hello everyone and welcome to the stern Spiel it's a podcast where I Veronica talk to my dad Charlie about my life as a working actress on the road right now and a musical and also we talk about kind of pop culture and like everything happening in the world through our lens and kind of our family Dynamics so let's get started how are you doing today Dad I'm doing okay Veronica it's more than a podcast it's it's bigger than a podcast it's a it's a conversation it's a therapy session it's a um he
I don't know I don't even know what it's bigger it's bigger why do you say that because I look forward to it like it's just it's an opportunity to talk it's um it's kind of an escape for me from everything else that I'm doing for half an hour to just chat with you about a few things and so it uh it's more than a podcast I like the way your room looks thank you we're staying in a really nice hotel this week which is funny because it's only funny if you like know this conversation that I had last
week where I was complaining about hotels but I have stated enough that I feel like I can say whether or not a hotel is nice or not and there's just like very simple criteria for me it's like do the doors work are there not gaps in the doors like can I see like through a huge gap in the door as there stains on the walls like it's little things you know and and it's Pleasant you know and like the key card if if a hotel like if the elevator has like the key card to press the button to get to a flo
or like a safety thing I'm like that's a really good hotel so that makes you feel safer yeah it's just like little things and like we were in one hotel where that key card thing was there but it didn't actually work and I was like this is a ratchet hotel right so it's small things and you know one would say then stay in airb be but you know sometimes like it's not an option and you just want to like have everything taken care of for you so whatever right that's life on the road I mean this trade
offs right you the Airbnb or saer as you've mentioned a couple of times also very nice but a little more expensive and there's also some things that you have to do to make that work like go shopping for food which has its advantages but it's a little bit more overhead on your part yeah so so what's going on today what's happening today in your life I know there's a little bit of uh what do you call it audition tape anxiety going on there yeah I don't even know if it's audition tape anxiety um bu
t basically I have the day off today and on tour it's something called a golden day um because it's very rare that you actually have like a day off where you don't have to travel at all it's just like truly a day where you don't have a show you don't have to travel you don't have any obligations you just have a day um so we call it a golden day on tour and today's a golden day so in my head I'm thinking oh my gosh like I'm GNA have such an amazing day I'm just going to be so relaxed like I'll do
fun things and then I'm like oh never mind like I have to film a self tape now I last week I also had to film a self tape and I'm very grateful to have these opportunities that's not anything that's not the problem it's just more so the buildup to the self tape learning the material for the self tape then you know it's like the setting it up the taking it down and I have to edit it so there's just like a lot of steps that go into self Taping that I don't love which is why I prefer just like goi
ng in person but obviously I can't do that right now so I'm not going to complain but it is something that is Weighing on me today yeah let me ask just like a lot of work can I ask you a couple specific questions about that audition process because it seems like you know I mean I'm looking at it a little bit from a distance but a lot of your most of your auditions are self tapes yeah I would say like 90% at Le when I'm on the road even even when you're home I find that you're working on self tap
es frequently so I it's my anecdotal observation that most auditions are remote via self tape I mean certainly the early ones right yeah I mean in the early process of it like the first the first time like usually they're like hey just send in a self tape and they kind of like wean people out that way um but I I don't agree though because I feel like when I was home in that in between time between the first tour and the next tour I was going in person a lot I didn't realize so when you're actual
ly when you're actually in New York I feel like they're like okay like let's just come in come in yeah cuz nobody likes self tapes nobody likes it right well it because it's all like it's all inside your head it's this virtual experience where sing this song read these lines record it you don't know who's looking at it you don't know whether they looked for 3 seconds or 3 minutes or 8 minutes you don't know or how many times it got looked at whereas if you walk into a stu a studio a stage yeah t
hey're sitting right there if they don't like you they're going to say you know don't call us we'll call you well yeah they don't exactly say that but there is some more of that like immediate feedback that you can get where like you walk away from that that audition you're like hey you know what I think I did a pretty good job and even if I don't get a call back or something like I know the work that I did there whereas with a call with a self tape you're kind of just more like all right I'm se
nding it into the void and like your agent may say like great tape or whatever and like that's all you can get really you know and obviously the feedback that you get is whether or not you get a call back but so it's just like a lot of like like you said it's very inside in inside your head and then I think the worst part of self tapes though is the fact that you have to like set up take down the lights the camera the the editing afterwards you know and I've gotten better at it as I've got as I'
ve done it more so that it doesn't take me so long but yeah I think a self tape like last week mine was pretty simple I just had to film two songs and two sides or no two songs one side and it took me two hours but hey Veronica did you know those two songs no so how'd you learn them and two you know and end to end this process must have taken you more than two hours that's true there's like a lot of practicing that goes into it all right right and your voice has got to be ready you got to know t
he material and stuff so yeah I'm not I'm making it worse now I'm sorry no it's fine I'm just like getting stressed out because I'm like oh God I have to learn this song but it's okay I I'll do it ver it's a golden day all right recording this show is not even going to take you half an hour we're going to be done and you'll have the rest of the day take care of yourself self-care very important self-care and then work on your tape well speaking of selfcare did you watch the Super Bowl I watched
some of the Super Bowl I watched uh I watched the uh part of the halftime show with Usher and I I saw after they won okay uh I didn't see much of the rest of it well did you see the caill commercial the Super Bowl ad as a matter of fact I did see the Ceda field commercial would you like me to play it back right now because I think that we're going to not something immediately about this cedil commercial let's play it back okay can you hear this yeah are we going to get copyrighted though that if
we play this no no do you notice anything about that young lady Dad it's it's actually the guy doesn't look like me no the dad doesn't look like you look at her headphones and then show God look oh my God bring up your headphones hello oh my God I'm sorry I'm sorry there she is right there when I saw that I was like this is ridiculous we should be getting like a royalty off of this but she's got green eyes yeah once again it's just uncanny it's like a type I watch this real father and daughter
living in New York I didn't really know what the friendship bracelets are so basically in the Swifty Community friendship bracelets are like this form of like sharing because Taylor Swift has a song called you're on your own kid and in the bridge of the song she's like so make the friendship bracelets take the moment and Chase it and so like everybody has now made friendship bracelets and like they exchanged them as like it's like girlhood I can't explain it um so the Super Bowl ad is so beautif
ul and the dad is wearing the friendship bracelets to sort of acknowledge so it's like she wore the jersey he wore the friendship bracelet so they're sort of acknowledging each other's experience it's very good film making so good it's such good film making but the thing about it that's like crazy is it's this biracial daughter and this white dad like I mean come on that's literally us that's literally us you don't watch football though that's for me I don't watch football and I don't look anyth
ing like that guy I don't talk like him nothing but he didn't talk in it but okay but the kid looks exactly like you and then here's the thing that she's a little bit younger she's a little bit younger she seems to be maybe 16 or 1 it's exactly exactly how you look and for the most part still do yeah unbelievable God and it's so funny because my friend sent that to me and I was like um how did you not book this and I was like yeah I don't know thank you thank you friend because I thought the exa
ct same thing and hey Veronica I don't want to get into your business but you need you need that's all I'm saying well okay well you know what why do you have to take it and like make it a business opportunity no I just think it's it's a business opportunity it's if very marketable character type I guess is all I'm trying to say you know it was just amazing when I saw that I was like are you kidding me this is literally me and my dad but I would say I would say that Taylor Swift has brought us t
ogether even if it doesn't involve football yeah I it's come up it's come up a few times it comes a lot yeah comes come up a few times so that was one of the best commercials I actually didn't get to watch the Super Bowl either so I didn't get to see a lot of the commercials myself but that one obviously stood out to me there was another commercial where they were I don't remember what it was for but they were poking fun at French people and and yeah it was sort of like it was um I don't remembe
r now if it was a a beer commercial maybe I don't remember what it was but they were making fun of the French and it was a a composite of different stereotypes of French people and at one point they had like Napoleon bonapart standing next to Marcel Maro and then the next French Meme and the next French M Etsy commercial it was it was hilarious it was Etsy commercial I was drop dead laughing out loud it was so funny really that you know the commercials are great um you know who doesn't like that
the wicked trailer okay let's talk about that Wicked trailer okay can I tell you how I saw it yeah break it down for me for so basically I was on my way to the theater the Super Bowl had started I turned off the TV I'm walking down the the street right and there's like a sports bar on the street that I'm walking on and all of a sudden I look to my left and I'm like why is that Ariana Grandy in that commercial and then I stop dead in my tracks dead in my tracks and I and my mouth gapes open I'm
like oh my God it's a wicked trailer cuz I didn't know that was coming out MH so I watched the entire thing like on the sidewalk looking into this bar I could hear they were playing it oh my god dad it looks so good looked very interesting now I saw Wicked I'm not one to go to a lot of Broadway shows as you know I probably shouldn't acknowledge that too loud and I'm not a Broadway show guy I just you know I get bored but I did see Wicked and it was a good show it's a great show yeah it was very
good it was very entertaining and and I could see how it could be a big movie but then Mommy was telling me that that in recent history movies based on Broadway shows tend not to do very well which surprised me because I always thought the biggest movies of all time were originally I thought what like the sound of music My Fair Lady those were big shows that turned into big movies like Westside Story but that's not recent sorry well there was a um like a consumer thing that came out a couple wee
ks ago that was saying that ba based on some studies that they did like people don't like musicals anymore and like when a musical is marketed as a musical movie Musical that is people are less likely to go and see it which just like doesn't make a ton of sense but basically it said something about how Westside Story in 2021 kind of like flopped and they didn't expect it to so now they're trying this new approach where they don't necessarily Market the musical as a musical MH um so like Wonka fo
r example nobody knew that that was a musical like literally nobody knew up to this moment yeah and then people started going to see the movie and they're like oh the music was so good and everybody was like what like Timothy sham singing they're like yeah and then the most recent thing that kind of drummed up a lot of criticism is the Mean Girls movie musical um Everybody in the Broadway Community knew it was a musical but when they like put out trailers and stuff there was like no music which
bothered a lot of people I haven't heard a lot of people talking about how the wicked trailer doesn't have a lot of music in it it has like the main song Defying Gravity so they kind of did the same thing where like they didn't really use a lot of music but everybody knows Wicked is a musical so I'm very excited about that and it comes out in Thanksgiving so soon seems to me if you have a fully green character you have a hit on your hands look at Wicked look at Shrek right are you comparing Wick
ed to Shrek I'm saying Sesame Street had Kermit the Frog if you have a fly green character you could have commercial success I see a I see a through line is what I'm trying to say okay um you watch mark my words that Wicked is going to be a blockbuster although I understand it's not coming out until October no no it's coming out on Thanksgiving so October right is Thanksgiving November right so November October November same thing close enough so I'm very excited about that it'll be great it's G
NA be great so you in a new city um tell us about the journey from the last City I heard it was a little bit of a bumpy ride so Dad um I feel like I'm speaking my truth right now like I have been flying in Planes now for months you've been on more you've been on more planes than I have been on in my life that's true yeah yeah sometimes we take two in a day yeah sometimes we take one whatever you know I've just been traveling a lot and when you travel a lot you experience turbulence and I have ne
ver experienced anything horrible I think the worst like plain experience until yesterday that I ever had was when Mom and I were flying home from Michigan um in 2017 and we had had to like reroute the plane the the plane had to like reroute to JFK because it was losing fuel yeah and we were kind of just like you know holding hands and like praying that we would make it to the ground but there was no turbulence on that plane there was no turbulence right I've experienced turbulence a few times b
ut never anything horrible until yesterday so I have Wi-Fi on the plane and I text you guys when I'm flying yeah yesterday I experienced the worst turbulence I think I've ever experienced in my life so on a scale of 1 to 10 how rough it was like an 11 oh my god dad well we talking like bumps or vibration or what we're talking bumps the plane moving from side to side like I'm actually I'm going to be sick thinking about it the plane moving side to side the plane dipping and coming back up oh my G
od it feeling like it was out of control a little bit yeah yeah I can't I can't touch you with those stories I I don't have anything to compare the only thing I can tell you is the you know the text message comes in and the text message is like oh I can't believe there's so much turbulence on the plane and like you know you say sort of say something I try to be as comforting as supportive as I possibly can but then I realize after two or three of these messages she's really scared like it is ser
ious anxiety taking place on that airplane right now and then you told me after you landed you texted me and you said that people were screaming yeah people were screaming on the plane because it was really really bad so I actually just looked back cuz I wanted to see like how long into the flight the turbulence started I basically I texted you like 11:30 and I was like about to take off talk to you later and then literally 20 minutes 20 minutes into the flight I said the turbulence is really ba
d so it was kind of like when we trying to get into the air it just felt like we weren't going to make it up um when I didn't want to scare you guys and be like guys like I think the plane's going down know I wasn't scared you know I mean I I wasn't scared by the catastrophic implications of it I was scared by like yeah she's really scared she's really feeling terrified right now and when is this going to to subside so that she can just have a little peace that's what was going through my mind I
went to the National Weather Service and I looked at your you know your Source location and your destination and I said I understand why she's experiencing turbulence because you were flying through a flight path that was entirely rain and clouds and so I mean I I realized you know once you get it was Memphis to North Carolina and then I realized well once you make the second leg and you get North a couple hundred miles north of where you were I knew it would calm down because there was no weat
her system so that was seriously the worst thing I've ever experienced on a plane and like I almost it was almost so bad that I was like I don't know how I'm supposed to get on another flight after this y I was just getting nause it was just o and then I think the worst part about it is the screaming because it was just like people holding on for dear life being like Oh my God oh my God oh my God and oh so bad so so bad so that's what happened to me yesterday on the way to my next um I'm changin
g I'm changing topics because it's too miserable okay but I do have another airplane question for you when you spend time on these planes what do you do do you listen to podcasts so do I listen to podcasts yes that's the question um yeah it depends I kind of um it depends they're really short flights usually and I usually have Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi is prettyy good so I will you know have a few things downloaded I read a book one time I bring my Crossroad puzzle thing but for the most part like I'v
e been falling asleep because they're so early in the morning so that's kind of what I do on the plane it's it's not anything exciting or interesting I mean if you have a self tape coming up you could start to learn the music well I did I did start doing that on the plane on this flight and then um I had to like pray for my life to continue on so anything to take your mind off of that so let me ask you this question so when you're listening if you listen to podcasts do you stream them or do you
download them to your phone and then play them no like I said I have Wi-Fi I feel like I feel like we're we're really in an age where like Wi-Fi on the plane is pretty common and it's really good Wi-Fi so I just I literally was watching the toast yesterday right so podcast were you watching the video podcast or yeah I was watching the video and that was coming through the Wi-Fi on the plane then that's pretty good that's pretty good because that's actually you know that uses more bandwidth all r
ighty well okay you g to find a gym in this new city I already did Hotel gym okay perfect yeah it's a nice look I can tell from the furniture that the place has been updated recently you know my experience with the with the traveling and you know and I don't haven't spent as nearly as much time in hotels as you when they're recently renovated they're nice it doesn't have to be a high-end place but if it's up to date it makes a big difference and that's what you were talking about earlier the gap
s in the doors and the elevator and the acutron in the lobby and you know do they have this and does Wi-Fi work and all that stuff it's it's not it's not whether it's a a $100 a night place or a $300 a night place it's how long ago was this place constructed right that's my my two cents on that subject so you got a good place yeah it's nice cool so I mean that's feels like a good episode to me this week yeah and you know now that this episode is over I got to do what I've been dreading all winte
r I got to shovel the snow yeah how bad is it today it snowed um I would say there's about 3 in of snow outside okay that's bad is not that bad um and so I don't know how to summarize this but like 3 in is is a crippling amount of snow these days it didn't used to be but now it is and it hasn't snowed in New York in 2 years it snowed it's 3 in half of it is melted because the temperature went up quite a bit but I'm going to go out there and and I'm going to shovel the driveway and the walk and y
ou know the usual thing um and uh you know kind of recover but it there's something about the experience of it it's psychologically debilitating like oh it's going to snow tomorrow and then the schools are going to be closed and the roads are going to be and then it actually happens and you can recover fairly quickly but it's like a psychological thing so that in a way I'm looking forward to having a little bit of exercise yeah that'll be good so everyone if you enjoyed this episode today be sur
e to subscribe to our YouTube channel the stern Spiel where we post a new podcast every week and also you can listen to us um through your headphones on Spotify Apple music Amazon music iHeart Radio podcast anywhere you listen to podcast basically listen to us subscribe like rate review we'd love to hear what you think about the podcast and um you can follow me on social media at Veronica Stern at new Charlie Stern that's my dad's that's my dad's Instagram handle and you can also follow us at th
e stern Spiel if you just want us in one place thank you guys so much for listening and we'll catch you next week bye verica
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