Summer S’pouses Episode 5: The Spouses Alone

Summer Spouses with Conan O'Brien, Sonam Ovsessian, and Matt Gourley, and Liza Powell O'Brien, Tak Baroyan, and Amanda Lund. Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. My name is Liza Powell O'Brien, and I'm here with Amanda Lund and Tak Baroyan, the spouses of Matt Gourley and Sonam Ovsessian, respectively. Welcome to Summer Spouses. Doesn't that make you think that there's going to then be a fall spouse, and like they're going to have to get remarried to new people every season so that there's something to put on the air? Oh my gosh, Summer Spouses. Right? I mean, I could take a break, you know? I could use a break. Heard, by the way. That is a very good idea. Okay, how has this been so far for everybody? It's been great. Great. It's the first time for me. You've done this before, right? On a podcast? I have not done, like, what I haven't done is sort of the being yourself and talking about your life on a broadcast. Like a chit-chat show is what I call that. Do you? And you do them, right? I, not like this. I mean, I have like one chit-chat show with my friend Maria, but it's behind a paywall and I'm pretty convinced like no one is listening, so it feels very safe. This is scary because people are like, we've got eyes and ears. By the way, I think we, fewer every second, I think. Maybe on this one. It's going to be out there forever. Right. Also that. Yeah. Yeah, but it felt like fun to be in the hot seat a little bit. Did your spouse act a little bit differently in this room with you in it? That's a good question. I was getting like supportive nods. From him? From Matt, yeah. From Matt, okay. Did he look, was there fear in his eyes? Um, he told me right before we came in, he was like, it's okay. Like you can. Whatever you. He said, you can speak freely. Okay. And so I kind of got the green light. Yeah. A little bit. Does that mean that you're not usually encouraged to speak freely? No, there's, I've signed a nondisclosure. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. What about you? Was Sona different? Sona was always Sona, right? Yeah, yeah. She was kind of giving me that, don't you fucking embarrass me. But was she also. No, I'm just kidding. Was she also just walking? Watching, it felt like she was also maybe a little quieter. Like she was really interested in hearing what you had to say. Yeah, yeah. She was letting me talk for a change. Is that unusual? Yeah, exactly. That's not the norm. Yeah, no, it is. We're cool. She was about the same. She's always herself. That's like her thing, right? Yes. No matter what circumstance. It's a gift. Yeah. Really. It's not typical, I don't think. It's not. And how about your kids? Does one of them take after each of you or are they like from somewhere else entirely? I think. So I think Mikey is more Sona because he's like very adventurous and just hardheaded and stubborn. And Charlie and he's very extrovert. And Charlie is more like, you know, he's more me. I think he loves to draw and he likes to do his own thing and like look at his monster books. Yeah. And just sort of do his own thing, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We just got these great thank you notes from them for their birthday presents, which was adorable. And I'm going to frame them. I don't have little kids right now to do that with. And one of them drew a picture and the other one wrote Michael. Thank you, Michael. And Sona was like, this couldn't be a better representation of how different my kids are from each other. That's it. Is one of them more social than the other? Depends on the day. Sometimes Mikey gets a little shy for some reason. It's kind of weird. And Charlie steps up and like tells the jokes, you know, which is like so like unexpected because he's like, I don't know. Because he's more of an introvert, you know? Yeah. But he can tell that like the usual host isn't there. So he's filling in. Yeah. Yeah. But I would say they're, you know, they're equally social kids and, you know, they always approach other kids and talk to them, introduce themselves. It's really cute. That's very cute. Yeah. Well, I say you're such a natural at this. Well, I'm just nosy. That's a great voice. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Have you just been like watching Conan all these years? Like, I could. I could do it. No. Better. No. No. I had a nightmare once. I don't know what brought this on that I was supposed to go out in front of people and entertain them. And I had a I'd never had a panic attack in my life. I had a panic attack in my dream because I thought I had to go do that thing that he does. And there's no way I could do it. So, no, I never watch or listen to him doing what he does and think, like, let me at it. No. No sweat. No. Are you guys a little bit closer in terms of your skill set? Maybe you're both performers. Maybe a little bit. But yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Probably a little bit because what we cross over a bit like Matt will be on my shows and I'll be on his stuff sometimes. So, yeah, we do some crossover. What's your favorite kind of performance? Like, is it theater? Is it TV acting? Is it? I probably theater. I really actually love podcasting. It's just I. Really? I just really, really like it. There's just so much creative freedom in it. And like, you probably, I don't know, maybe felt that when you did your show. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes, there were. I mean, I felt it was. Let's hear it. It was. No, it was. It was great. I couldn't believe I got to do it. It was also I signed myself up for so much work that I started to be very grumpy. And it is. That was a lot of research. It was a lot of research and writing. And and I was doing it sort of in in lockstep with my younger kids. The last two years of high school. And then he graduated and I was like, we're done with school. And I sort of felt like I don't want to write any more papers. And it was it was kind of funny. But so it felt like a really it felt like a limiting format that I had set up. But I liked that. Yeah. I appreciate boundaries and stuff like that because I'm terrified of improvisation. So here we are. Yeah. So it's a very different type of of podcasting. Do you have any other projects? Coming up podcasting or. I don't have any other podcasting projects coming up. No, I have. I have a theater piece in a in a in a festival in Aspen. And I feel like theater is where it's at right now. Is that what's happening? Like, should we all be that? You know what I mean? Right. Well, it's like how live shows are the sort of backbone of the music industry right now. I think. And yeah, these people are in. These people are in to experiences that you cannot that not every single person in the world can just get. Yeah. I know. Podcasts are dead. Right. Right. Exactly. We can all agree. Like, that's what we've decided. Sorry, guys. Yeah. We're done with that. Yeah. No, I think in other parts of the world, too, like in in London and Europe, I think there's a lot of theater happening in like sort of grassroots seaways. And I think the U.S. is having a bit of a difficult moment with the funding issues. But but I don't think it will ever not quite completely go away because it's so human. But yeah. But maybe this is the new campfire. R.I.P. Summer s'mores. I mean, I don't know if it's totally gone forever. OK, let's see. We have other prompts here. How has the podcast impacted your lives? Sorry, I read that wrong. Has the podcast impacted your lives? And if so, how? Well, we get like Sona gets recognized all the time. Now, really, she's like a full blown celebrity at this point. Wow. Yeah. Because that happened after you got married. Yeah. Was that weird to go through that transition with her? I mean, she people kind of knew she was when we were dating. But like now when we went to YouTube with the podcast and everything, because people knew her from the remotes from the show before. But now it's the podcast is huge. And everybody just like, I know your voice. Oh, my God. And I'm like, people freak out now. And they ask for. Your pictures. As Sona actually says, can we take a picture? Oh, my gosh. That's great. I love that. That is so generous. With her camera. Yeah. Her camera. We have a collection at home. Record it all. All my fans. A wall of them. But it was so weird when we were in Hawaii like a week ago and we went to where do we go? We went to the Diamond Head hike. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And there was like the booth where you park. And these two girls are working there. And and Sona's like, watch this thing. You're going to know. And we we we drive up and our cousin, our cousin from Australia, Steve, he's there. And so we drive up and they're like, hi, like, hi, can we park? It was like, no, you have to buy parking. You have to go. You have to pre arrange parking or you have to go drive down the tunnel and park there. And then our cousin Steve's like, Mike, do you know who she is? And she's like, it's Sona. And they got all giggly all of a sudden. Yeah. Like she got they got like super stoked. I was like, oh, my God, I'm never going to live this down. So then and I was like, so now that this happened, can we park there? Or like, no, you still got to go down the tunnel. Celebrity has its limits. Yeah, that was that was it. Yeah. I feel like you can kind of identify a podcast listener in the wild. You know, you can be like that person's going to approach. Yeah. Yep. There's a lot of approach. Yeah. I have none of that. because people were coming up to me to him before i knew him and so i can't you know i can't tell who knows him for what people still come up to him and say i love your show and i'm thinking which one what there isn't a show unless this is a show maybe it's a show and i bet like the travel show has brought in new audience probably because that's a whole different yeah yeah worldwide okay yeah well you didn't answer oh yeah i think for me it's been interesting because like both matt and i are both like we work like gigs you know and then especially podcasting it's like you'll do a podcast like on it's regular yeah and then having something that is such so regular it's like the nine to five job at this point you know which i never would have thought podcasting would have been for us but it's like okay yeah this is like we're yeah this is the career you know which is you i don't think either of us could have foreseen that right that it was going to be like podcasting was like the stable thing because right now like everything's so in flux with the other parts of the industry you know so that's been really cool and then also post youtube matt gets recognized all the time yep but there's like certain places where you can kind of you think there's a higher chance of it happening like any any theme park like he'll usually get recognized a couple of times how often are you in a theme park i want to ask you know and when i met matt like he had worked at theme parks but he was like i'm not a theme park person but then having a kid he's like a total disney dad now it was like the minute we took glenn for the first time to disneyland and like he saw her light up when she saw mickey mouse like he cried okay he couldn't he was like this is so magical oh my god and now they're like he's taking her to the to universal like a lot he'll play hooky days where he's his beard yeah yeah he's going for him like actually because she he takes her to go see the water world stunt spectacular okay um and to the point where they're like regulars now and so i don't know if you're familiar with water world the movie yes okay yeah you're a big big fan huge huge kevin costner okay yes thank you okay so there's the villain in it it has some funny name i don't remember what it is but anyway he's oh look they're all getting their phones i feel so powerful i never have this in my other podcast um anyway so the deacon the deacon the deacon okay so they're like glenn's a big fan of the deacon and after the stunt he's like oh my god he's like oh my god he's like oh my god he's they wait and talk to the deacon and like take pictures with him but apparently he's retiring so so they got to go catch his last show is he going to be replaced by someone else i i guess like i don't know and well she'll have to be in on those auditions i think yeah so yeah glenn could play the deacon that's great who you actually listens to this podcast i used to listen regularly and then i got a little uncomfortable with like the every talking about our lives and stuff so i just kind of was like it's like not looking at the comments anymore yeah yeah yeah so i uh now i just watch like chunks of it on my feed okay have you and sona had like boundary conversations about what you are comfortable with her sharing no i mean i don't want to be like don't talk about this don't talk about this like it comes with the territory you know also do you feel okay because for on on our end i i am always impressed with sort of conan's innate sense of boundary i think he's got he's i would not be good at that i'm i'm a blabber and he yeah we can tell well of everyone's information too so don't tell me anything um no but he has a very i think a very good inner compass about um how not to hurt anyone basically oh yeah um and not share things that you know shouldn't really be shared even if they would get a big laugh so i i have never even had that thought oh how interesting yeah yeah the same with matt i feel like i kind of just trust him there was only one one time this is a while ago but it was it was actually like four years ago when glenn was a baby and i don't know what they were gabbing on about in here but there was something about like matt had the monitor maybe i had gotten an alert from like our we have like a wi-fi connected monitor in the nursery and i'm sitting there in like the dark nursing glenn and she's like asleep on me and all of a sudden i just hear hello and it's conan's voice coming through the baby monitor and i was like like so scared to like i didn't know what was happening um and i was like hello like hello i'm the baby's sleeping and then i just hear like this laughter like chuckling over there and i was just like what is happening in the mouth like i'm sorry i'm sorry like i guess i don't know what bit they were doing where he was like here and i can even like talk through the monitor and he didn't know that i was in there with a sleeping baby and i think that was the only time when i was like i don't like that yeah right thank you that scared me no thank you but but otherwise um i listened to some episodes of the show but i hear a lot of it being edited because matt's always working on it so you know i'm like around in the back house in his office where he works and i always hear lots of you know i hear the raw audio and i hear get to hear what's taken out um do you ever disagree with an edit no but sometimes i will say not like i'm taking any credit but there's times when i'm i'm advised like oh yeah maybe that could go or stay maybe just a couple times where i get to i get to like a little hear some of the notes too that are coming he's receptive to that oh i mean yeah like he'll do whatever i say i'm just kidding um no but it is cool to hear him editing it yeah you know and just to see that what he takes out it's never like really big things because they're such pros especially when it's like you know like you're just the three of them you know a lot of that is just yeah what they record is what you hear yeah yeah i want to ask if there's ever been anything from a guest that's been edited out that you i mean that's more of a these guys know yeah i'm sure that's every podcast right i mean it happens but it's actually less than you would think like we give everybody the same disclaimer when they walk in you know this is a safe space we'll take out anything you want just let us know either in the moment or afterwards if you're driving home or the next day if you feel uncomfortable at some about something we'll 100 take it out and it's really rare that that that happens it happens it's just very it doesn't happen often and does anyone ever call in after they hear their episode and say i want you to i don't know i've never heard remorse i've never heard of that i've never heard of that happening every everyone i think the biggest yeah i mean every once in a while like maybe once or twice a year like sometimes the order might change a little bit like it might be like oh like this was great we should put this more up front but for the most part it's kind of like the as it happens kind of like the tv show i mean it was kind of like shot on tape and then so yeah that was you guys might be the first right exactly yeah to redo all of it um so people always ask me especially is he like this at home like this being however he is out in the world um and uh and he he is who he is no matter what is happening like all the time in the mirror no one around he's always doing his stuff but it's all of that there is no it's there is no um compartmentalization of his character or his you know nonsense so he he is what you see is what you get no matter where who you are um is that how does that compare to you guys especially with like this show pretty much yeah and just to uh just to say about conan like it was just so refreshing when i first met him to see that he's like that in real life he's just this great awesome guy and sometimes you meet people who are like oh i don't know i don't know and they're like oh it's not like that on on tv you know yeah right but like who tack like who i'll tell you later um but yeah he's i love conan and he said some very nice things about me and i just well he means yeah he's the most he said even when you're not listening you but he says him even when you're not listening okay that's the real test uh but as far as uh sona yeah she's basically the same person everywhere is there ever any time in your lives together where she is someone a little like conan used to say when my grandmother called he could always tell she was on the phone because i would suddenly sprout a bonnet like and hello and how are you you know that kind of like i yeah i just you know i zealig'd right back to her whatever she was giving so is there anything that gets sona to do that or no i maybe when she's making some kind of like professional call on behalf of conan like making reservations hi this is someone calling from conor brown's office oh a professional voice yeah the professional voice yeah but she's always like love to hear that she's recording she's extra nice to other people like you know like the staff and right you know people are restaurants and and hotels yeah yeah that's pretty much the only difference she gets even nicer yeah yeah it's good yeah it's a good way to go there's such like a magic charisma and like well conan obviously is a total pro and then sona and matt are just like they're such good laugh yeah like it makes you feel so safe in a podcast to have that like they're just looking at you beaming wanting you to succeed and supporting you with their laughter but they also they like stand up for themselves you know like he's a he's a big he's a big presence in any room and but they they hold their own which i'm always really happy to hear it's it's so it is just truly magical i feel like matt is basically the same but i don't know if like sona and conan are like true extroverts because they come across super extroverted and it seems like they are that i i wouldn't i mean i would have assumed that you know that he is but i don't really you know think of that way so much but then during during the lockdown part of covid um i was benefiting from some of the changes like i didn't have to drive to a bus stop at 6 30 in the morning i didn't have to make a bunch of meals before everyone left for the day and so and we were all just together and you know that sort of hunkered down thing that and so the kids and i were all kind of at the beginning sort of happy about it and and i looked over at conan and he was like a house plant that no one had watered in four months he was visibly starting to wilt yeah and i thought oh this is what people mean when they say extroverts get energy from other people yes he does and i i don't i think it takes energy from me to to be social and so it's a real like he's very extreme that way so what about matt matt doesn't seem that extreme he's i mean like on the podcast you'd be like oh he's an extrovert but i think he and i are both similar we like we love to socialize and be around people but we're introverts so we gotta come home and just like power down yeah yeah you know and like just kind of chill out for a little bit yeah call that extroverted introverts yeah yeah okay maybe that's what he is yeah yeah that's what i am too oh it is okay yeah like after this i'm just gonna go pass out in my car oh yeah we'll just see you park your car i know we don't allow you back in the house for a while well we drove separately that's why but yeah i'm gonna need a nap uh-huh and uh maybe a meal yeah yeah you need a little cookie or something maybe a drink yeah i don't know it's like you gave blood yeah yeah i know i'm in a vein exhausted yeah exactly oh my god how do they do it okay this has been great yeah um let's hope we're all still married to these people by the next time yeah i thought we did good we could have gone a lot harder maybe if they invite us back for fall spouses we had a really good time doing this i hope people had fun listening to it and tune in next week when you will get to hear all six people around the table at the same time oh boy conan o'brien needs a friend with conan o'brien sonam of sessian and matt gorley produced by me matt gorley executive produced by adam sacks jeff ross and nick leo theme song by the white stripes incidental music by jimmy vivino take it away jimmy our supervising producer is aaron blair and our associate talent producer is jennifer samples engineering and mixing by eduardo perez and brendan burns additional production support by mars melnick talent booking by paula davis gina batista and brit khan you can rate and review this show on apple tv and google play.com. apple podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode got a question for conan call the team coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message it too could be featured on a future episode you can also get three free months of sirius xm when you sign up at siriusxm.com slash conan and if you haven't already please subscribe to conan o'brien needs a friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded © transcript Emily Beynon