Lake Bell serves as co-creator, co-writer, executive producer, and star opposite Dax Shepard in ABC’s Bless This Mess, a new single-camera comedy that centers on a newlywed couple that gives up their drab and unfulfilling lives in New York and moves to Nebraska for a simpler life. Bell also directed the pilot, and the series will return for its second season this upcoming Fall. Bell can currently be seen reprising her role as the lackadaisical cat Chloe in the second installment of Universal’s The Secret Life of Pets 2 opposite Patton Oswalt, Bobby Moynihan, Jenny Slate, Dana Carvey, Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart. This fall, Bell will be voicing Poison Ivy in the upcoming DC Universe animated series Harley Quinn. Bell made her debut as writer-director-star with the acclaimed 2013 comedy In a World, and in 2016 followed it up with I Do … Until I Don’t, a romantic comedy about marriage in which she co-starred with Ed Helms, Mary Steenburgen, Paul Reiser, Amber Heard, Wyatt Cenac and Dolly Wells.
On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, two good friends, actor-writer-director Lake Bell and singer Santigold, sit down for a long-awaited chat together. The pair are both very busy performers – Bell is hard at work on the second season of her new show Bless This Mess and can be heard in the new animated feature The Secret Life of Pets 2, and Santi recently dropped I Don’t Want: The Gold Fire Sessions and just came back from a U.S. tour – but are also highly involved mothers, and a large focus of their talk is on the challenges of balancing family life with creative work. They discuss how you can’t in fact do it all or have it all, how the making art changes after you have kids, how filmmaking and parenting are (kind of) the same thing, plus Santi’s social media struggles, where the roots of Lake’s comedy lie, what Lake is doing to address the current political situation, Santi’s move into directing, and much, much more. For more filmmakers musicians in conversation, visit Talkhouse at talkhouse.com and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.
Episode recorded by Gideon Brower, and recorded and co-produced by Mark Yoshizumi at Hook & Fade Studios in Brooklyn.
The Talkhouse Podcast’s theme song was composed and performed by The Range.
