Letting Them Talk with Will Harris

willharrisinva
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Performing Arts
  • Updated Weekly

Longtime pop culture journalist Will Harris, perhaps best known for his work at the A.V. Club (or, more specifically, for his Random Roles interviews), finally embarks on a straightforward interview podcast, chatting with actors, writers, musicians, political pundits, comic book artists... The world is his oyster, and he's planning to make the most of it!

  1. 10h ago

    Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 53 - Allan Havey (The Paper / Mad Men / Billions / Seinfeld / Curb Your Enthusiasm / The Office)

    This time I’m letting Allan Havey talk. I was introduced to Allan way back in the days when there were two cable stations devoted to comedy: The Comedy Channel and HA! In short order, they combined to form a single entity known as – you guessed it – Comedy Central. If you were watching back then, you may remember a quirky talk show called NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, and if you do, then like myself, you presumably also remember Allan. That’s not to say that he hasn’t been continuing to work since then. In addition to being a well-respected stand-up comedian – perhaps you’ve seen one of his many appearances on Letterman, or maybe his HBO special – he’s more recently become recognized for his work as an actor. For me, it was particularly interesting watching his acting career evolve, having known him from that earlier incarnation of his career, but he’s really mixed it up a lot over the past few decades, doing both comedy and drama in relatively equal measure. Perhaps you remember him from playing Lou Avery on MAD MEN or Karl Allard on BILLIONS. Maybe his face stands out to you because you saw him on SEINFELD or CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. If you’re a Prime Video aficionado, you could’ve seen him on THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE or BOSCH. Or you could’ve seen him on GOOD LUCK CHARLIE, like my daughter did. Most recently, however, the best place to catch Allan has been on Peacock: in addition to having done a couple of episodes of THE OFFICE in  2013, he’s also part of the recurring ensemble cast of THE PAPER, playing Marv Putnam, the CEO of the company that owns The Toledo Truth Teller. In addition, Allan’s got his own YouTube channel – @allanhaveycomedy – and he’s got a continuing series of videos called “Best Stand-Up Advice.” He’s up to 43 of them so far, and the overwhelming majority of them are under three minutes in length, but they’re all worth a watch. To be honest, I could’ve spent a full hour just talking about NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, but I tried to mix things up as much as possible during the course of the conversation, and I think it’s a fun one. All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Allan Havey talk.

  2. Sep 14

    Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 52 - Tommy Stinson (The Replacements / Bash & Pop / Guns 'n' Roses / Perfect)

    This time I’m letting Tommy Stinson talk. Tommy was busy touring the world and elsewhere when he was still in his teens. Of course, that necessitated dropping out of school, but considering the journey that he went on as a member of the Replacements, it’s easy enough to argue that he made the right decision. Of course, the Replacements haven’t really been a going concern – at least as a full-time band – since the early ‘90s, so Tommy  has had to make his own music, something he’s been quite happy to do. First came the band Bash & Pop, which was followed by Perfect. Then came Tommy’s unexpected stint as a member of Guns ‘n’ Roses, after which he finally made his belated debut as a solo artist in 2004 with the album Village Gorilla Head. Since then, Tommy has continued to do some solo stuff, but he also did a stint as a member of Soul Asylum, reteamed with his Replacements bandmates for a few years to do some shows, and unexpectedly revived Bash & Pop for a second album in 2017. His most recent solo album was 2023’s Wronger, but he’s got plans for new material that we’ll hopefully be hearing in the near future. I must admit that the reason that Tommy and I did this interview was to promote an intimate live show in Norfolk, but before the original planned drop date for the episode, I got word that the show was canceled. The reason? By unfortunate coincidence, it ended up being the same day at a free Dinosaur Jr. concert in Virginia Beach, which… I mean, it’s virtually the same demographic, and it’s free, so of course everyone opted to go to that show instead. But don’t worry, Tommy will almost certainly be back, and hopefully after listening to this episode, you’ll be inspired to go see him on his next tour. Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Tommy Stinson talk.

  3. Sep 4

    Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 51 - Mark Sheppard (Ever After / Supernatural / Battlestar Galactica / Firefly / Doctor Who)

    This time I'm letting Mark Sheppard talk. Mark's availability for an interview came up with a press release for his latest film, a horror movie called EVER AFTER, but my reasons for asking him to do the podcast were admittedly tied to the fact that he plays a key role on my wife’s favorite TV series of all time. Yes, Mark Sheppard plays Crowley on SUPERNATURAL, and given that my wife is part of that show’s substantial fanbase and has attended SUPERNATURAL conventions here in Norfolk, Virginia as well as in Rome (shout-out to JIB!), I’ve heard his name more than a few times. But I was already well aware of him as a character actor thanks to his work on a number of other series, including Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Doctor Who, NCIS… The list goes on. I was also aware of him because of his father, Morgan Sheppard, who I first discovered on Max Headroom but who I remember most fondly for playing the Klingon in Star Trek VI who delivers the rules of Rura Penthe to Kirk and McCoy. What I wasn’t aware of until I started prepping for our conversation, however, was the depth of Sheppard’s musical history. I knew that he was a musician, yes, but I hadn’t realized that he’d been a member of the Television Personalities in the early ‘80s and been one of Robyn Hitchcock’s live drummers. Mark is a man who was made for a podcast called “Letting Them Talk.” Indeed, when I told his SUPERNATURAL cohort Jim Beaver that I’d talked to him, he simply asked, “Did you get to say anything?” Spoken like a man who’s been on more than a few panels with him, but it’s a fair question. To be honest, I made good on the name of the podcast and let Mark talk. As a result, he brought up most of the topics I’d planned to ask about before I could ever get to them, and it felt a bit superfluous to return to them, so if you’d like a sequel to this episode that involves more specific questions, let me know, and I feel like it’s something we could make happen. As you’ll soon hear, we talked about the aforementioned EVER AFTER, which in theaters now (and I confirmed this via Fandango, because it’s playing in my area), we talked about his music career, as well as how his return to music was the direct result of his connection to SUPERNATURAL and its conventions. This is definitely not a conversation that’s heavy on SUPERNATURAL minutiae, but if you’re interested in Mark and his life and times, then I think you’ll enjoy it, and if you’re coming into this episode without knowing much about Mark, I think you’ll find him to be a fascinating individual. One minor technical note: during the course of the conversation, there were a few occasions where the video hesitated, making us both think that we were frozen, but the audio seemed to be fine throughout, so when you hear those moments of slightly confused conversation, that’s what was going on. All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Mark Sheppard talk.

  4. Aug 17

    Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Stopgap Edition #2 - Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music / Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country / Starcrash)

    This time I'm letting Christopher Plummer talk...because, yes, that's right, it's another stopgap episode, owing to the fact that I have no new episode in queue and I am currently in the process of trying to stockpile some additional episodes for your listening enjoyment. I suppose there are worse times that I could find myself in this situation than after dropping the 50th episode of the podcast. I had intended to draw attention to this pretty significant milestone when I recorded the intro to last week’s episode, but I got so focused on making sure you had the episode in your hands to enjoy over the weekend that I completely forgot. So let’s consider that accomplishment now: I started this podcast in November of 2025, and we’ve now hit 50 episodes. That’s 36 more episodes that I ever managed to record of my previous podcast, Obscurity Knocks. If you’re doing the math, that podcast effectively stopped after its 14th episode, which dropped in September of 2019, and over the course of that time, people have continued to download those 14 episodes on occasion, bringing its grand total of downloads to 4,400. Meanwhile, I’ve done 50 proper episodes of this podcast since November, and we’re currently sitting at 6,400 downloads, so even if I never did another episode… Well, there’s no point in continuing that sentence, because I obviously am going to do another episode. Several more, in fact. As many as I can manage. But having said that, I should also underline a couple of key points, the most important being that I have a mortgage to pay, and this podcast is not currently earning enough to pull off that task, so I’m definitely having to continue writing for various outlets. The other important thing at the moment is that I’m also in the process of working on a new book project, one that I’m excited to tell you about as soon as I get the go-ahead from my publisher, but suffice it to say that if you enjoy this podcast, there’s an extremely strong likelihood that you’ll think that it’s a very cool and extremely interesting topic…and to my knowledge, there’s never been another book that covers this topic quite like this, which makes it particularly exciting. I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re currently supporting Letting Them Talk with Will Harris through a paid subscription to my Substack or via my Patreon campaign, I really appreciate it, because even if it doesn’t pay the mortgage at the moment, it does help pay for gas or groceries or the occasional bill…and in some cases it provides enough to keep my account from going into overdraft, in which case it’s really, REALLY appreciated. And if you aren’t currently supporting me in either of those ways, well, this is the week of my birthday, so next to sometime in December, this is the best possible time to offer your support in that fashion. I’m working on some sort of gifts for supporters – I could maybe send you some DVDs for your trouble, because God knows I need to get rid of some of these things – so if that interests you, let me know when you make your pledge, and I can make that happen. For now, though, I’ll just go ahead and offer you an interview from my archives: it’s the audio for the interview I did with Christopher Plummer when he attended the Television Critics Association press tour in support of Stephen Frears’ HBO movie, Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight. Yes, it was a Random Roles interview at the time, but you’ve most likely never heard any of the audio from the conversation…unless you’ve heard him talk about Starcrash, a film so classic that it was covered in an episode of How Did This Get Made? – one that included Paul Scheer reading a quote straight from my interview and giving me a shout-out. Otherwise, though, this is all previously-unheard material, so I hope you enjoy it. Well, that’s more than enough of an intro. It’s time to let the late, great Christopher Plummer talk…but brace yourself, because it was recorded in a hotel room on a handheld recorder, so it won't be up to the usual audio standards. The stories, however, are worth turning up your volume to hear!

  5. Aug 14

    Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 50 - Wesley Stace a.k.a. John Wesley Harding [The Smithereens]

    This time I’m letting Wesley Stace talk. Wes is a singer-songwriter whose work I’ve enjoyed since the release of his debut LP for Sire Records, Here Comes the Groom. That LP, his first full-length studio album, came out in 1990, so not only have I been a fan for 26 years, I’ve even seen him through the loss of his musical pseudonym, John Wesley Harding, in favor of his birth name. Wes has consistently remained prolific with his releases, and he’s got another one that’s coming up fast: One Last Heist, which comes out on September 2. He’s already teased the record with a couple of singles – the title track, “A Funny One,” and “I Say Lots of Things” – but I’ve had the opportunity to hear the whole thing, and I can testify that it’s great from start to finish and one of the best albums he’s released in recent memory. The last time Wes and I talked was when I was briefly a senior editor for Q Magazine, and it was a conversation that was focused heavily on his then-impending tour of the UK, so this time we were able to mix things up a bit more. Of course we talked a fair amount about the new album, but we also discussed some of the other records in his back catalogue, including the recent vinyl reissue of Here Comes the Groom and a couple of other albums that’ll hopefully be joining it on that format. We also talked about some of his songwriting collaborations outside of his own work, including Eleanor Friedberger and Tanya Donnelly, and his recent opportunity to serve as one of the recurring frontmen for The Smithereens. If you ever get a chance to catch Wes in concert, either with a band or without, I highly recommend the experience. He always puts on a good show and chats with the audience during the course of the performance. And I’m not just saying that because I might be doing some writing for him sometime in the semi-near future…but you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out what that means. All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Wesley Stace talk.

  6. Aug 10

    Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 49 - Robin Shorr (The Middle / Samantha Who? / Galavant / The Carmichael Show))

    This time I’m letting Robin Shorr talk. I hadn’t actually seen or talked to Robin since the summer of 2013, but despite the fact that 13 years had passed since our previous conversation – which was, in fact, the only conversation we’d ever actually had – you’d never know it from the way she and I were chatting about her life and career. But there’s a reasonable explanation for that connection: Robin used to write for The Middle, I used to review The Middle, we’ve got a bunch of friends and acquaintances in common, and – perhaps most importantly – she’s the credited writer on “Stormy Moon,” the episode of The Middle which was partially inspired by a real-life incident experienced by the Harris family. The quick nutshell summary for anyone who hasn’t listened to the previous two Middle-centric episodes of this podcast: our family once got a summons from the sheriff’s department because of library fines – it happened because we lost a disc from a book-on-CD set, and the cost to replace it was just over the amount that causes a summons to be issued – and when my wife and I visited the Middle writers room, she told that story, and we were informed that anything said in the writers room was fair game. Fast forward a few months later, and “Stormy Moon” aired. I really only tell this story again because it comes up almost immediately in my conversation with Robin, but don’t worry, we talk about a lot of other things besides The Middle, including our mutual love of the ‘80s sitcom It’s Your Move and her being in awe of Jason Bateman, attending sitcom tapings in the late ‘80s and going to college with Seth and Josh Meyers, writing on the MTV Movie Awards with the guys from The Lonely Island, coming up with The Hills: A Staged Reading, writing for Samantha Who?, working on short-lived – but very funny – Fox series like Sons of Tucson and Traffic Light, her friendship with David Hornsby and Adam Goldberg, being a part of Galavant and The Carmichael Show, and much more. Oh, and she also has a podcast of her own, Los Feliz: The Podcast, which she does with Morgan Murphy, and which I can assure you is entertaining whether you live in Los Feliz or not…although if you live in Los Feliz, I can only imagine that it’s an absolute must-listen. Anyway, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Robin Shorr talk.

  7. Aug 7

    Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 48 - Michael Hampton (Parliament Funkadelic / Golden Palominos)

    This time I’m letting Michael Hampton talk. Michael has been a professional guitarist since he was in his teens, earning his place in one of the most influential funk bands of all time by being able to reproduce a ridiculously difficult solo when he was 17. By the time he was done, there was no chance that he wasn’t going to be in contention for a spot in the lineup in the musical collective known as Parliament-Funkadelic. Michael has mostly kept his work within the ranks of the group, but recently he’s been making a concert effort to step out on his own and do some solo material. Last year saw the release of the album INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, and he’s just released a new album, KING KONG. It was a lot of fun talking to Michael, and it was absolutely entertaining, although I’ll be the first to admit that I sometimes lost the thread of the conversation.  That said, I don’t think he ever did, because as you’ll hear, there are a couple of occasions where he goes on a tear about this or that, but when all’s said and done, he comes right back to the original question. You know how a certain politician refers to his manner of speaking as “the weave”? Not only does Michael Hampton put him to shame, but he’s a thousand times more enjoyable to listen to, even if you don’t always follow where he’s going. It’s all about the journey, baby. During the course of our chat, we talk about how he felt about having been crowned Kidd Funkadelic, whether it was weird for him when Eddie Hazel came back to sit in with the group, why he thinks funk remains such a popular form of music, and for my part, I was thrilled about how excited he got when I asked him what he remembered about recording with the Golden Palominos. I think I also threw him a bit when I referenced a quote about him from George Clinton’s memoir, but he gave a hell of an answer to my question anyway. Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Michael Hampton talk.

  8. Aug 3

    Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 47 - Chris Loggins (PBS / Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood / Odd Squad)

    This time I’m letting Chris Loggins talk. Chris is someone I’ve been describing as an outside-the-box guest for this podcast. In realty, though, he isn’t, since he’s squarely within the realm of pop culture. It’s just that the pop culture in question is for a slightly younger demographic than most of the folks who’ve been guests thus far. Chris is supervising producer for Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and if you haven’t been around little kids very much in recent years – or unless you were still a toddler circa 2012 – then there’s a decent chance that you may not be familiar with this series, but it’s a predominantly-animated spinoff of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that revolves around Daniel Tiger, who was a puppet in Fred Rogers’ original PBS program. It maintains a number of staples from that program – the Trolley is still very prominent – and  in addition to Daniel, there are also other animated adaptations of classic puppet characters, including Prince Tuesday, son of King Friday and Queen Sara Saturday. When PBS sent out a press release about how new episodes of Daniel Tiger would be dropping in the near future, it was right around the same time that my wife, an RBT who works with children with autism at a local ABA clinic, was telling me about one of her clients who is absolutely obsessed with Daniel Tiger. That got me thinking about the idea of interviewing someone from the show and finding out a bit about how someone gets into working for a PBS program and what it’s like to be part of a program that carries on Fred Rogers’ legacy, and then when I found out that Chris had also been a part of the PBS series Odd Squad, I decided to reach out and see if he’d be up for an interview. Thankfully, he was. We talked about both of these PBS shows, of course, and as you’ll hear, I took a few moments up front to talk about my own connections to PBS, but I also asked Chris about his unique office décor, which included both baseball and sci-fi. I also asked him some of the burning Daniel Tiger questions that listeners asked me to pose to him, and I’ll let you be the judge, but I think he was mostly amused by them. Well, that’s probably enough of an intro: it’s time to let Chris Loggins talk…and P.S. Ugga mugga. (If you don’t know what that means, your kids will.)

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

Longtime pop culture journalist Will Harris, perhaps best known for his work at the A.V. Club (or, more specifically, for his Random Roles interviews), finally embarks on a straightforward interview podcast, chatting with actors, writers, musicians, political pundits, comic book artists... The world is his oyster, and he's planning to make the most of it!

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