No, I wouldn't be

surprised, but like I've had, yeah, I've had people like, you know, totally random people.

Yeah.

I remember Ray Liotta came up to me like twice at different parties and was like, man, like totally Ray Liotta, but a big bang fan or Billy Bob who came on the show, you know, Billy Bob came on because, well, cause his mother was obsessed with it.

So he actually did the show as like a gift to his mom.

He didn't tell her.

He did the show and then he went back home to visit her and put it on one night, the night that he was on.

If you had to add another character to the show, what would they be like?

And for The Treat, he talks about a play that looked at the nuances of small town life and how it rendered intimacy in an epic way.

Hi, this is Simon Helberg, and, uh, you're listening to The Treat.

[gentle music] I am a huge, huge lover of the play, Our Town.

This, like most people, was a play that I kind of dismissed.

Saw a lot of high school productions of it and was like, "Eh, this is all kinda cheesy." But when I first actually saw this play done, I, I was very bored, uh, for the first two acts, and then the last act came along, and it absolutely slayed me, and I have not stopped thinking about this play literally since I saw it.

So I think about this play probably every day, and I'm, and I'm not kidding.

It feels very much, 'cause it takes place in the early, you know, 20th century, so it feels a little bit like you're watching Waiting for Guffman, you know, in the beginning.

You have a nice, young, pretty face.

Yeah.

And then, um, then the next year, they redid it.

They came around.

They had this character.

I've said this a million times, but I, I was doing Studio 60, and I was like, "I don't wanna do another failed pilot, another nerd, another character like this, and I'm happy I'm on this Aaron Sorkin show," and I kind of shied away from it, and then I got sort of coaxed into, like, trying and going, and then I got it, and I...

And of course Studio 60 just, like, disintegrated.

Right.

It took me a while to realize what was happening, but I was like, "Okay," so I did, I went off that and, and I kind of was off, and I found a great therapist, and I kinda got things moving in a much just regulated.

girl.

But my arm at least got to wake up.

And so Jason and I became, we became partners in the, Well, and him getting girls and me, you know, doing impressions.

That's so funny.

But no, we were friends.

Like, best friends, really, from then on.

And then roommates in college.

But, you know, also kind of this idiot savant in a way that like has shades of Howard, but it's so wildly different.

Thank you, Simon

... specificity and ideas and words is, is a beauti- beautiful thing.

Um, for me, I, I, I think like any industry, like you can equate it to Hollywood.

It could be in finance.

It could be in politics, but we chose, he chose, uh, Silicon Valley.

It's people running these industries, and that's always fascinating.

Like, we could say, oh, we could blame it on the, the technology, but no, people created it.

And, um, you know, finding the threads, finding the cracks, finding kind of the w- the, that had been a romantic relationship in this and may now be changing into something different.

I mean, it's just, it's truly unbelievable to go back and wa- Do you go back and watch ever, old episodes?

Um, you know, sometimes my ki- so my kids are absolutely obsessed with Young Sheldon.

Like, I mean, it's on, it's on all the time, like all the time.

And we traveled, when I went to France and we went to London, they ha- my son had, has an iPad that he was just playing Young Sheldon.

My, my, both my daughter and my son were watching, you know, like in bed, and they just, everywhere we went, every country we go, it's like this comfort.

Um, so they've seen those like, I don't know, 5, 10 times, like all of them.

Yeah

Putting it sort of mildly.

And that he will, like, including his wife, look, give her a full five seconds before he says anything.

Yeah.

You know, I was reading about Sam Bankman-Fried, um, as I was getting ready to do this to not just watching reality TV, and there's a whole part in that book that's so...

Just, like, actually, it's not a whole part.

It's a sort of a throwaway, but that, that, that he was basically being trained to have social skills at a, you know.

It was just that he didn't know how to read people, and so he actually had, you know, there are, like, coaches that, to learn how to, to discern is this person interested, happy, sad, angry? Because he was getting...

People that worked with him were, you know, calling him a sociopath and things that he very well might be, but, but it's also, there's also just a, a lack of an ability to read social cues.

this guy kinda knows a little bit," which makes it more interesting to watch.

Mm-hmm

... yeah, but I'm yet to ...

There's like, um, there's a classic, there's a scene, somebody, I can't remember who talked about this with Willem Dafoe and, uh, Christian Bale in, in American Psycho where he, it's, it's like Willem Dafoe plays the detective and he comes to talk to Christian Bale I think for the first time maybe.

There's some, it's, it's like a, uh, the big scene where I, he's questioning him about all these murders, and I think Willem Dafoe-Had asked the director, like, "Do you think..." 'Cause again, this is like a great example.

Like, the entire scene is him asking him questions.

Yes

... it's the, it's the stuff of, of life, you know.

I'll, I'll say, like, if I had to sort of sum up, I, I'm just thinking on, like, the, the kind of feeling or the, the most simple way that I can think of acting is, and I, I sometimes just say this to myself, is, like, that you...

Oh, that's real healthy.

So, you know, I'm not saying this is a segue.

I'd be stupid if I didn't segue.

Because the show that I'm doing now.

Are you plugging a show now? Well, I am saying this because it is an insane segue.

You set it up.

I'm on a show called The Audacity that's on AMC.

Are you building an honest therapy bot or are you building something based on your own personal experience on the show?

Two, probably 2002, 2003.

Well, you were like, you really took me under your wing.

You really did.

You were so kind because, uh, and, and the, and this is the thing I was, I was, I, I was thinking about as I came here today.

I was like, "Oh man, you know, Bobby really..." Aside from even just the time on the show, you also like, I feel like, taught me how to be a, a sort of grown-up, like how to pay for dinner.

You were always so generous.

I just never knew anything like that, and I had never made a, a, like a weekly-

Yeah.

Which, yeah.

He's, you know, he's somebody who probably stopped developing at, like, 14 or 15, went to, to Stanford, and is the brilliant mind, but is missing all of the kind of emotional components that make a, a human human.

And so he's now locked himself in his garage all day and is working on developing this AI companion.

And, uh, so he doesn't really know how to relate to people.

Um, and, uh, but at, at the same time, he's married to this beautiful woman, and that, you, you can probably fill in the, the, the blanks there and why, why and how that all-

You said so.

No.

And I think that, it, after that, I, was when I said, I, you know, I'm gonna stick on Studio 60, and it just became this sort of, he, he wanted me to test, and then I tested, and then they didn't, they didn't hire me for, like, a week.