it's I have more Christmas things coming.

I love the holidays. I love touring. And I love working with friends kind of really straightforward. Someone who also loves Christmas, of course, famously, Stephanie J. Block, the two of you should should do a she has like four Christmas trees in her house. No joke.

[31:37] Alan Seales: I did not know that.

[31:39] Ana Gasteyer: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, the two of you need like a Christmas diva off.

[31:42] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[31:43] Ana Gasteyer: Where you can just try to try to out each other with Christmas tunes.

[31:47] Alan Seales: Except it would be a loving partnership, not a competition.

[31:51] Ana Gasteyer: I would approve that for you, please. Looking back at everything you've done, though, do you have a moment that stands out above the rest? That's kind of like, wow, this was this this will never happen again. I can't believe I'm here right now.

[31:57] Ana Gasteyer: Not to be gross, but like so many of them. I have had the most charmed like I can't believe it sometimes. I don't think about it. You're always like rat racing and your head's always down. And I want the things that I make to happen very badly right now. I mean, this thing that I'm writing, all I want to do is make sure that we get it like I live in fear of not have a little bit of like that, you know, Lin Manuel anxiety of Hamilton of like, I got to write and get it done. I got to write and get it done because I have so many things that I want to get made before I'm too old to make them. And that sort of panic, you know, and I just hope that I get the privilege and the opportunity to do them.

But I've had so many. I mean, I got to the 50th was unreal. It was just unbelievable. It's like, you know, you go into those things like high school reunions thinking like, Am I going to have a good dress? And, you know, I came out having had so much opportunity and to do really fun, creative things and be a part of it in such a special way. And it's so unusual in show business in life to especially in show business, to be a part of something that's both nostalgic and relevant. You know, you're usually going to like a reunion of something like the 20th of Wicked, but I can't go play Elphaba again. So it's kind of wild to like, SNL is this like expanding accordion of a show like you're, you know, we did characters that were popular 20 years ago, but we did them in a way that is still like singing pop tune pop tunes from today, like so that we did when Will and I did Bobby and Marty at Radio City.

So that was really special. You know, I mean, I got to perform Annie at the Hollywood Bowl. I mean, I mean, I was, you know, Hannigan, which I never ever would have imagined with his all star cast that, you know, Megan Hilty and Roger Barton, David Alan Grier and Michael Arden directed I, you know, I got to play Elphaba and Wicked on Broadway. Like it's insane. I mean, there's just so many things that I feel, you know, I got to be the lead in an NBC comedy. I don't know, like, I just feel like I've gotten to do some pretty exceptional things.

[34:14] Alan Seales: So your next step, you know, Boston Pops that was on the list, you know, your next goal. I mean, it sounds like is being a Tony winning writer, musical writer.

[34:20] Ana Gasteyer: I mean, I would love that. I'd like to actually be a Tony winning actress. Like, it's so hard to get nominated for a Tony. Like, it's so hard. It's so hard to originate a role. It's so hard to find the thing is it takes a long time to get there. I have such admiration for it. So yeah, I love being a part of the community. It's so meaningful to me. And I have such massive respect for people who do it. You know, it's it's hard.

[34:50] Alan Seales: Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back after this break. Welcome back to the episode. Do you have a favorite medium overall? Like you've you literally have done everything including like cartoon voiceovers, animated voiceovers. We haven't touched on that. Like, yeah. Like, do you have a favorite medium?

[35:05] Ana Gasteyer: I haven't done that much film. So I'll give you that. I mean, I've been in movies, but I've never had to carry one. I mean, no, I don't. I mean, that's a boring answer. But I obviously live performance is organic to me. And it's terrifying, but it's it's Bill Hader, you know, I but I do love I love the relationship of performance, especially song and audience music and audience, I think is very there's I really love being in an audience. And I really love being on stage for an audience. I think there's something really magical that happens, especially increasingly in this world of media distraction and whatever. There's so few, you know, I went to Quaker school like I you sit in silent meditation once a week.

So I feel like there's this that audiences are these still these really sacred spaces theater. So I do love that. I like television acting because it's fast. And, you know, leaves a lot of room for comedy. I love ensemble comedy in particular, and variety, you know, but I would say it's probably live performance at the end of the day. It's theater and live.

[36:10] Alan Seales: Good answer. Good answer. All right, so let's wind down here. And we're going to switch over to plot in 60 seconds, which is a fun little 60 second game we've got. I've got a list of 16 popular musicals in front of me. So you give me a number one through 16 that will correspond to one of my shows and then you give me the plot to that show in 60 seconds or less. I have a caveat before we do this.

[36:26] Ana Gasteyer: What's that?

[36:36] Ana Gasteyer: I have I am legitimately terrible at plot like my family makes fun of me, literally like three weeks after I left Wicked. Somebody like one of my children asked me the most basic plot point. I was like, I don't know. I don't remember. Like you did it. I I'm like, it was great. I enjoyed it. I felt it. I'll walk away with a great vibe. And it'll be over. So I'm going to fail so hard on this. I can't wait.

[36:59] Alan Seales: That's what makes it great. Okay. One through 16. Give me a number.

[37:06] Ana Gasteyer: Nine.

[37:06] Alan Seales: Nine is the Lion King. Go.

[37:06] Ana Gasteyer: Oh, my God. I mean, this is what I mean. A little baby lion. Somebody dies. They go. A bunch of hyenas try to eat it. Somebody. Somebody holds it up on a rock. And everything's going to be fine. Hakuna Matata. And Simba grows up and overcomes the obstacles of a lonely childhood. The end.

[37:36] Alan Seales: 30 seconds remaining.

[37:44] Ana Gasteyer: All right. All right. And Jeremy Irons gets it in the end. I told you. I've seen it once about a thousand years ago.

[37:50] Alan Seales: Fair. Let me let me do the other point of it. Puppetry. You cry in the opening. The end.

[38:03] Ana Gasteyer: One of my favorites for Sound of Music was Julie Andrews defeats Nazis. The end.

[38:07] Alan Seales: There you go. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty much it. That's it? That's all I got?

[38:11] Ana Gasteyer: Well, I mean, that's probably about a 40 percent, 40 out of 100.

[38:14] Alan Seales: It was terrible. It was good. I don't even, literally, I don't know what it's about.

[38:18] Ana Gasteyer: Coming of age? About coming of age and growing into your of your lion's skin?

[38:20] Alan Seales: Personhood, your manhood, your womanhood. Yeah. Being who you were born to be or something.

[38:26] Ana Gasteyer: I couldn't tell you what the main takeaway is.

[38:29] Alan Seales: What's the plot, though?

[38:31] Ana Gasteyer: Well, the plot. Oh, the plot. Yeah. Oh, God. See, now I'm on point. How dare you?

[38:38] Ana Gasteyer: Was Simba tries to... Scar wants... Scar is the brother of Mufasa, who is the king of the Pride Lands. Scar wants to be king, but now Simba gets born and now... But Scar is trying to take out Simba and makes him feel he kills Mufasa, but he really didn't. It was really him. And then he befriends Timon and Pumbaa. And then they say, no worries, it's all good. Hakuna Matata. And then because Scar is ruining the Pride Lands, Nala is out searching for food way out where Simba ran away to. They get reunited. He tells... She tells Simba, hey, I kind of like you and you got to come back and save us from Scar. And he does the end and everything's good.

[39:18] Alan Seales: All right. Good job.

[39:19] Ana Gasteyer: Thanks.

[39:20] Alan Seales: Proud of you.

[39:20] Ana Gasteyer: Thanks. Is that better?

[39:21] Alan Seales: Well, you redeemed me.

[39:24] Ana Gasteyer: Okay. I'm going to put my mouth on top of your face and it'll just be...

[39:28] Ana Gasteyer: I do know The Sound of Music. I actually know The Sound of Music and I know Mary Poppins. Why? Because I've watched them at least 3,000 times.

[39:35] Alan Seales: Oh, I'm going to put Mary Poppins randomly in my list here. I don't have that one.

[39:39] Ana Gasteyer: Mary Poppins is so good.

[39:39] Alan Seales: I don't know the Mary Poppins musical, like the stage plot as well.

[39:44] Ana Gasteyer: I saw it, but I don't... All I remember is it was in... Do you remember The Dollhouse? It was an amazing set.

[39:48] Alan Seales: Yes.

[39:49] Ana Gasteyer: But I don't... I know the movie set. I knew the movie Mary Poppins better.

[39:53] Alan Seales: I should like throw people off by adding like bed knobs and broomsticks.

[39:57] Ana Gasteyer: That would really screw them up.

[39:58] Alan Seales: That would really screw them up. Okay. Three closing questions. Standard questions. Just the first one simply is what motivates you?

[40:03] Ana Gasteyer: Ooh. Three things motivate me. They're so basic. Joy, having a good time. The love I have for my family and my friends. Love and fear, not getting it done. Should have mentioned that 40 minutes ago. We could have unpacked that.

[40:23] Alan Seales: Okay. Let's see. Next question. What advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[40:30] Ana Gasteyer: My advice to my younger self would be spend less time worrying about other people because your little path is what it's going to be. Just keep focusing on what you're doing. It's very original. You do you because over and over and over again, when you commit and you try hard, something good comes from it. And you don't always know what that exactly is going to be, but it does pay out down the line. And working hard, for example, for an audition or a project or whatever it is, never nets anything bad. You may not get the role, but you don't feel bad about yourself, which is a win. You walk with your head high and you usually, in my experience, something does pay off down the line. I auditioned for Wicked. I didn't get it. And two months later, they called me and said, hey, do you want Chicago? Every time I've truly thrown my hat into the ring in an earnest and committed way, it has paid off in a way I haven't been aware of later.

[41:26] Alan Seales: Huh. I love that. Okay. And stop worrying about other people. You're not going to make somebody less talented. You're not going to make somebody less of a competition. Don't worry about it. There's lots of room. There's plenty of pie. I like that. What advice? Oh, sorry. I asked that. That was question two. Third question. If you could only see one show for the rest of your life, you can see it as many times as you want. What would you see?

[41:45] Ana Gasteyer: Oh, God, that's impossible. I mean, I'll tell you some shows I have seen a lot that I never get tired of. I've seen The Music Man 5,000 times. I've seen Cabaret 5,000 times. I've seen West Side Story 5,000 times. I will never not love them. Mary Poppins, as mentioned. Sound of Music, as mentioned. Yeah. How to Succeed, I've seen 100 times. Oh, that's so good. All right. So where can we find you? Jeff and the Salesman, I've seen 100 times. Where can we find you online on social media after you are done listening to the Mattress Cast album?

[42:22] Ana Gasteyer: Right. I'm at Anna Gasteyer everywhere on TikTok, on Insta, X, Facebook. Yeah. And you can look for my alter ego at September L. Davis.

[42:40] Alan Seales: September L. Davis?

[42:40] Ana Gasteyer: Official September L. Davis. She's got a show coming up.

[42:44] Alan Seales: Oh, great, great, great. All right. We'll have to put that in the show notes. And I'm on Threads, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Leave a rating and a review wherever you're listening. You can watch now on Patreon and Spotify, actually. Jukebox the Ghost gave us our intro and outro music, and Anna Gasteyer gave us our wonderful conversation. Thank you, Anna.

[43:01] Ana Gasteyer: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.