WTF with Marc Maron Podcast

When listening to actor Brian Cox talk with Marc, it’s hard to see how this pleasant man is anything like the despotic, cold-blooded patriarch Logan Roy, who he plays on HBO’s Succession. Except there is one thing they have in common: They both see the human experiment as rather ludicrous. Brian’s view of a world that is absurd above all else has served him well playing any number of Shakespearian...

Randall Park’s Korean immigrant parents were skeptical about their son’s career path. But that all changed when Randall played the actual dictator of North Korea in The Interview, a movie that caused an international incident. Randall also tells Marc why he founded an Asian-American theater company in college and why he’s taking the same mentality at the core of that group to his Hollywood product...

Lily Tomlin received a bit of advice early in her life that she really took to heart: If you can’t be direct, why be? Lily’s direct approach to performing, exemplified by her creation of original characters, led her to early success in New York cabarets, spots on The Merv Griffin Show, and her breakout showcase on Laugh-In. Lily and Marc talk about her personal and professional relationship with h...

Joe Mantegna is about as Chicago as they come. He grew up in Chicago, he talks like he’s from Chicago, he got his acting start in Chicago, he even used to play with the band Chicago. That might explain why he tells Marc he still thinks of himself as a blue collar guy with a blue collar job. Joe talks about the moment West Side Story changed his life, how David Mamet became his champion, and why he...

During a victory lap for their movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio put movie stardom on hold for an hour to have a chat with Marc. They talk about their early days as show business outsiders, the moment they knew their lives would never be the same, the times they've known a movie they're in is going to tank, why they don't want to direct and why they love to produ...

Scott Caan stars in major movies, is on a long running television series, published his own photography, wrote more than 20 plays, and yet he’s still not sure what he wants to do when he grows up. Scott and Marc talk about finding professional fulfillment after a lifetime of personal growth, from being a kid looking for trouble to mellowing with age, letting go of anger, and embracing fatherhood....

Shauna Duggins does stunts for blockbuster movies and TV series, but at first she just wanted to entertain. She went to Los Angeles fresh out of college with a business degree and a lifetime of gymnastics experience. At the neighborhood gym, she started hanging out with a stunt crew and learned the skills that got her jobs on Charlie’s Angels, Fast Five, and Iron Man 3. Shauna tells Marc how she g...

Brittany Howard always needs to keep moving forward. That’s part of the reason she made the difficult decision to take a break from her band Alabama Shakes and go out on her own. Now, for the first time as a Grammy-nominated solo artist, Brittany is trying to force herself to be present and reckon with the fact that she tried so hard to get away from the past. Brittany and Marc also talk about the...

Jimmy Tingle has a lot in common with Marc and many other Boston-based WTF guests. But what sets Jimmy apart is the merger of his comedy with politics and civic engagement. Jimmy tells Marc about his sobriety, his shift toward one-man shows and his focus on societal issues, which eventually led to him getting into Harvard in his mid-50s, giving the commencement address, and running for office. The...

Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney is always trying to understand why things are the way they are. He’s done so with Enron, Scientology, the War on Terror, Donald Trump and other topics where he often finds people believing that the ends justify the means. That’s true of his new documentary Citizen K about Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin. Alex also talks with Marc about his path...

Jay Roach went from directing major comedies like the Austin Powers series and Meet the Parents to making timely political films like Recount, Game Change and his new movie Bombshell. The transition makes more sense when you hear Jay tell Marc how he’s gone from one thing to another in life - teaching in college, making documentaries, meeting his wife, meeting Mike Myers, directing his first featu...

To play Richard Jewell, Paul Walter Hauser knew he needed to tap into a part of himself he thought he left behind in Saginaw, Michigan. Paul and Marc talk about his Christian upbringing as the son of a Lutheran pastor, the importance of faith in his life today, how show business initially beat him down and kicked him back to his home town, and how he got back in the game with an emotional audition...

Before he was a King of Comedy, before he was even an entertainer, he was Cedric the Insurance Claims Adjuster. Cedric and Marc talk about his emergence in the St. Louis-area comedy scene and how the business of Black Comedy took off. Cedric also looks back on his brief but game-changing touring days with Bernie Mac, Steve Harvey and DL Hughley, his roles in movies like Barbershop and First Reform...

Photographer Ethan Russell is the only person to shoot album covers for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who, which is quite an achievement considering he didn’t even want a career as a photographer. Ethan talks with Marc about going from the U.S. to England in the 1960s to become a writer, only to find himself working with Mick Jagger and taking rock and roll photographs that stand the te...

There was a point in Jessica Kirson’s life where she was living with too many secrets. She was a pot dealer, she had a hidden cocaine habit, and she was deeply in the closet. Jessica worked to unburden herself of all those secrets and found a breakthrough when her grandmother told her, at 29 years old, that she should be a comedian. Jessica and Marc talk about her therapist mom, her stepbrother Za...

Keith Wager is a recovery friend of Marc’s who has a lot to be thankful for. Instead of doing drugs and getting arrested, like he did in the past, now he’s telling stories about his addiction and recovery on his podcast It’s All Bad. And because it always helps to talk about things, Keith and Marc talk about the bad decisions he made while drunk or on speed, his time in various detention centers,...

Mike Sweeney tried on several different careers before becoming the head writer for Conan O’Brien: trial lawyer, standup comedian, warm-up comic. But it’s a miracle he was able to do any of them after growing up in a violent, unpredictable household. Mike tells Marc the truly shocking circumstances of his early life, as well as the better days doing comedy in New York City, the highs of Late Night...

Comic Louis Katz was working with Marc just before the launch of WTF. In the ten years since, Louis and Marc have taken paths that are both similar and completely different. They share their experiences on the road and get into the nuts and bolts of comedy club standup, then and now, as well as the persistent East Coast-West Coast split between comedy sensibilities. Louis also talks about what it...

When a very complementary newspaper profile called Nathan Lane “the last of the great entertainers,” Nathan couldn’t help but wonder, “Is that all there is?” Nathan talks with Marc about the subsequent steps he took to get himself out of the box people wanted him in, which included taking on roles like Hickey in The Iceman Cometh and Roy Cohn in Angels in America. They also discuss Nathan’s early...

Actress Lili Taylor and Marc quickly realize how much they have in common, like their nearly 50 combined years of sobriety, their similar stories about parents struggling with mental illness, and their search for belonging in New York City when they were younger. Lili tells Marc what it was like to be a central figure in the independent film community of the 1990s, but that was only a short moment...

Tony Hale is trying to be more present. He’s motivated by the fact that some of the biggest moments of his career on shows like Arrested Development and Veep are lost down the memory hole. Tony and Marc trace the reasons for these mental gaps, which are largely attributable to childhood panic attacks, codependency, and a long-running search for identity. They also talk about Tony’s reliance on his...

Kate Nash says getting cast on GLOW saved her life and, when you hear about the emotional roller coaster she was on before landing the gig, that might literally be true. Kate tells Marc what it was like to leverage her MySpace account into pop stardom at age 19, with a number one record and sold out shows for thousands of devoted fans. And then she explains why it all fell apart, with anxiety, OCD...

John Goodman has more than four decades of experience on stage, in movies, and on television, but he’s just now learning to trust himself. After a lifetime of trying to please everyone and beating himself up over everything, John tells Marc what finally caused his perception to shift. John also talks about being shaped by comic books and Mad Magazine, finding inspiration working with David Byrne a...

Marc doesn’t consider himself a “folk music guy” but he cannot deny how strongly he responds to singer-songwriter Joan Shelley’s work. Joan talks with Marc about her Kentucky upbringing and how she’s careful to respect the roots of folk music while also infusing her work with a vulnerability and texture that is her own. She also discusses her collaborative relationship with Nathan Salsburg, workin...

Edward Norton knows the importance of slowing things down. While many entertainers feel the need to move immediately from project to project, Edward has learned from his peers, his idols, and his own experience that sometimes it’s all about what you don’t do. Edward talks with Marc about the lessons he learned from working with David Fincher and Milos Forman, the inspiration he takes from David Bo...