Finneas

joined by Monica Monsoon.

Hi.

Hello. This long-awaited Easter egg. People were growing impatient, and I understand why.

Yeah, we dropped this egg a while back.

We did. Recklessly.

It was a golden egg.

Yeah, it sure was. Phineas. Phineas is an Academy and Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter,

and composer. His solo albums include Optimist, Blood Harmony. He's written and produced,

you know, What Was I Made For, No Time to Die, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We

Go, Happier Than Ever. He's such a beast.

Such a beast.

And I'm so excited about this. He has scored a new Apple TV series that comes out this

year called Disclaimer. And so now he's scoring things.

Yeah, he's done a few things, which is really exciting.

I know. He is a prodigy.

He also, I'm going to put him in almost the Kimmel category, where a lot of good boy vibes

and sexy guy and cool guy.

Oh, all the categories.

Sexy man and best boy. Yeah, right? He kind of delivered on all the categories.

I can see that. I feel like a lot of people have the opinion of him, just based on what

they see on TV, that he's just a very-

You might think even shy.

Exactly. Shy, super sweet. And he's not. He has a fun personality.

Big time. A rascal even, I'd say.

And a little bit of a contrarian, he says himself. So it's fun.

Yeah, it was a big, big fun pop out the whole way. And now I adore him. Please enjoy Phineas.

Oh, you've been seeing each other?

Yeah. Well, Phineas has seen me with my headphones in. He lives in the hood.

Well, I know, but do I know that you guys are seeing each other a lot?

Well, I have two dogs, so I walk relentlessly as you do.

You're a better dog owner than I am. I have two dogs and I have not walked at all.

Over the last two years, I've been like, I think that's Monica. Occasionally.

But also, not to be accusatory, you're probably listening to early edits.

That's right. I'm working on the job.

I never see you sort of like laxadaisically.

I don't. I walk with a mission.

I see you really focused. It's never been a good time to say, love the show.

Well, I would have loved to have heard that, but you're right. I would have been like-

But first, you would have been like, excuse me? You know what I mean?

Pretty accurate.

Well, because they could be saying a car is coming, like you have to react quickly.

You do have to kind of be fast with it, yes.

You gotta be fast.

It's true.

There's so much here though. Also, you know, Monica, yes, she likely was editing or preoccupied.

But also, she enters the street is like, it's an apocalypse. People are gonna attack her.

Like, she's definitely in a zone when she's out on the streets. Is that fair?

That's fair. My best friend-

Happy birthday, Callie. It's her birthday today.

Thank you.

My best friend said-

He was talking to Rob.

I thought you were being funny about Callie's birthday.

She said I walk like I'm on a mission. In high school, I would do that.

Oh, they're so good.

I'm gonna wait till we're deep in this interview when my intermittent fast is broken.

Do you have an alarm that goes off on your phone?

No, but I'll feel it. I'll know when noon is.

Yeah.

You do it?

Pavlovian.

I've been doing it on and off. I'm a fan of it for two reasons. One is,

who likes to fall asleep feeling too full?

Sure.

And then the other one is just, in any version of dieting at all,

I like the restricted hours, but I feel like I can eat whatever I want in the hours.

Yeah, it's not the food you're taking away.

Yeah. The hardest form of trying to control what I eat has been like,

eating less Cheez-Its than I want to.

I love Cheez-Its.

They're really good.

That's your food too?

Like, do I love Cheez-Its?

Yeah.

I do love Cheez-Its.

You love them. They're so good.

You love Cheez-Its. We all love Cheez-Its.

Well, I have come to Cheez-Its by way of you. They were not for me.

I didn't realize that.

In fact, they're what my stepfather liked, so they got filed into-

That's what Barton loves.

Old man food a little bit.

Maybe a little bit.

My last stepdad, who I absolutely adored.

The final boss.

The final boss, and why I liked him is he was never much of a boss.

And you're too young for this, but he had Mr. Belvedere vibes.

Do you remember Mr. Belvedere?

What's Mr. Belvedere from?

It was a show about a butler, Mr. Belvedere.

Okay.

And he was very proper, and he wore sweater vests, and he was nice.

I think now it's like a vodka.

What?

I think Belvedere and vodka.

Oh, Belvedere is a beautiful brand of vodka.

But back then, he just stood for kind of old-fashioned.

Butler class.

So the fact that he ate Cheez-Its for me, it wasn't sexy enough.

Yeah.

The idea that you'd associate that with some authority figure.

What do they represent for you?

Fun?

Like, these are so fun.

They're square.

There's millions of them in this bag.

I think they're like any form of snack where it's the tub.

It's like pretzels or something.

Anything that you're sticking your hand down into, like a claw machine at an arcade, bad sign.

Monica, I don't want to speak for you, but you have a specific association that's airport for you.

Yeah, that's my airport snack of choice.

So as soon as I get in there, I need the big bag.

Mine for a long time was Takis.

Do you know those?

The spicy things?

Oh.

Takis are Dorito adjacent.

They're like a rolled chip, and they're super spicy.

And just sometimes people wear them on their face.

That's Bugles.

That's Bugles.

But I do know what you're speaking of, in that the cylindrical shape of them adds even more crunch.

It's really violently crunchy, and it became a whole debacle in Billy and my touring life,

because we were public-facing appreciators of Takis,

which meant that by the 15th show, they were being thrown at us on stage.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So we definitely crossed over the bell curve of appreciating them to being like,

no, no, no, no, this has to stop.

And now when I'm at an airport, I'm like, oh, I'll get a bag of that.

There was a period where they were sort of falling out of my jacket pockets

and being hit in the face with them and stuff.

You felt like it had jumped the shark.

Just like anything that you suddenly go from,

this is a little delicacy that I appreciate, to like, always being inundated with them.

What a bizarre lesson to learn real time is that,

well, we got to be careful how much we express our love for something,

because they'll eventually get thrown at us on stage.

Thank God you weren't into throwing stars or something dangerous.

Something that would kill me.

Yeah.

I've always, because I'm a junkie, so I've thought there were certain performers,

generally stand-ups, who knowingly would be like, bring drugs to my show.

And people would throw free drugs on stage.

And I thought that was such a great idea.

Yeah.

I thought it was so generous.

Well, it was a generous of the participants, but also what a great hack.

You're in another town.

You don't want to travel drugs.

I feel like you're talking about a pre-fentanyl period of time.

Exactly.

I am.

That sounds terrifying.

You're right.

Don't do this, kids.

If you're a very popular stand-up, the three people that are out there listening,

Theo Vaughn, don't ask anyone to do this.

I'm not friends with stand-ups like you are, but when I go to friends' concerts,

and I go to their green room to say like, great show,

there's usually some consumed bottle of alcohol.

Of course.

That I have a feeling of like, oh my God, are you hitting that every night?

That kind of blows me away.

And maybe it's a whole band, and maybe it's a whole crew backstage,

and they're all having it.

But sometimes I'm like, I don't see a lot of people back here, man.

That's a very empty bottle.

Huge deficit of alcohol for two people.

When you tour, what is your kind of habitual pattern?

And what's on a rider?

I have a super monastic, boring rider because of exactly what we're talking about.

Because of like, when we first started, my rider was like Oreos.

Great pick.

A case of Oreos a day.

Milk, too?

Yeah, sometimes milk.

Or would you raw dog them?

But anyway, again, it was kind of an exposure thing of like,

ooh, I shouldn't have this always at arm's length every day.

So my rider is like apples and a can of cold black coffee and stuff.

It's very tame.

I wasn't a famous musician, but I do weirdly relate to this on a deep level,

which is when I graduated high school, I kind of went working full time with my mother

doing car shows for General Motors.

And you had a per diem.

And I coveted fast food so much growing up.

I love fast food, too.

And it never occurred to me that if I had endless fast food, my body would change rapidly.

And I graduated at 185.

And after just one year of doing car shows, I'll never forget it.

I was in Lake Lanier, Georgia.

And I just caught a glance of myself.

And I said, you're becoming a very big boy.

And I stepped on a scale and I was 217.

So I had gained 32 pounds with this per diem just absentmindedly.

Yes, yes.

Mystery weight.

Yes.

It's a lucky position to be in life where you actually have excess.

It's true.

Or yeah, what's around?

We're talking about the same thing, basically, which is that adulthood and independence was

coinciding with this other unhealthy thing.

Living at my parents' house, my mom's a healthy person and had healthy shit around.

Even I remember turning 18 and I was dating a girl that was going to college.

She was home for the summer.

And I would go over to her parents' house where she was staying.

And we'd hang out late in the evening.

But it wasn't kosher to spend the night.

So I'd leave.

And there was a Taco Bell blocks away.

And I hit that Taco Bell almost every night for like-

Well, you had blue balls and you had to get-

No, they were fucking.

He just wasn't sleeping over.

Oh, you're right.

You're right.

What am I thinking?

She was in college.

He was 18.

I'd hit a Taco Bell like every-

These were post-coital tacos.

Sure, yeah.

There's nothing tastier than a post-coital.

It's better than a cigarette though.

Yeah.

But I have a very vivid memory of after a summer of the bell,

being at a restaurant for my birthday, which is at the end of July,

going to wash my hands in the bathroom, looking in the mirror and being like,

who's that?

I look so different.

It was shocking to me.

I've been saying that for the last two years that I've been eating like it's for a role.

Yes, yes.

But I have not.

I feel very saved by that I did have to be on camera all through my 30s.

And I couldn't just go crazy.

My vanity has probably added 20 years to my life.

You enjoy it.

Mentally, nothing makes me feel better.

Like Arnold.

It's better than coming.

It's like you're walking around all day coming.

You leave the gym and you're coming.

Can you imagine for me how much I'm in heaven?

Wow, doing Arnold.

And I'm glad you've seen that clip.

That's so special.

He's just so delighted.

He's like, the pump is better than coming and then I'm home and I'm coming.

He's delighted.

He's so happy about it.

And he was doing two a days.

Yeah.

So he had the pump twice a day.

How much for me I am in heaven really killed me.

Imagine how much for me I am in heaven.

It's pretty great.

It's wonderful.

I don't know if I've ever met anyone as well versed in Arnold quote.

That's a surprise.

And I like it.

Oh, I know.

This is not about you.

I apologize.

But we were just in South by and I was moderating a panel for Roadhouse.

It's all young actors.

They're dudes.

They all got in great shape.

And then we saw him the next day at the hotel.

And one of the guys grabbed my shoulder and he's like, what are you training for?

That's sweet.

What a huge compliment.

It is.

But I also felt very silly because I used to be able to say, oh, I'm doing a movie.

And I was like, I don't know.

I don't know what I'm training for.

I don't know what it's about.

But he started crying.

A hernia.

I'm just training to get a hernia.

Yes.

First of all, I listened to the Jake episode of Armchair when he was like shooting that.

And I was sort of at stuff that Jake was at a year ago when he was finishing shooting that.

Because remember they shot for a while.

He got COVID or something and it paused for two and a half months.

So I was like, dude, so you just had to stay like 0% body fat for three months while you're

on hiatus.

Right.

Yeah, it sucks.

He looked unbelievable.

He had the greatest looking body on a man I'd almost ever seen.

And there's like videos of him at USC and stuff.

It was insane.

Wait till you see this film.

He's got the most glorious body.

And are you like me in that I am far more interested in men's bodies than women's bodies,

even though I'm heterosexual?

Um, you and I both have a mental image of what Jake's body looks like right now,

but I don't think you and I have one of a female actress right now.

Let's pretend.

Sure.

Yeah, I can't say I can't say with full transparency that I have

much more interest in men's bodies.

Okay.

I am an appreciator and I'm fascinated by the whole thing.

And I work out and I rock climb and stuff.

So there's interest in that for sure.

Yes.

But you and I aren't going to miss a male actor who gets in great shape.

100%.

Very interesting to me.

Me too.

It's so silly.

I've been in a relationship for five years.

Which is impressive.

My partner, Claudia, who's an actress also like you and I are talking about Jake.

We have that about actors and actresses alike or just maybe people.

But we were at a party the other night and Claudia was like,

Jennifer Lawrence looks on fucking believable.

Right.

And we have that kind of same version of like, wow, look at that person.

We should all watch a movie together because all the person I talk about is like,

my goodness, look at the traps on so-and-so.

Look at this.

Look at that.

It's so worth appreciating.

I know.

I think someone could maybe deduce there's some kind of shallowness to that.

I'm inclined to think it's more like evolutionary.

There's something primitive about it that I can't resist.

Yeah.

I think it's just interesting.

Also, most people are not particularly predisposed to it.

So it's displaying a kind of like, wow, they really like went for that.

Like when Kumail suddenly was Adonis.

I'll won't forget that like I don't forget the space shuttle.

That was growing up.

That is an important marker of my life.

Picturing you with Kristen in the other room with Kumail coming on the TV and you being like,

babe, hon, get in here.

Yeah.

It's so silly.

Yeah.

But five years is a very long time to be with someone when you're 27.

Yeah.

We got together when I was 21 and she was 22.

How did you meet?

We met on a dating app.

Oh, you did?

That's the sort of abridged version.

And then to her, the validation was that I knew mutual friends of hers.

And then once we'd matched, she was like, isn't this the guy you keep talking about?

I think that that validated me in a way that if I'd just been sending her a message,

she would have been like, ah, I don't know who this is.

And how long had you been on that dating app?

And how frequent were your dates?

Very briefly.

Because I miss this whole phase of life.

And I'm a little envious.

I'm very pro dating app.

What could be better than two people being like hot and pressing a button.

Yeah.

And then talking under the auspice of like, we should go kiss maybe.

Like, I think that's awesome.

It really is.

Yeah.

I think a lot of energy and time.

We should go kiss.

I'm glad you missed it.

Yeah, I would have never come out.

Yeah.

I would have never come out for sure.

Yeah, I wouldn't, I shouldn't have.

I wouldn't be trusted.

I think you would have been like me.

I think, again, I was on it and met people and had fun experiences and then fell in love with Claudia.

Full disclosure, I did have that kind of similar thing.

MySpace was a thing.

And that's about as close as I could get to it.

Yeah, it's like strangers interacting and then getting together to kiss.

And then one of them has got really good taste in movies and books.

And next thing you know, I'm kind of dating them.

I am a habitual monogamous.

I can't stay out of a relationship, truth be told.

Yeah.

Had you had a long one prior to this five year?

I hadn't had really long ones.

The college girl, how long was that?

That was like a year.

That's pretty good.

Yeah.

Do you think we could go out on a limb and say that it maybe is somewhat related to our

relationships with our moms?

I definitely have a really great relationship with my mom and a really great relationship

with my dad.

For me, this is a weird way to put it.

I'm a real problem solver to a sort of debilitating degree sometimes.

Everything's a problem.

Not everything's a problem.

But if there is a problem, I'm going to try to work through it.

Yeah.

And I think sometimes I'd have friends who seemed like they were having a really good

thing with a partner.

And I'd be like, what happened to that thing?

And they're like, oh, it just didn't work out.

And I'd be like, what happened?

And they'd explain something to me.

And I'd be like, well, that seems like very surface level.

That was solvable.

Could have had a little conversation where you said, hey, that made me uncomfortable.

When you said that to me, it made me feel small.

Yeah.

I just communicate a lot.

But do you think maybe implicit in there is that you and I both had mothers that if I

did go bring my feelings to her, she, A, took them seriously.

Yes, validated them.

She listened.

She didn't deny me.

Because I said so.

She treated me as a peer and with respect.

Did you go over to friends' houses as a kid and say, can we do this?

Can we have a sleepover?

And they'd say, no.

You'd say, why?

And they'd say, because I said so.

That blew my mind.

Oh, couldn't believe it.

To the parents?

Yeah.

Well, interestingly, and now I am going to betray our bond.

My mom, begging was not on the table.

That was like a rule in the house.

So I would go like, can Trevor spend the night?

And she'd go, no.

And I'd be on the phone with Trevor.

She said, no.

Well, ask her again.

And I'd be like, no, that doesn't work.

Beg her.

I go, no, no, it doesn't work.

She's just going to get mad.

If she says no, that was for real, no.

For me, and this is a really good lesson in psychology is I would go, hey, can me and

Cameron have a sleepover tonight?

My mom would go, well, he's got soccer practice in the morning.

And what's fun about a sleepover if not waking up and watching a little cartoon and eating

breakfast together?

You have to worry about going to bed too early tonight because he's got his soccer

practice he's got to wake up for.

By this time, I'm so bored of this answer.

I've completely tapped out.

And it's morning.

And I'm like, never mind.

You win.

And I think that that's a really great example of people, no matter how young, are usually

not fully immune to like reason and justification.

So if you give it to them, they'll just sort of go like, oh, yeah.

Even if they kind of throw a tantrum about it, it's like a little inarguable.

Well, that's the policy we have at the house, which is best argument wins.

And it can be from them and often is.

They'll say something.

I'll go, oh, that was a great counter.

You got this one.

Yeah.

Sometimes I would be like, it's so important to me to continue this hang that we will promise

to go to bed on time and wake up early as long as we can watch Incredibles right now.

I can't wait to tell my kid, no, sorry, I decided this.

And that's that.

And I'm the mom.

We were just talking about that.

And that's the end of this conversation.

Go to bed.

Go back to bed.

Shut them in.

It's noon.

I can't wait to do that.

Why is that how your childhood went?

No, I got away with murder.

How did you get away with stuff?

You're the oldest.

That's the one that they're careful with.

But I was good.

I was good in school.

I did everything I needed to do outwardly.

So in the house, if I was shitty, which I was, they were like, I guess we prefer that she's

a good student performing for us.

So sure, she can run wild.

But we were just talking about this.

Yes, I have zero problems with authority.

I have no problem with someone telling me I'm in charge.

Give the literal example.

We're just on an airplane coming home from Texas.

And the shades were down.

And they said, you got to have the shades down to keep the airplane cool.

But we had been on a flight a week before where they're like, got to have the shades up.

It's FAA.

We got to be able to see shit.