Letting Them Talk with Will Harris

About Letting Them Talk with Will Harris

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!

Publisher

willharrisinva

Category

arts · tv & film

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Nov 2025

Latest episode

14 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

61 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   14 Oct 2026

   Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 59 - Neil Flynn [Scrubs / The Middle / Shrinking / The Fugitive / Second City / Mean Girls / Girls5Eva]

   This time I’m letting Neil Flynn talk. Neil always surprises me when he actually agrees to talk, even though he’s done several interviews with me at this point. In my defense, though, he’s made a career out of playing characters who tend to be men of few words. Take Mike Heck on The Middle, for example: the guy spent virtually the entire run of the series actively trying to avoid conversation, and when he was invariably forced into having to talk, he generally only spoke as much as was absolutely necessary to get the conversation over and done with. The first time I interviewed Neil, it was in the bar of the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, and although it lasted for 45 minutes, it concluded with him being surprised that we’d talked so long. In fact, he made note of having read my Random Roles with Lily Tomlin for the AV Club and said, “That thing went on forever! I was, like, ‘I’m never gonna have that much to say!” But it turns out that Neil Flynn is actually a pretty great interview if you can get him talking about things that he actually enjoys talking about, which is to say things that he actually cares about. I’ve also discovered that it helps if you can keep him guessing a little bit with what you’re going to ask him about. And it certainly doesn’t hurt if you let him take whatever tangents he decides he wants to take, because wherever he ends up going, you can count on it eventually being pretty funny. I’d been wanting to invite Neil onto the podcast ever since I started it, but when I reached out to him after hearing that he was going to be in the first season of the Scrubs revival, he downplayed how much he was going to be in it…and rightfully so, since he only ended up being in a single episode. For season two, however, I ‘d heard he was going to be in more than one, so I reached out to him early,  and that’s why you’re getting the interview this week: because if you’re downloading this on the day of its release, then you’ll be able to see him in tonight’s episode. So of course we talk about Scrubs and we talk about The Middle. This is the first time I’ve interviewed him since he made his debut on Shrinking, so we talked about the fact that this is the third time he’s worked with Harrison Ford, and he reveals how memorable those previous occasions were to Mr. Ford. We talk about his early acting career, which started in Chicago, led him to Los Angeles, then back to Chicago, and then back to Los Angeles, where he remains to this day. He’s got stories about popping up briefly in the unsuccessful pilot for Kung Fu: The Next Generation, kinda sorta making out with Laurie Metcalf, being unable to tell if Norm Macdonald was kidding or not, working with Amy Sedaris in Girls5Eva, and having someone question whether or not he’d really been part of Second City and the UCB. For the record, the conversation starts with Neil not being able to figure out how to get his audio to connect, and by the end of the proceedings, he literally admits to being the living embodiment of Old Man Yells at Cloud. But that’s just who he is, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Well, that’s almost certainly more than enough of an intro. It’s time to let Neil Flynn talk.

2. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 58 - Brittany Ishibashi [Brothers / Supernatural / Grace and Frankie / Marvel's Runaways]

   This time I’m letting Brittany Ishibashi talk. Brittany absolutely qualifies for the descriptor “that gal who was in that thing,” because when you look at her filmography, you quickly notice that she’s been in an episode of just about every hourlong drama of note that’s been on the air in the last decade or two. Here’s just a brief list of shows on which she’s appeared over the course of her on-camera career, which started in 1999: Felicity, Charmed, Angel, 24, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, The Office, Veronica Mars, Nip/Tuck, Supernatural, Desperate Housewives, House, The Mentalist, Bones, Castle, Major Crimes, Parenthood, This Is Us, and Scrubs. This is in no way a complete list, but it gives you an idea of how busy she’s been and how high profile that busyness tends to be. Currently, Brittany is working with two of the most high-profile actors in the business: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. She plays Woody’s wife on the Apple TV+ series Brothers, and we talk about how they’re everything you’d ever want them to be, and more. But, of course, that’s not all we talk about. We discuss several of the series I cited in that laundry list of past credits, and we talk about some that I didn’t mention in there, like her recurring role on Grace & Frankie, working with Dennis Hopper on the NBC series E-Ring and Sigourney Weaver on the USA series Political Animals, the opportunity to be part of the MCU via the Hulu series Runaways, and the fun of doing a Hallmark movie. I also enjoyed the opportunity to blow her mind a couple of times during the course of the conversation by asking her about some obscurities from her back catalog, but I regret nothing. In fact, this was just an absolutely delightful conversation from start to finish. Being as she is indeed a “gal who was in that thing,” you might not know Brittany’s name, but once you’ve listened to this episode, not only do I think you’ll remember it, but you’ll probably want to actively seek out her work, as well you should. Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Brittany Ishibashi talk.

3. 

   9 Oct 2026

   Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 57 - Renny Harlin (The Beast / A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 / Die Hard 2 / The Adventures of Ford Fairlane / Driven]

   This time I’m letting Renny Harlin talk. This man’s films have been part of the pop culture fabric of my life dating back to the late 1980s. I’m not going to lie and pretend that I saw his first two films – 1986’s Born American and 1987’s Prison – when they were initially released, but I did rent A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master on VHS, and I most definitely saw both Die Hard 2 and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane in the theater, so…I guess you’ve gotten the idea by now that I’m very much a Renny Harlin fan, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to him, even if it was only for a little over 30 minutes. Harlin’s latest film is his fourth collaboration with Samuel L. Jackson, but it’s decidedly unlike any of the films they’ve previously done together. It’s called The Beast, and if you’re any sort of presidential historian, then you’ll recognize that the film shares its title with the highly-fortified state car that serves as the vehicle of the President of the United States. Well, in this case, our man Sam is the Commander-in-Chief, he’s inside the Beast, and he’s under attack from virtually the moment the film starts, so…buckle up. By the time this episode is release, the film should be in a theater near you, and if you’re listening to this a little bit down the line, then hopefully it’s available for purchase for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home. Of course, there was no way that I was going to have a conversation with Renny Harlin without asking him about some of the films that I mentioned earlier, so we chat about the budget battle of Nightmare on Elm Street 4, the rock and roll adventure of making Ford Fairlane, and how little he’s bothered by the aviation inaccuracies of Die Hard 2. We also discuss his shift to directing episodic television a few years ago, the time he had dinner with Billy Wilder, and the experience of working with Burt Reynolds on Driven, which was…definitely an experience. No, I didn’t get to ask him about everything I would’ve liked to ask him about, but at the very end, I managed to make a closing comment that led him to tease me with a story that I sincerely hope will result in us doing a sequel sometime down the line, hopefully sooner than later. After all, he’s got a podcast now, too – Harlin House, which he does with his wife, Johanna – so it’s got cross-promotional opportunity written all over it! Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Renny Harlin talk.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

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