In the lush, softly lit studio where nearly 60 years ago the Beach Boys recorded “Pet Sounds” and changed pop music forever, the hosts of the “Podcrushed” podcast are preparing to interview their latest guest: Chase Stokes, star of the Netflix teen-treasure-hunting drama “Outer Banks.”
Those hosts — Nava Kavelin, Sophie Ansari and Penn Badgley — check their mics and headphones as videographers adjust their cameras. An engineer in the control room futzes with the sound. Chase, whose publicist is also named Chase, announces that he has never done a podcast before. “You’re taking my podcast virginity,” he tells the group. Badgley, the TV star formerly of “Gossip Girl” and currently of “You,” assures Stokes, actor-to-actor, that he prefers the “longform format” and expects that Stokes will, too.
There is a glut of celebrity-interview podcasts these days, all positioned as spaces where guests can speak freely and be, in the parlance of the moment, their most authentic selves. Many of these podcasts are hosted by other celebrities; you, a lowly non-famous person, are invited to eavesdrop as guests share what they’d never reveal in any other context. Though these back-and-forths can have their delights, the results are about what a savvy listener would expect: the illusion of intimacy with the absence of accountability, ancient gossip proffered as breaking news, meandering filler that begs to be played at 1.5 speed.
“Podcrushed” approaches the genre from a different angle, and the results are surprisingly poignant. The show is primarily about adolescence, zeroing in on the coming-of-age stage. “Podcrushed” interviews linger on tween triumphs and traumas, probing for the tender, vulnerable places beyond adult defenses.
Matthew McConaughey talked about having his heart broken by his eighth grade girlfriend, who dumped him the day after he told her that he loved her. Ramy Youssef reflected on the fear he felt as a Muslim middle schooler in America after Sept. 11. Adam Brody, who found fame portraying the aspirational teenage experience on “The O.C.,” admitted that, in reality, “junior high and high school were the darkest period in my life.”
With Stokes, 32, the hosts spend more than an hour delving into the confusion he felt as a young man lacking a father figure, the bullying he endured and how he was plagued by “crazy cystic acne” that covered his back and face. Only after this emotional deep-dive, which takes up most of the episode, do they get around to the projects Stokes is ostensibly there to promote.
Conan O’Brien was an early big-get guest, appearing in the show’s first year.
“There are people who have an awkward middle-school experience and then things start to work for them,” he said on the episode. “And they grow into their body, and they feel pretty good about themselves, and they have success, and they actually forget or act like that other part didn’t really happen. And I think it’s good to remember that that part happened, and let other people know, without mistake, that that happened. That was reality.”
“The feedback we’ve gotten, I think a lot of times, is that it feels like therapy,” said Badgley, 40. “But in the gentler sense, in the best sense.”
HOW MANY WAYS CAN FAMOUS PEOPLE talk to other famous people? Famous actors can talk to other famous people about the “stuff of life” (“Where Everybody Knows Your Name” with Ted Danson and, sometimes, Woody Harrelson) or the wisdom wrought from age and experience (“Wiser Than Me,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus) or pretty much whatever they want (“Literally! With Rob Lowe”). Famous comedians can talk to famous people about what showbiz is like behind the scenes (“Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade”) or what life is like beyond work (“Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” “WTF with Marc Maron”). Multiple famous people can talk among themselves as co-hosts, while also talking to at least one other famous person (“Smartless,” hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes). Famous family members can talk to unrelated famous people (Kate and Oliver Hudson’s “Sibling Revelry”). Famous people can laugh with other famous people about how the famous host doesn’t really know anything (“Anna Faris is Unqualified”; Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert”; “Don’t Ask Tig” with Tig Notaro), or they can bloviate at like-minded famous people about how they actually do know everything (“Here’s the Thing” with Alec Baldwin).
And that’s before we even get into the ever-expanding genre of rewatch podcasts with stars from your once-favorite shows (“Office Ladies,” “90210MG”) or the wide world of sports podcasts hosted by professional athletes.
Given the market saturation, one might consider the enterprise a little lowbrow. But hardly anyone, it seems, is too famous to be above trying a celebrity-on-celebrity interview podcast: Not even a first lady (“Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast”) or the Duchess of Sussex (Meghan Markle’s since-canceled “Archetypes”) or Gwyneth Paltrow (“The Goop Podcast”).
These celebrity-on-celebrity interviews are on the rise as traditional media, with all its annoying requirements (journalists who fact-check and ask follow-up questions), is in free-fall. Trust in media is at a near-record low but, apparently, trust in celebrities is higher than ever.
“Podcrushed” doesn’t pretend to be investigative journalism, and the ground rules are appropriately cozy: Guests are permitted not only to view a draft of the episode before it’s released but also to cut anything they wish they hadn’t said. As Kavelin explained it, “I think that came from Penn and his own experiences of [interviews where] you say something and as soon as you say it you know it’s going to be taken out of context.”
She remembers when Ariana Grande was a guest on what became the most-viewed “Podcrushed” episode to date. Grande had agreed beforehand to talk about her time on Nickelodeon, even though “Quiet on Set,” a documentary alleging harmful and, at times, abusive conduct at the network, had just been released. Badgley still avoided the subject until Kavelin finally brought it up.
“I just think he never wants to ask those questions, and I understand why,” said Kavelin. “But I also feel like, if our spirit isn’t to exploit someone or get clickbait, but it’s something meaningful or important, why not ask? Why not go there?”
That perspective is what helps “Podcrushed” stand out from the pack of celebrity-on-celebrity interview podcasts. It is, after all, a celebrity-and-two-civilians-on-celebrity interview podcast. (Kavelin, 37, is a former middle-school teacher and Ansari, 30, is a former fifth-grade teacher, so they are well positioned to explore what it means to be 12.)
Badgley acknowledges that his fame — a word he seems viscerally repulsed by — is an important part of the “Podcrushed” equation, not just to attract listeners’ attention but to win over well-known guests. “I think it is true that some people probably relax knowing like, ‘Well, yeah, you do know what it’s like. You do know what it’s like to be in my chair,’” he said, adding: “I think the capital I bring is that kind of comfort.”
Kavelin and Ansari’s role, then, is to puncture that insidery intimacy with the giddy enthusiasm of everyday fans — to call it out when a story that is supposed to be “relatable” is anything but, and to bring esoteric tangents down to earth.
“I also think there’s certain questions that we might be more comfortable to ask, as people who are not celebrities and never have been, that might be more uncomfortable for Penn to ask,” Ansari said.
Badgley agrees. “I would never ask people about their love life.”
“He shouldn’t, but it’s fine because we’re also fans,” says Ansari. “I think we kind of are a voice for the people.”
SINCE “PODCRUSHED” DEBUTED IN MAY 2022, it has found an audience that is overwhelmingly women, split almost evenly between millennials and Gen Zers. They also have 117,000 YouTube subscribers and more than 705,000 followers on TikTok, where clips from episodes and cutesy, self-aware promos swiftly spread. It all started with an idea from Kavelin: to make a show where celebrity guests reacted to listener-submitted middle-school anecdotes. Badgley was originally envisioned as a narrator, the one voicing the real tween stories, but after only one conversation, he took on his current role. “At the beginning of a phone call, I was pitching him doing the stories, and by the end of the call, he was a host,” Kavelin said.
Those real adolescent stories were initially a significant piece of what made “Podcrushed” unlike other celebrity-interview podcasts. But bosses at SiriusXM presented data that listeners weren’t into the anecdotes. “I think [that was] a little heartbreaking for all of us,” Kavelin said. So “Podcrushed” dropped its foundational conceit. (Earlier this year, “Podcrushed” moved from SiriusXM to Lemonada media before beginning its third season.)
Another shift came in the second season, when the podcast switched from audio-only to the now-common video format. “We realized, oh, we need some structure,” said Ansari in a follow-up by phone. “We need to be tighter with this, and we need to have a flow.”
The hosts prepare their questions in a shared document — or at least they’re supposed to. “Sometimes [Penn] puts them in the shared doc, but sometimes he doesn’t,” said Ansari. “He always has technical difficulties. He’s a dark horse. He has like, 16 emails, and he’s always logging in from the wrong one.” Guests are asked about their first crushes or heartbreaks and their most embarrassing stories from middle school. From there, the interviews transition to adulthood: their careers, their personal lives.
“Podcrushed” has settled into something more familiar, both behind the scenes and on the air. The hosts are approached by hopeful guests, rather than having to scrounge them up; guests peg their appearances to press tours, aiming to promote new work. In a major coup, after Grande tapped Badgley to co-star in her music video for “The Boy Is Mine,” she agreed to appear on the most polished-looking episode of the series yet.
“We usually film on our iPhones with dinky little tripods, or we’re on Zoom,” said Ansari. “There’s something special about that. There’s something intimate about that. But there are certain guests where it feels like, there’s standard we need to hold.” The Grande episode “introduced a tricky element now — once you reach a certain production value, how do you roll it back?”
The hosts have bigger ambitions for “Podcrushed.” Now that Badgley is done with his “You” duties — he wrapped the series a few days before the Stokes interview — he is free to think more broadly about how he wants to structure his days. “I don’t know the answer to that question yet,” he says, though all three hosts would love to be able to shoot more episodes in person. Ansari and Kavelin are in Los Angeles, Badgley in New York; many “Podcrushed” episodes are recorded virtually.
Kavelin pitches aloud, for the first time, the idea of setting aside a few weeks to record a full season together. “I think that would be the dream,” she says. (That is, besides her dream of getting the ultimate, ungettable guest: “If we ever got Taylor Swift, I would cancel the show immediately after.”) Later, by phone, she theorizes that more coming-of-age content — a podcast about college, for instance, or content that is actually for middle schoolers, rather than just about middle school — would fit neatly under the “Podcrushed” umbrella.
Kavelin said she may be alone among the three as being “totally excited to be part of that universe” of celebrity-interview podcasts. The leveling-up that a star of Grande’s wattage required did not, in Kavelin’s opinion, make for a less intimate, open conversation. “I don’t think I’ve felt, yet, that we’re giving stuff up. There are some guests who are just more open than others, but it’s hard to predict who those guests will be.”
Stokes seemed more than willing during his initial venture in the world of podcast guesting. As their conversation reached its natural conclusion, Badgley asked the standard “Podcrushed” closer: “If you could go back to your 12-year-old self, what would you say, or do, if anything?”
Stokes had thought about this before — he’d done a similar exercise in therapy — and was prepared to respond. “I would put my hand on his shoulder,” he said. “And I would tell him that I know there’s a lot of confusion and cloudiness in life right now. That all of this will service you, at some point.”
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