Doula work and birth advocacy

Support for NPR and the following message come from FX's The Lowdown. Starring Ethan Hawk, the series follows the hilarious exploits of Lee Rabin, a self proclaimed Tulsa truth storian on a mission to expose the city's hidden rut. Amy Eligible. Now streaming on Hulu. Bullseye with Jesse Thorne is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR . It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorne. I Love Boosters starts out more or less like a fun heist movie. You can sort of gleam that well enough from the trailer if you've seen it. A gang of cool ladies from the Bay Area steal clothes from high-end designers, then sell them at a steep discount to their friends and neighbors. But I Love Boosters is also a Boots Riley movie. It's surreal, bombastic, it branches out in a thousand different directions and traverses a dozen different genres. So it doesn't really stay a heist movie, you know? My next guest, Poppy Liu, drives that change more than pretty much any other character in the film. She plays Jian Hu, a garment worker in China, who joins the gang and without spoiling too much, brings a bonker's new wrinkle to the story. It's a role Poppy was made for. She's made her career playing confident, somewhat unhinged weirdos. She was cast in a lead role in the 2019 sitcom Sunnyside. On hacks, Liu plays Kiki , the blackjack-dealing single mom who is easily the most put-together person on the show? Poppy Liu is great and I love boosters. She's great in everything. And I'm so excited to get to talk with him. Let's get right into it. Pablo, welcome to Bullseye. I'm so delighted to have you on the program. Thanks, Jesse. It's an honor to be here. I get the feeling that you are somebody who was excited to be in I Love Boosters for like theory reasons. Definitely. Are you kidding me? I was so excited to be on it just like from like nerdy, I guess theory reasons that when I first met Boots over Zoom after I read the script, and it was like the Zoom was supposed to be us talking about the character and like the story prior to me taping for it. And we just got so like nerded out about like the sci-fi of the world and the character, and how like she's like from China, and just like you know, garment workers and all this stuff. Like, I've like forgot that I was trying to get the role, and so I like it was even like suggesting actors for him. Or I was like, oh my God, wait, have you seen so and so? Like I was like, I feel like, oh, like she really gives off the vibe of this character. And then I was like, wait, right, right, right. It's I I'm trying to get the role . You know, but I I feel like I came in already with the mentality of being like a fanboy of it where I was like sick, can't wait for this new Boots Riley movie for me to go watch and then go into the subreddits and you know troll around about. There's not a lot of movies that are this ridiculous and this bananas that also just have a lot of discussion of diale ctical matters. 100% . I told him candidly, only this last week when I watched it at um the Bay Area premiere that like I finally understood the science of it . I feel like each time I've watched it or like reread the script or like filmed it, I guess, like a new piece of the science comes in. But like last week was when I first finally locked in, which is great. It's great for like a piece of art to grow with your mind over time . I couldn't have absorbed all of it in the beginning. There's too much to absorb. So in I Love Boosters, it's about a crew of boosters, people who shopli ft to uh sell what they shoplift. Yeah. Liberate what they shoplift. Yeah. And your character is initially not one of them. No No. She's a worker in China who gets on a sort of parallel hustle. Yes. largely here but partly in China for your teenage years. What made you decide to make your life here ? Well so I was born in China in Cien, but then we immigrated to Minnesota when I was two . And then we lived in Minnesota from when I was two to up until when I was fourteen. And then we went back to China to Shanghai. I went to like international school there. But I feel like the the two to fourteen time period is very foundational in terms of I think your sense of like self. And so I am kind of a hick at the end of the day. You know, it's like you can't international school the hick out of me. Like the Minnesota hick? Yeah. The land of a thousand likes. One hundred percent. You know, like and then I was back in China then, but that was kind of like a double triple culture shock of being back in China, but I'm in a at like at an American school, very a la like exo kitty vibes. It's actually like not that far off. And then like all my classmates had been like living internationally their whole lives or like were the kids of like the wealthiest family in South Korea or like you know like were the kids of French diplomats or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I just hung out at the skate park for most of like middle school, you know, and like went to go see like Slater Kenny play in Minneapolis and that was awesome. And so I can't redo what those years were and they're just fundamentally part of my like chemical makeup now. How many of the kids at your high school were born and raised in Shanghai or in China? How many of them were , you know, from across the world, how many of them were American? I would say the vast majority were like had lived in four to five countries by the time they were in high school. You know, like it was a very typical. I think my like high school boyfriend at the time was like he was like born in upstate New York, but like his family's Indian. They had like moved to like I think like Mumbai to like Singapore , to like Tokyo, and just now we're like in Shanghai finally. So I w I was the outlier, the one that like came from Minnesota. Everyone's like, oh my God, what's that? Someone told me when I was 14 that I had a Minnesotan accent. And I was like, no . So yeah. That's I um I I think even you know, even in my twenties, it's like I spent most of my twenties then like in New York City and but you know, like and Shanghai to like even that. No no amount of years in like a very chic metropolitan city can undo what Minnesota did to me, which is it is just part of who I am. I feel like international school or American school in a foreign country is a scene for people who are either going to like go into international finance or crash a Ferrari when they're 17. Definitely. Oh, there was a whole thing where like I think cause also there's like not really a strict age for like drinking or clubbing or anything. So we would just like go clubbing every weekend. And I used to like sleep over at my one of my first friends that was there. I think she probably was one of the people that lived in Shanghai the longest. And we kind of had this running joke that we were like, maybe your dad's in the triads or something. Like, what does he do? You have this like giant mansion with like five live-in maids. Like, you know, it's like this huge house. I would sleep over at her house every weekend and then we would sneak out and go clubbing with these like, you know, like the older international kid like crew, whatever. And then there was this story where like, oh, someone had beat up the like French diplomats kid or whatever. And then so they like got him deported. And you're like, oh my God. And then like she like she would joke where she was like, blah blah blah. My boyfriend broke up with me. And then she was like, My dad's so scary. He was, Do you want me to take care of it? And she was like, no. And I was like, what does that mean? You know, I was like, dang, I've been hanging out like in the parking lot of a dairy queen. Like, who are these people? Yeah. That is a really uh dislocating feeling, I would presume. Definitely. And also like, you know, I think class-wise, too, like my parents were both the first in their family to like go to college. My dad grew up in like a very, very, very rural village in like northern China in Shenbei. And you know, he was like he didn't see a moving vehicle till he was like 14 years old, whatever. But he was like smarty. And so he tested into like one of the top schools. And like similar with my mom, my grandma was the first to leave her village. She moved to CN to like be in a bigger city. Then we are the first of my whole family to leave the country. Um, and we left when I was two years old. And so like my parents are definitely they're like hustlers, you know, like they both were engineers in China when they came to Minnesota. They pretty much had to like start over again. My dad got a second PhD because his PhD from China wasn't recognized. My mom, she was like working fast food and like hotels and stuff while getting her master's at night at St. Thomas for like computer engineering or something, all while like raising a like two, three year old kid while also learning English at the same time. Like and now that I'm like a parent too and stuff, I like I feel like I have a new perspective on kind of like how much they were handling during that time. Yeah, so it's kind of over the course of my childhood that like they kind of slowly got their footing. And then we only ended up back in China because um my dad was working at 3M, which is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. Very good. Very good, Jesse. Wow. Yes, it's famously headquartered in Minnesota, which also fun fact about Minnesota, a lot of headquarters are there. But anyways, all this to say is just like they kind of like very hum, like you know, like we had just kind of worked to sort of like a solid middle class place, and like you know, my dad was doing great at 3M, but like they were the ones that assigned us to go back to China again. And so that's how we ended up there. But I think it was a very different if it felt like a very different kind of like upbringing than a lot of my classmates once I was in Shanghai. But even like the like the typical in quote sort of like expat experience, like you're living in a gated community, you get like the company gives you a driver . Yeah, it was a culture shock in a lot of ways. We got to take a break. Don't worry. When we return, even more with Populi u. Stay with us. It's Bullseye for maximum Fun dot org and NPR . This message comes from Sattva. How you sleep shapes how you live. Restorative sleep can sharpen focus, stabilize mood, and support long-term health. Voted Best Luxury Mattress by Sleep Foundation, Sattva's handcrafted luxury mattresses are designed to help people sleep more deeply and recover more fully at prices below traditional retail. Save up to six hundred twenty-five dollars this memorial day at sattva.com slash NPR. Support for NPR and the following message come from FX's The Lowdown. From acclaimed reservation dogs creator Sterlin Harjo comes FX's The Low Down. Starring five-time Oscar nominee Ethan Hawk, the series follows a Tulsa truth story whose obsession with the facts always leads to trouble. Named an AFI Program of the Year and hailed as a gloriously off-kilter noir, the lowdown is Emmy eligible in all comedy categories. Stream it now on Hulu and Disney Plus. This message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana. Carvana believes selling your car should be refreshingly simple. Enter your license plate or VIN, get a real offer down to the penny, and schedule a pickup on your time. No surprises. Sell your car today at Carvana.com. Pickup fees may app Every episode of It's Been a Minute, NPR's What's Happening in Culture Podcast starts by asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. Welcome back to Bullseye. I'm Jessie Thorne. I'm talking with Poppy Liu. She's a comedy actor who has appeared on Hacks, Better Called Saul, on Sunnyside, and more . These days you can catch Poppy on the big screen. She stars in the brand new critically acclaimed movie I Love Boosters. That's playing in theaters now. Let's get back into our conversation . Were your parents happy for you to be American? Was that their idea as well that when you when you know when you came of age you'd go to college in the States and be American for the rest of your life? Um uh hmm, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know if that was the specific expectation that I would like be American. It was just the fact that like at that point I was quite American. already You know, even way more so than my parents. Because I'm the only one, other than my younger sister in our entire family history that was like raised in America. I have some cousins now that like live I think one of them's in Toronto, like one of them went to school like in Ohio for college. But I was the only one that was like raised here. And so that was part of it. I went back to China and my Mandarin's quite good, but I would go back and people would be like, oh, you're like a foreigner. You're like an American girl that's here. And I'd be like, what? But no, no. It just, yeah. I think I just already was and if like, you know, for college and stuff, I think I thought uh very briefly about being like maybe I'll go to like the UK for school, but I ended up just only looking at schools in the States 'cause I think at the time, it's not that I wasn't thoughtful about decisions like that, but I don't know if it ever occurred to me to be like, why am I only thinking about like America for schools? It just was like, oh, that's where I'll I'll go to college there. And like , yeah, it's end of the day, it is like this country is like what I know the most of. You know, and I I've been thinking about that a lot recently too, is like I've had friends, especially like parents, who are like, I really don't want to raise my kid here. You know, like it's just I'm terrified every single day. I'm scared for my kid to go to school. I'm like scared of so much like violence in so many ways. And there's part of me that's like a little jealous to be like, yeah, like maybe I will move back to China. But I was like, I feel kind of like I have to stay here, at least like for the there's not like really a a good imminent future option to leave. And also like if I think about myself as like a contributing citizen of the world and like community member, there is nowhere else I know better than here. You know, like the good and the bad and the ugly. I was like, I feel very connected to like justice movements here. I feel like I really understand the like racial and power and you know the d dynamics here more way more than like even China, for instance. When you finished college, did you have to do something to get status in the United States? No, I actually what's what's in uh what's interesting is we became naturalized as citizens the year before we moved back to China. So I became a US citizen when I was like thirteen and then when I was fourteen I moved back to China. So your parents were on it. They were on it. Oh they are on it. I like only recently I don't know why like and I don't know how much there is that I can share to not be incriminating . But I yeah, I like finally only now like learned about like some of our like immigration stories, like how we even got here or whatever. And it's like looking back, I'm like, dang , they really did that. And like I'm really proud of them. They're baddies. My parents. I mean, one of the things that I love bo osters is about is the way that one's status as a worker, one's place in the global economic system supersedes borders. Aaron Powell Definitely. I've always like said whenever we have our QA's and stuff and they're like, oh, like the fashion and the fun, like whatever. I'm always like, it's a film about global class solidarity and anti-capitalism. Which is so boots. And like that's what I love about him is like it's not a gimmick when these themes are in his movies because like he does live that and he does like stand, you know, he walks the walk too. And I think he's so smart in the way that he like makes something about, for instance, like international borderless, like class solidarity really, really accessible. You know? Like when you watch a film, there's like so much, there's like surrealism and there's like it's wild and the fashion and the music and the pace and like all of this stuff. But by the end of it, it feels like a really obvious you're like, oh right, like of course it's like us against the like 0.0001%. Duh. And of course that supersedes borders and culture. And like, you know, without giving anything away, like my character integrates so quickly with like the Oakland booster girls. Cause we're like, oh, we like actually really have shared goals, like done. And who but Boots would make like an insane fantasy sci fi , you know, crazy nonsense mess, uh that's totally coherent and ultimately culminates in and I don't think this is an important spoiler, a general strike. Yeah. Right? Like the idea that it's all building towards labor solidarity. Yes. A global general the first time I like saw I like cried . I was like, yeah. Yeah. It's really special. And also, you know, like even the commentary on mass consumerism and capitalism and stuff, the way that like it's not even just about like the business mogul and the exploitation of like we're going as far back as the garment workers and like to trace where a thing even comes from up until the point it gets boosted. I feel like he's able to delineate power structures in a way that is very, very, very easy to understand . And human in scale. I mean, I think one of the things that I've talked with him about when he's been on the show, is I'm a huge fan of his music. And there are so many rappers who are quote-unquote revolutionaries. And it can be really thrilling to hear music that's about the kind of trappings of being a revolutionary, the kind of like uh b black beret black leather jacket stuff and how b ad it is to be a revolutionary or whatever, right? And those often are very like polemical records. They're records about telling you about something. And it's al almost always abstract. Yeah. And or it's almost the aesthetic of revolution. Exactly. And it is about like sort of the class unity and the work that goes into And human beings. Like the thing that is special about uh Boots as both a filmmaker and a musician in that sense is that he ultimately is making really human stories about working class people that reveal these ideological structures that he builds. You know, it's not it's not about the ideology. Definitely. And that's that's part of what I really love about my character too, is like I don't think she ever self-identifies as a revolutionary. You know, I think she's just like, I want my family and my loved ones to be okay and we're not okay right now under these working conditions. And like what do I need to do to improve them? You know, which at the heart of it is like what being a revolutionary is of being like we need to change systems and power struggles, but it's not like like what I thought about her and stuff, even when I I make like a playlist for each of the characters that I play just to like help me create the world, but also for practical reasons, like when I'm actually shooting, you know, like you're you're shooting so out of order. The days are super, super long. You kind of just need a fast way to like get into the world. And for me, it's like really through music and kind of scent too. Like sense of smell is a really strong effect on me. Tell me about that. So I like I have a smell associated with each character. It's usually like a perfume or like um or like I think with one character it was literally just like old spice deodor ant. Do you like go to a smelling place and browse or imagine it in your head? How does it work? Yeah, I usually look hit up a like a Sephora and just really do a bunch of smell tests. But with this character with Dionhu, like it was harder for her because I was like ideally, I think her scent is actually just like kind of like burning wood chips a little bit and or like the after smell of like matches or something. So I got something close, but whatever. It wasn't perfect. But I had her playlist still. And when I first was putting her playlist together, I was like looking up like up all this revolutionary music. I was like revolutionary music from China or from like other like I was just like going really deep intellectual in that way. But then I was like, wait, I don't think this is actually even on her consciousness. Like this is me as Poppy interpreting her and interpreting how she moves to the world. But like in her mind , she's, you know, just like a young person in China who like I was like, oh, I think she's probably just actually into like pop music. I'm sorry, I want to go back to the scent thing. So once you've picked it out at the Sephora, which by the way, like I've gone into the Sephora, shout out to Old Town Pasadena . It is a sensory pandemonium for me. Yeah. I'm good. I'm gone the second I walk through the door. Yeah. I went in there, just wandered in a daze up to the counter and said just said to the person like where is a nice man to tell me a concealer. I gotta go. Like it was so overwhelming. Um so you're going into this w banana sensory environ ment. Yeah. In your sniffing test trips? Yeah. Well I actually I feel very at home in a Sephora. I actually feel very at home in a mall in general. And this is throwing it back to the Minnesota of it all is that you can throw me into any mole anywhere. I will know how to navigate it. So with the Sephora, you can't smell, even with my powers, you can't smell that many scents without your brain like liquefying. Right. And they do have, I don't know if they all have it, but sometimes they'll have like coffee beans so that you can like reset, factory reset your, you know Schnazz. Yeah, you'll olfactory senses , but that doesn't work at after a certain point too. So I have to be very strategic about how many scents I'm gonna smell because I can't smell that many. So I have to already go in with a plan. And you kind of have to know already like am I like gonna be smelling much like Joe Malone like sense in which case like I'm just gonna focus there. Is this sort of like you know am I doing like fruitier? Am I going over to like the like the Chloe or like the, I don't know I just. smell just it does a lot for my creative process . When you went into acting, did you think you were going to be a comedy performer? Definitely not . I didn't think I was gonna be a comedy performer until literally the day that I got cast for Sunnyside. Sunnyside is a sitcom that you were on CalPenn sitcom seven or eight years ago. Yeah, that was my first pilot season out in, you know, I came out for like a week in LA. And then Allison Jones was the first casting office I went into. Allison Jones, who's, you know, iconic, did did the original office, like past Bulls I guessed go back and listen if you're listening. Yep. I love her. She's my girl. Like she was the first like you know, room I went into. And then yeah, she like found out when I was leaving town, got me to chemistry read a hour before that. And then right when I flew back to New York they called and said that I got the job. And this was a big comedy part. In this show, you and Joel Kim Booster were I'm this is eight years ago now, but you were uh rich first generation Chinese siblings who were kind of very intense in high maintenance. Yes. Malin and Jun Ho. They're rich as hell, but they won't actually say where they're from. Yeah, technically our dad now lives in international waters. He means we have no knowledge of his current whereabouts. For the last few weeks we were all taking a class that was helping us with the test and the paperwork. But it all shut down when somebody bought the building. Yeah it's getting turned into one of those shared workspaces. It's like ew. Yeah seems like everything's getting turned into one of those. No I mean like ew work and share . And very silly. Yes. And it was a sh I'm gonna t I'll tell you retrospectively, a show that involved a lot of really talented people. Show did not work for me. However, you and Joel Con stant were hilarious in it. Well, yeah, it also is scrubbed from the web. You can't find it anywhere except for a kind of viral fan-made YouTube montage of only me and Joel scenes. It's like a 20-minute clip of just like us being sort of like incredibly wealthy bimbo brained twins. Yeah. Yeah. These big characters. Yeah. Like no question, these are comedy characters. This was not like I just played my intentions and it happened to turn out funny. Like these were comedy characters. It was and also well, cause like I've performed my whole life. I started off doing like Chinese dance when I was in Minnesota. I did that for like nine years. A lot of Chinese people in Minnesota. And then I did like a lot of theater in like high school and college. And but a lot of it was all very like absurdist or experimental and like even when I was in New York, it was like I was doing puppetry and et cetera. I You're kind of on a money track. Exactly. Yeah, dollar signs for eyes. I truly and I I actually mean this not in like a oh like I'm trying to like be humble, whatever. I really didn't know that I was funny before. And like not in a like I know I'm fun. I know I'm fun to be around. I know I'm a really good time, but I didn't think I was like funny, like in a comedian way. Even I think like my humor, whatever, isn't like one-liners or like whatever and stuff. So I it's pretty specific. I guess. I mean, in terms of comedy performance, you know, it is it's very sharp. Oh, I think it's not jokes, you're right. But it's comedy choices. It's not just persona. It's mmm, it's not just vibes, because I feel like that's what it is. There's a lot of vibes. I'm not denying the vibes. The vibes are straw. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Before I was like, maybe it's like pheromones and vibes or something. I don't know. But like, yeah, like the thing that I did right before Sunnyside, a couple months before that, was like what I thought I I'd be doing more of, which was like my first TV job was like a guest spot on New Amsterdam as a first gen Chinese kid who felt like too much pressure and like attempts suicide, but like survives and like is in the hospital now and ends up, you know, seeing the sort of like hospital psychiatrist and like is talking, like, you know, you talk about depression and it's that. And then the next thing that happened is Sunnyside. So yeah, and then after Sunnyside, it was hacks. So I'm like, oh, I guess like I do comedy now . We'll finish up with Poppy Liu in just a minute. We haven't talked about her part in hacks yet. When we come back from the break, we will remedy that. It's Bullseye from Maximum Fun dot org and NPR. Support for NPR and the following message come from FX's the lowdown. From acclaimed reservation dog's creator, Sterling Harjo, comes FX's The Lowdown. Starring five-time Oscar nominee Ethan Hawk, the series follows a Tulsa truth story whose obsession with the facts always leads to trouble. Named an AFI program of the year and hailed as a gloriously off-kilter noir, the lowdown is Emmy eligible in all comedy categories. Stream it now on Hulu and Disney Plus. A grassy green lawn might look nice, but it's going to eat up resources like drinking water and the gas you put in the mower. You can do a solid for the environment by ditching even just some of your lawn and replacing it with a wildlife friendly garden. Life Kit has tips to get you started. No green thumb required. Listen to the Life Kit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, we've been doing my Brother, my brother, me for 15 years. And maybe maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened. And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up. But no. No, you would be wrong. We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing. Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works. The only NFC's I'm into are naughty funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother and me. We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening. And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten. So check it out on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcast it's bullseye i'm jesse thorne my guest is poppy liu, star of Hacks, The After Party, and the new Boots Riley film, I Love Boosters. You have played characters. You've played a lot of American Chinese immigrant characters and you've played them on a real continu um of amount of Americanness, amount of Chinese-ness, and various mixes thereof. Um is that something that you're self-conscious about when you're doing the work that you're thinking about different people's positions? A little bit, but I think that's something that I'm actually bringing into it. And this is like credit, I think, largely to like my team, and I feel so like supported by them. Is that like a lot of the characters that I play aren't necessarily specifically Chinese American? Like the plot or like their own arc doesn't inv like revolve around identity. It's more so that I'm like, okay, if like you cast me in this role, I am who I am. Also, like it's part of my job to make this character make sense to me and like how did I get here to where this character is? And I'm like, well, that is just gonna involve whatever the backstory is, which is gonna involve some degree of like , you know, if I'm in America, then like somewhere down the line we immig rated here. And like maybe that's not relevant to the story, but like for me, it feels important. And you're revealing in some case uh some element of your own queerness as well on screen, whether or not it's a character that has a romantic story. Definitely. I think so. Yeah. And like I feel as like in some ways it's like maybe not so like obvious to the eye, but I really feel it. Or like Kiki and Hucks, for instance, is like kind of a girls' girl, like nothing is kind of queer-coded about her. But in my mind, I'm like, but I do see it. She's a single mom of her kid. We never hear once about her like baby dad. He's just floating around, like somewhere, whatever. She's like this like hustler. She like you don't see her family alive, but I was like, she's doing that somehow. And then like cut to now, I'm like, oh, like I'm a single mom. And like I actually do have a great co-parenting situation. But it's like even like looking at my own life, my like little village of like besties , there's like a whole community of like aunties and uncles and like an ex turned enemy turned best friend who's now my kids like godparent involved. So like I think for me like it does feel like queerness as a way of like creating family and like moving through li fe does feel very present throughout. I love your character on hacks. Thank you. How would you describe her? I would say she's like um , you know, a baddie little mommy hustler also loves the mall. This is uh let me say this. This is where me and her overlap. We both have mall superpower and I think we're both, you know, little mommies. Do what you will with that. You made a gesture. Yeah. I did this with my hand. I put it up two inches away from my face and then I moved my neck around back and forth with a flat hand. A flatat hand hand.. Straight fl Like a framing flat hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the kind of a coy, demure eye gaze and a little smile. That's what's happening right now. When I said little mommy. Yeah, as a visual for those of you that are listening in the car. There's something so gleeful about her hustling. Yeah. What I really like about her, especially in the world of hacks, is that like she's one of the few characters who's actually just really truly happy with her life. And she is like happy with herself, and there's not like some sort of like silver ladder that she's trying to climb. She doesn't really seek validation from other people because I think she's quite happy with herself. She's like into who she is. Someone was worded it recently in a way where they were like, all the characters kind of their gravitational pull is affected by like every sort of will and whim of Deborah Vance. And I think Kiki just isn't. I think she just she's like, I got my bag. Deborah's part of my bag. I got like three Rolls Royces out of it. But like I have other hustles too. I think it she's interesting in the context of Las Vegas, where so much of the show takes place. Like the show is about these kind of weird different forms of show business. Yeah. Like the relationship between this pure show business of Las Vegas and the business show business of Los Angeles and like the ways that Deborah Vance, the protagonist's career, passes through these worlds. Yeah. And Las Vegas is such a particular insane hustle place that is so full of desperation and sadness. Yeah. But also of I don't know, like I think Carrot Top is glad that he just works there forever. You know what I mean? Like he doesn't have to go to Duluth to do a weekend, you know? Like uh Juluth is really nice and long it's a long flight, you know what I mean? A lovely place. And I think Kiki is such an expression of the possibility of a insane place like Las Vegas. The possibility. I was like, yeah, I think like if you were to go into her life more, I was like, I can imagine her being like, you know, like the matriarch in a sort of get all your relatives over to America little ring, you know? There's like a whole economy of like entertainment and business around a Deborah Vance, around like Hollywood, you know, there's like the ripple of effect like all the businesses that are around it. And I just feel like Kiki navigates it very, very well . You've been in a doula and doula-ing encompasses a lot of different parts of guiding people through the birth and uh baby experience. But one of those is birthing moves. Do you have any favorite moves? For giving birth? Yeah, yeah. Oh, well now, that I've given birth too, I have some personal experience as well. It's just every birth is so different. I started off because I accidentally became an abortion doula because I like the first kind of film anything I made was a short film about my abortion story. And then I like self-produced a tour, was like, you know, at like reproductive rights conferences and blah blah blah blah. And so people just started reaching out about their own abortions or being like my partner's about to have an abortion, like, can you talk to them? Whatever. And then I became a full spectrum doula . And I think in total, I've attended five live births, and each of them is so vastly different. Like the first one was like 36 hours in a birthing center. You know, just me talking her through labor and working through each contraction. And you know, like one of them was a C-section. One of them, like the labor was really short. We like got to the hospital and then immediately like babies out now like but i think the theme or like the um the similar factor amount all of it actually is just ultimately telling people what their options are, which sounds really simple, but I think a lot of people just don't know, you know, and like especially in America, we are like the medical industrial complex makes it so that like they don't want us to know a lot about our own bodies or like, you know, you're kind of just like you're at the whim of the doctor when you're at the hospital. And you just trust that you're like, I'll be taken care of. But it's not always the case, you know, like C-section spike right before sort of like lunch break or like dinner break or like the end of a night shift or whatever. I think a lot of people just don't even know that they have other options. And so there's like not really like a better or worse birth to have. Like it's like if what you really wanted is a C section, great. But like you should know these are other things that you can do. Or like you should know like what your own medical history is or like yeah like or like what yeah have someone to communicate to definitely medical professionals that's n not currently giving birth to something. Yeah. I think that's the best move is having someone who can like help advocate for you and communicate with medical professionals when you're in labor. I thought you were just gonna say something with a yoga ball or something. Totally. You know what the doula told me that I'll never forget? What?