Grace Helbig: How I Got Here/Transcript

(This transcript is currently in progress.)

Intro
Link: Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Link.

Rhett: And I'm Rhett! This is the inaugural episode of our audio-only podcast. There's no video being shot of this, to your disappointment, I'm sure.

Link: Or, at least, to our knowledge.

Rhett: Which is good, because I've got on flip-flops. People give me a lot of flack about that.

Link: So, this is a new thing that we're very excited about. Thank you for being here for this! Our plans are to do this every week, and see where it goes. I don't know, is history being made here? I'm not gonna go so far as to say that.

Rhett: Well, I mean, technically, history's always being made. You alone in your room, whimpering to yourself, or accidentally burping after a meal is history being made. The question is: is it notable history? And, I don't wanna make any sort of prediction whether or not this will be notable or memorable, but it is for your entertainment purposes. But, you know, it's also for our entertainment purposes. One of the things that we've been talking about is how...

Link: This is not what they may expect from a Rhett & Link podcast.

Rhett: Right, this is gonna be a little bit different.

Link: So, we wanna warn you right at the top. Number one: this show is not about us.

Rhett: Right, you see enough of us saying things that we think. You know, if you watch Good Mythical Morning, our morning talk show on YouTube, our second channel, Rhett and Link 2, you see us talk every single weekday about something that we think, our perspective on something. You can see and hear a whole lot of us, and this is not just more of that type of thing without a video component.

Link: Right, this is a conversation with another person, of course. Our guest this week is Grace Helbig. She is not sitting here now with us. At this point in the process, it's just the two of us kinda preparing you for what this is, for this week and for weeks to come. They're going to be conversations with other YouTubers, friends of ours. It may branch out from there.

Rhett: You know, we have what we think is one of the greatest jobs in the world. We get to make YouTube videos full-time, and there are these other people who are doing the same thing, or things very much like that. And, we just think that this is a moment in history that's pretty interesting, and we've gotten to know these people, especially since we moved out to Los Angeles...

Link: Who are pioneering the space.

Rhett: Yeah, there are so many people out here who are doing the same thing we're doing. And, we always find it fascinating to just talk with them, talk with them about how they got started doing this, talk with them about who they are. You know, not the daily Grace that you see every single day on YouTube, but who was Grace as a little girl, and you know, where she grew up, and what her relationship with her parents were like, and this sorta thing. What shaped her to become the person that she is? And, we gotta assume that there's enough of you out there that are interested in the people we're gonna be talking with, like Grace Helbig, that you're gonna be fascinated by this conversation in the same way that we are.

Link: So, that's the first thing. It's that this show is not about us. It's about a conversation that we're interested in having with someone else. Hopefully, you'll be interested in listening. I think the second point I wanna make is that this show in particular is not necessarily family-friendly. As we have authentic discussions with other adults, there may be topics that come up that aren't appropriate for kids. So, I know that we've developed an audience out there with our family-friendly content, so we just wanted to say up front that things may not go that way. You know, I have conversations with my wife and with my friends that I don't have with my kids around because they're kids, and I think that we want to set up this table—literally we are at a round table here.

Rhett: It's wooden.

Link: Where other YouTubers, other guests can come on and they can be themselves, they can speak authentically, honestly give their story in the words that they want to use. And so we don't want them to censor themselves, we want them to be themselves. So first, I think there will be topics discussed that are for adults, they're not for kids, and there was, there may be language used that is not appropriate for kids to hear. So up front, we just wanted to say that may be the case in general given the approach of this show.

Rhett: Right. And a little bit about the name. Okay, we put a lot of time into this, we actually put about five minutes into it and Ear Biscuits is what we came out with and we're just gonna go ahead and tell you right now...

Link: What we came out with.

Rhett: Yeah, well I'm thinking, it's like we put some dough into the oven of our brain and we came out with Ear Biscuits and they're a little bit undercooked, we acknowledge that. But I think the idea is that biscuits are great, everybody loves them, they're warm. And what if there were little biscuits that you could put in your ear if your ear were to eat as opposed to your mouth, that's kind of where I was going with that.

Link: Now in England I think biscuits are cookies.

Rhett: They are which is even better than actual biscuits.

Link: Not according to me, brother. I mean, if you've ever been down South and gone to Bojangles and got a biscuit, or if you've got a grandma in the South who's made a biscuit...

Rhett: Well I think the point is...

Link: It's not a cookie.

Rhett: Okay. Granted.

Link: If it's a cookie or if it's a bonafide biscuit, if it's for your ear you should love it.

Rhett: The point is is that biscuit means absolutely positive things in every language.

Link: Yes.

Rhett: Every culture. In Swahili biscuit means "good tidings".

Link: You don't know what it means.

Rhett: It probably doesn't exist in Swahili

Link: So as we've already said on this week's show, we've got Grace Helbig, looking forward to that conversation. Honestly, we've already had the conversation. [Rhett laughs] Hopefully you're looking forward to it.

Rhett: Spoiler alert.

Link: You know for her from her daily show on YouTube Daily Grace. She's also the 2013 Streamy Awards Audience Choice Personality of the Year winner.

Rhett: And she's the co-producer and the star of the upcoming movie Camp Takota, a scripted project with Mamrie Hart and Hannah Hart—no relation I don't think, maybe we need to talk about that later—premiering on chill.com.

Link: So let's get into it, our conversation with our friend, fellow YouTuber, amazingly hilarious Grace Helbig.

Interview
[Music]

Link: [Grace laughs] Now Grace, we were trying to figure out the first time that we met you.

Grace: Ooh.

Rhett: And I have a clue to this.

Grace: You do?

Rhett: I do.

Grace: Okay.

Rhett: This is gonna sound a little creepy.

Link: Is this a game? It sounds like...

Grace: I know, I know. I know when I first met you guys.

Rhett: Okay. Well I want to tell you a quick story--

Grace: Yes.

Rhett: --and see if this all lines up--

Grace: Okay.

Rhett: --because the other day I logged into my Facebook account, which I do not do because I really don't use my personal Facebook account anymore.

Grace: Yeah, nor do I.

Rhett: Because when I started... You know, my Facebook account, it was like "Oh this is a promotional thing, I need to make as many friends as possible".

Grace: Right.

Rhett: So when I reached the friends limit, which was really the fan limit.

Grace: Yeah.

Rhett: At that point it became useless to check this inbox, right? But I was like I seen to remember that I had personal interactions with people other than, you know, friends on Facebook, like back 2008/2009—and this is just weeks ago. I start going back through those and I found some very interesting interactions with people that I... for another time. But then I see Grace Helbig [Grace gasps] and she says "Nice meeting you last night." Something, something, something. Nothing inappropriate. [Laughs]

Grace: Right. No, I'm a total pro. I'm like "What? Was I... What happened? What did I say?"

Rhett: And I was like... I just put it all together, we met you in the lobby at the Streamys.

Grace: The lobby at the Streamys. Oh!

Link: Is that what it was?

Grace: No. You know where we met? We met... No it was the... Yeah, it was the Streamys, but it was the pre-party to the Streamys--

Rhett: Yes.

Grace: It was the night before the Streamys when they had that, yeah, in a hotel lobby, that like get together of everyone. And I was there with my friend Michelle.

Rhett: Michelle, who you had the channel with.

Grace: Yeah. And Michelle met you guys first.

Rhett: Michelle Vargas.

Grace: Vargas. And then she, like, introduced all of us in that night, and I was like "Those guys were so nice!"

Link: Aww.

Grace: She's like "Southern. Southern." Yeah, that is so crazy, because I remember going to that event. I was there to do red carpet interviews and I was flown out by My Damn Channel from Brooklyn with Michelle and we were just in that room thinking "Oh my god, these are real people from the internet, this is crazy!"

Link: Yeah.

Rhett: Oh yeah.

Grace: And we were very not educated in the YouTube space at all and didn't really know...

Link: Which is why you talked to us.

Grace: Which is why I was like "These guys are tall, let's talk to them." [Rhett and Link laugh]

Rhett: They're easy to spot.

Grace: Yeah, exactly.

Rhett: I thought about replying to your message just a couple weeks ago.

Grace: Oh my god, that would be so weird.

Rhett: I was going to be like "Nice meeting you too, Grace".

Grace: And I would have instantly been embarrassed and then...

Rhett: Four years later.

Link: 2009?

Rhett: It was 2009 I believe, yeah.

Grace: Wow. So we go way back, you guys. [Laughs]

Rhett: Yeah we do. And now that I realize how far we go back, yeah.

Grace: Yeah, that was a whole blur, and then the Streamys happened the next day and that was a fun time for all.

Link: Yeah, it didn't go well for anyone who doesn't know, but...

Grace: Yeah.

Link: It went so well that they didn't have it the next year.

Grace: Yeah.

Link: But then they had it the next year and you won the whole thing, isn't that how it worked?

Grace: I did not win the whole thing.

Link: You won the Streamys.

Grace: I won the Streamys, yes. I won the entire Streamys. Yeah. So what a weird chain of events.

Link: We're like "Wow, we should have replied to Rhett's Facebook message". [Grace laughs]

Rhett: Yeah, yeah.

Link: We could be friends now.

Rhett: We witnessed the whole thing from the balcony.

Grace: That's... Oh, whoa.

Rhett and Link: Hmmm.

Rhett: It's a sore subject.

Link: Ouch.

Rhett: We were in the balcony at the Streamys so...

Grace: Times have changed.

Link: No, he's talking about a few months back.

Rhett: Yeah, just a couple months back.

Grace: Yeah, times have changed. [All laugh] The takeaway here is always respond to your social media. [Laughs]

Rhett: Yeah, right.

Grace: No, that's crazy. Yeah, that was a... That was my first time around a lot of YouTubers and I was really star struck.

Link: Coming from New York. Now let's go back. Where are you from?

Grace: I'm originally from New Jersey.

Rhett: Jersey.

Grace: Yeah, I don't really have an accent at all so people are always surprised.

Rhett: Did you ever?

Grace: No. I'm from South Jersey and in South Jersey it's, I guess, more of a Philadelphia type of accent then the Long Island, like, [in a New Jersey accent] "Talk more, let's go". And when I went to college I went to college in North Jersey and that's where I was like, "Oh, this is where the stereotype lives."

Rhett: Right.

Grace: All the girls are wearing leggings and Uggs and having poufs, which I adopted all of those things when I was in college.

Rhett: Really?

Grace: Yeah, I wore leggings and I still do, and...

Link: Is a pouf a hairstyle?

Grace: A pouf is... Snooki, you know Snooki--

Rhett and Link: Oh, yeah.

Grace: --as an icon in this world. It's when you take the front of your hair and you, like, tease it up high and then you wear the rest of your hair down.

Link: Okay.

Rhett: When was the last time you did that?

Grace: Probably when I Facebook messaged you. [Rhett laughs] Yeah. I had a pouf going for years before Jersey Shore came out and, like, really made it a Jersey thing.

Rhett: Is there a record of the pouf on the internet?

Grace: Oh yeah, big time.

Rhett: Really?

Grace: Yeah, big time.

Rhett: You made videos with the pouf?

Grace: All of my first My Damn Channel videos for two years I've had the pouf in them, yeah. Not on YouTube but on MyDamnChannel.com.

Link: Okay.

Grace: Yeah. [Laughs] I wish... This is the thing about podcasts is that you can't see the wonder on your faces! [Laughs]

Link: Yeah, I'm like I've already learned something—the pouf.

Grace: Yeah, the pouf is a big deal for Jersey girls. But yeah, I'm from New Jersey and then went to college in North Jersey and then moved to Brooklyn right after with Michelle. Michelle and I were college roommates.

Link: Okay.

Grace: Yeah.

Rhett: Now your mom has an accent though.

Grace: No, not a Jersey accent.

Rhett: Well it's, but... First of all, big fan of your mom.

Grace: Oh, thanks.

Rhett: When she made the—not that we we've met or hung out or anything [Grace laughs]—but when she made the appearance on your channel for a couple of episodes of Daily Grace.

Grace: She is a sweetheart and she went to VidCon for the first time this year and people were walking up to her and, like, getting photos with her and she felt like a celebrity and had a really wonderful time. And she's very excitable so I was worried that she was actually gonna spontaneously combust with all the excitement that was happening at VidCon. But yeah, she's really sweet, and now every time I make a video with her she has ideas for the video already.

Link: Oh.

Grace: Like she writes down ideas. [Laughs]

Rhett: Oh really?

Grace: Yeah.

Link: That's good.

Grace: She's into it. Yeah, big time.

Link: Does that mean she's gonna start her own channel?

Grace: I wish, and I think the internet would love that, but she is technologically not savvy enough. If there's a kid in South Jersey that wants to intern for my mom and help her edit some videos [Laughs] I'm sure she'd love it.

Link: Mom intern.

Grace: Mom intern [Laughs].

Link: That's what the Craigslist ad will say.

Grace: Exactly.

Rhett: She has...

Link: Mom YouTuber.

Rhett: She has good hair.

Grace: She's got very thick hair.

Rhett: There's a lot of bangs going on.

Grace: She has big-time eighties bangs still. For years and years and years she did the tease the bangs up and wear the bangs down at the same time, was very coif, very beautiful.

Link: What does she do or did do or whatever?

Grace: For a living?

Link: Yeah.

Grace: She has worked for years as a teacher's assistant in a special-needs classroom so she has incredible patience and is very, very kind as a human being.

Link: She is a hero.

Grace: She's a hero.

Link: I mean, she definitely needs a YouTube channel.

Grace: She's a hero that makes no money whatsoever.

Link: Right.

Grace: It's insane. But she puts up with so, so much, and she's the sweetest woman.

Link: Okay. So what was it like growing up with the sweetest woman in the world?

Grace: Well because she worked in a special-needs classroom she didn't really know how to turn it off so she would kind of treat me and my brothers like we were special needs. [Laughs]

Link: When in doubt.

Grace: Yeah. So she would ask us things like numerous times in a row, remind us of things like very, very often or, like, speak in a really high sing-songy cadence to us. [Rhett laughs] So she was really great, but she's very much, just so over-the-top sweet and patient but also incredibly flighty. She'll tell a story six times in a row to you and you're like "Yeah, you told me this story already".

Link: Well maybe that's just, she's trying to drill it in, you know.

Grace: Yeah.

Link: Repetition in teaching, it's that thing again.

Grace: Exactly.

Link: My mother-in-law was a teacher's assistant for, I guess it was second grade—she just retired—but she cannot get the, like you said, that teachers cadence--

Grace: Yeah.

Link: --and the volume.

Grace: Yeah.

Link: [Shouts] Whenever you talk to her she's talking like she's talking to a classroom full of children who will not listen! [Grace laughs]

Rhett: She talks to you like that?

Link: Yes! She talks, and this is on the telephone—'cause we talk on the telephone a lot my mother-in-law... But when you... "I'm so happy that you're here! Let's open the Christmas presents before we eat food tonight!" Because that's when we'll see her, at Christmas.

Grace: Where is she from?

Link: Kinston, North Carolina.

Grace: Oh, from North Carolina.

Link: [In NC accent] I didn't want to really turn on her accent but if you want me to go... [Grace laughs]

Rhett: Oh, please don't do that.

Grace: She's gonna listen to this podcast.

Link: But it's just, the volume, it's like "Bring it down, girl!"

Grace: Yeah. My mom sometimes doesn't understand. I think she's got, like, voice modulation sometimes where she's not aware of the volume at which she's speaking, even in, like, a Kohl's—she loves Kohl's so much. You guys have Kohl's in North Carolina?

Rhett: Oh yeah.

Link: She likes to speak loudly in a Kohl's.

Grace: Yeah, she loves it. Like I can hear... She'll call me from Kohl's to just check in.

Link: "I found this blouse!" [Rhett and Grace laugh]

Grace: Exactly!

Link: "I don't know how to text you a photo of it."

Grace: [Laughs] Yeah, she's really bad at texting and anything that's technologically related.

Rhett: So were you a performer in the family? Like was it... Were they all like "Oh, this is totally expected that Grace has gone on to this career"?

Grace: Kind of and also no. I have all brothers so I'm the only girl and...

Rhett: How many brothers?

Grace: I have two brothers and two stepbrothers, and my older brother and my older stepbrother were really close and they would make all of these, like, sketch comedy movies and videos together, and I would think that they they were so funny and so hilarious, and them just off-the-cuff riffing with each other was so hilarious. So I always was trying to make them laugh.

Link: Oh.

Grace: And, yeah. And it wasn't until we took, like, a family vacation to the Poconos and in the car I started doing—I think I was in fifth grade and it's when South Park came out and I started doing a Cartman impersonation in the back of the car and my older stepbrother, Mike...

Link: Which sounded like?

Grace: Ah. I wish... It was something like [Doing Cartman impression] "That's Kenny's cream cone". [All laugh] Really spot on. Really... Yeah, really good. And I just did it once, like, by myself in the back because we had a Jeep Cherokee and my three brothers would sit in the backseat and then I would sit all the way in, like, the trunk area.

Rhett: So you, like, did it into the corner to test it first?

Grace: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Rhett: You were like "Okay, yeah this is good, this is ready to roll out" [Link and Grace laugh]

Grace: And my stepbrother started laughing so hard, and I was like "I got him! I got him!" and then I just kept doing it again and again and again. I am my mother's daughter.

Link: Repetition.

Grace: Yeah, and I love that. But then I went to college to be a screenwriter, to write movies, and it wasn't until I started taking improv classes in New York City that I started to get into the performing side of things.

Link: So from the Cartman impression to the screenwriting, connect the dots.

Grace: So I... Yeah. How did that happen?

Link: First, well you got out of the Jeep in the Poconos.

Grace: I got out of the Jeep, we had a lovely family vacation.

Link: Okay.

Grace: Really nice. I think we went snow tubing and my stepmom fell off of her tube and sprained her ankle, that was a really fun time. [Laughs]

Link: You're not supposed to stand on them.

Grace: I know, she hit a curb and it was like this tube, like luge type of thing, like a snow luge.

Rhett: The old tube luge.

Grace: Yeah, and she fell out of the tube and the walls of the snow, she like smashed her ankle into. She is not athletic by any nature. But... So I decided I wanted to go to college to do something creative, something in the communications field. So I was a communications major at first and then I started getting into writing and really liking writing.

Link: Where, college where?

Grace: I went to Ramapo College in North Jersey.

Link: What?

Grace: Yeah, it sounds great.

Link: Ram of Po?

Grace: Ramapo.

Rhett: Is that an Indian tribe?

Grace: Yeah. R-a-m-a-p-o.

Link: Oh, so it's not three words.

Grace: No, it's one word. And I got a full scholarship there, it's the first college I applied to and I was like "Okay, I'm done. Great, I'm gonna go there" and it's not the... It's a good school. It's not a party school, people leave on the weekends all the time so, like, the social side of the college was not huge. But I got into writing and I had a professor, a screenwriting professor named Roberto Marinas who...

Link: He's great.

Grace: He was super great. What a name, he sounds like a Hispanic superhero.

Link: That's called a luchador.

Grace: Yeah.

Link: Is it?

Grace: It sounds right.

Rhett: Yeah.

Grace: But he kind of, like, took me under his wing and became, like, a mentor for me and he and I were writing scripts together.

Link: Really?

Grace: Yeah.

Link: Your professor? So he saw this potential.

Grace: Yeah.

Link: "Oh she's good...

Grace: Yeah.

Link: Looking.

Grace: No, not that.

Link: Okay.

Grace: It didn't go that route.

Link: Alright, good.

Grace: [Laughs] But he and I started writing some scripts together and then he got a Disney fellowship and moved out here, and...

Rhett: Woah.

Grace: Yeah. And...

Rhett: Roberto.

Link: Roberto.

Grace: Yeah. He's doing it. I don't know what he's doing now, but...

Link: But he just got you here.

Grace: Yeah. He built me up and then he got his script sold to Disney and then he left.

Link: Okay.

Grace: But he... Yeah. I wanted to do some form of writing, and then Tina Fey became really big in pop culture and I really idolized her and wanted to do sketch comedy. Started a sketch comedy television show at my college and then started taking improv classes my senior year of college in New York. I interned like a crazy person when I was in college because my college was a 40-minute drive outside of New York City, so I had six internships while I was in college because I was, like, obsessed with working and with trying to get involved in the entertainment business in some way. And so one summer I lived in New York for three months while I was interning and I wrote to a bunch of improv theaters because I wanted to take a sketch writing class but I didn't have the money to pay for a class so I wanted to intern at the theaters. And I wrote to UCB, I wrote to the Magnet, to the PIT. And UCB had a waiting list for their internships and the PIT was like "Yeah, come down on Friday". So I interned every Friday night at the Peoples Improv Theater for a year. And then they had a not-full level one improv class and I last-minute decided to take it and really, really loved it. And then went up through all of their classes and got on a house team there, was performing every week, and it was really great.

[21:15]