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ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Hey, listeners, before we get started, just wanted to say we're approaching the end of our season and we're going to wrap it up with a Q&A episode. We would love to hear any questions or comments that you have about the show, this season, Harv and I please be nice—whatever it may be! We would especially love to hear your lovely voices. So feel free to record yourself saying your question as a voice memo. You can send us your written questions on Twitter and Instagram @IQ_podcast, and you can email us your audio questions. contact@iqpodcast.com. Lots of different ways to get in touch. I can't wait to hear your lovely questions soon!

[Theme]

HARVINDER WADHWA: People are curious, and that's great.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: But there are some questions you just shouldn't ask or at least not like that.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I'm Harvinder Wadhwa.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And this is Inappropriate Questions.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Let's get inappropriate.

[Theme out]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So Harv I don't know if you know about my storied past, but I am a former child actor.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Really? Do tell more.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Well, OK, so when I was 13, my classmate’s mom was a filmmaker and she just saw me doing yoga or stretches or something in the middle of the class one day at snack and she asked me to audition and I got the part. I had never really acted before other than in school plays. And it was such a shoestring budget movie, we'd barely spent any money on it, shot it over two weeks at a motel in Parry Sound and then it got to travel around the world and it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. We traveled to Rome, to New York, all sorts of places to promote it.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Wow!

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So it was very interesting getting not really a taste of stardom, but, you know, I have an IMDB page. I've had people ask for my autograph before. This is a thing that's happened a long time ago.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So this whole time, I am cohosting with a celebrity and I didn't even know about it!

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I mean, like probably like K-list or like X-lists or these make no sense. But I read there was a moment where I could have gone further with acting, but I decided to be a nerd and focus on school instead. So maybe in an alternate universe, I am one of those people that show up in those “Where are they now?” articles that get pumped out about former child actors.

HARVINDER WADHWA: It's so very interesting. It's a little different than what we have done before.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Because now this question is not asked in most cases directly to them, but it is about them. So, yeah, this is a little twist. And I like twists.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Love a twist! Yeah, it mostly comes up in those articles and like click-baity articles about what happened to this child star now that they're old and washed up or whatever..

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right. Right. And I've seen one.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: You know, this actress is now doing a nine to five job kind of thing.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I don’t know whether you have seen that comes in your feed or not.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I've seen it many times.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah. I think this is a really interesting topic because of, you know, the societal fascination with celebrities. And to be honest, I sometimes do read those BuzzFeed articles about where child actors are now. It's kind of nostalgic, but I think sometimes, as with any aspect of celebrity culture, things can feel intrusive or be taken too far.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yeah, you have raised a good point because there is a privacy angle to it, too.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah. So I'm really interested to hear what people who have seen these articles written about them think of this question and whether people should be asking it about them or not.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Just so, you know, this episode has a bit of cursing in it. Be warned!

VOICE #1: They're saying, “where are they now?” and they kind of hope that we are at the bottom of a well.

VOICE #2: Everyone deserves to know where we are from us and not from some shitty like PopSugar, BuzzFeed bullshit.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: First up, we're speaking to Lisa Jakub. She's a writer, speaker, mental wellness coach and former actor. You might know her as Lydia, one of the kids from the movie Mrs. Doubtfire.

HARVINDER WADHWA: OK, I am kind of embarrassed to admit that I have not seen the movie, but I am quite proud of myself that I've heard about this movie because most movies I've not even heard about.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: When asked about what she's up to now, she had this great tweet.

LISA JAKUB: People always ask me what I've done since Mrs. Doubtfire. Acted for eight years, retired from acting, left L.A., married the best guy, went to college, published two books, became a mental wellness speaker/advocate, started a yoga program for vets. And now I'm going to make a burrito.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Can you think back to the first time you saw yourself referenced in one of those, “Where are they now?” articles, listicles. Is there a time that comes to mind?

LISA JAKUB: It was probably, you know, several years after I had left Los Angeles, left the film industry, and I went to college late. So when I started college, I was about 28. And I, I think that was probably around the time that I first saw that, like, “where are they now?” And it probably triggered like a bit of an existential crisis like “oh Jesus, where am I now?” Like it's a valid question. I was worried about exams and not being invited to parties because I was kind of this weird older kid who was married and had a mortgage and lived off campus with her husband. And, you know, I think it was probably one of those moments where I went like, “oh, my God, what am I doing?” Which is, I think, a point that a lot of us get to of what really am I doing with my life? And it's scary enough when you ask that of yourself. It's just terrifying if you think other people are asking that of you.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Hmm, interesting!

HARVINDER WADHWA: Wow, the internet doesn't make this easier. They will give you all sorts of salacious or click baity stuff too, right?

LISA JAKUB: You know, the click bait is so terrible. It really is. And, you know, when I turned 40, there were a bunch of articles that came out and it very much is like, well, look what she looks like at 40, you know?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh my god.

LISA JAKUB: I look like a 40 year old, like what’s your problem? And so I think that that feels really kind of evil, right. It feels like it's tapping into our basest instincts as humans to want to feel superior, to want to feel better about ourselves, to want to put someone else down. Oh, this person grew up to be ugly or they're fat now or oh, they couldn't get work past the age of 18 so now they work at Trader Joe's, right? This idea of we love to build people up and then we tear them down. And so I think in its worst iteration, the question is a set up to watch how someone has taken this life that we idealize and have fallen from it.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So being an actor, your life becomes very public. And in that public, even when you leave that profession, you are still a very public figure. So did you get stopped on the street or I shouldn't use the word accosted, right?

LISA JAKUB: Accosted is absolutely the right word. Yeah, I've had a lot of really difficult, really scary moments where people think that you owe them because you were an actor, you were in the public eye. This was actually something that happened when I was still an actor. But when I was a teenager, I was probably about 16 or 17. I was staying at a hotel and I was swimming in the pool at the hotel. And there was a man who recognized me and he demanded that I get out of the pool and take a photo with him. And I said, you know what, I'd be happy to take a photo with you. But, you know, hold on one minute. I'm going to go and get a towel because I didn't really want to stand next to some random dude in my bathing suit. And he actually said to me, no, you need to do this now. You're an actor. You owe me. This is what you get paid for.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: What?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Seriously?

LISA JAKUB: And there is no moment that more epitomizes that feeling of just being a dancing monkey, right? Like you are just here to please other people.

HARVINDER WADHWA: But even when you were younger, I'm assuming that most people were polite there must have been just a few. And I'm not going to use any choice words here, but...

LISA JAKUB: There definitely were people who were incredibly kind and just wanted to come up and say something nice. But I really was surprised at the number of people who had no boundaries. Even more, as a kid, there was less respect for bodily autonomy, right? When I was a kid, I got grabbed a lot. I got hugged a lot. I got picked up a lot. And that's incredibly scary at any age, but especially when you are a petite 14 year old.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: That sucks. And as a kid, it must be really hard to stand up for those boundaries, right? Because, you know, I didn't even know what boundaries were at that age.

LISA JAKUB: No, absolutely not. And I've gotten much better with boundaries now. And I think I would have had more choice words for that guy had that happened more recently. But there still is this public fascination, this fetishizing of fame, this way that we don't think that actors are real people. And it is really sad to me to see that just being repeated over and over again.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right. Where do you think this entitlement that a lot of these folks had comes from?

LISA JAKUB: I think that there is a sense of intimacy that people have with actors. We show up in people's houses right? They’re sitting on the couch and there we are. I don't think most of it comes from a malicious place. I think most of it comes from this sense, a misplaced sense of you're my friend, I know you. You have sat with me when I was sick and you have been there when my cat died and you know all of those things. And so I do think there is a sense of intimacy that's not on my end. Right. I have never seen you before. But you think that you know me. You think that I am a part of your life.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And, you know, thinking about that in the context of this question, you know, “where are you now?” kind of or “where are they now?” kind of becomes like, “where's that person I knew in high school?” Or, you know, it almost is like looking for an old Facebook friend you lost touch with, right? Or something like that. That rather than someone you actually don't know.

LISA JAKUB: Yeah and I think there is different types of tone that come with those articles as well, because I do think some of them are coming with this intention of nostalgia and sweetness.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

LISA JAKUB: And then I think there are the articles that feel more like they're saying, “where are they now?” and they kind of hope that we're at the bottom of a well. You know, they kind of hope that there's going to be oh, let me Google this person and see how many times they've been in rehab and have they crashed their car and all of those sorts of things that unfortunately tend to be kind of common with child actors, right? And so I do think that lately it's felt more like nostalgia, especially during this COVID era, I think where people are looking for that comfort.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Do you ever regret that you started your acting career so young?

LISA JAKUB: I don't regret any of it. I don't regret spending 18 years as an actor and I don't regret leaving. It really was a fascinating way to spend a childhood. I got to travel. I got to meet amazing people. And so I had a lot of fantastic experiences. I also don't regret leaving it because at that point that I got to in my early 20s, my anxiety was through the roof. I was really struggling with depression and so it's a no brainer for me. But it's always so bizarre to see people who really feel badly for me because I'm no longer an actor.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, I must be really weird to encounter them.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Lisa, it's been so many years since you've acted, but when you meet new people who find out that you have been a child actor, is there a certain way they act?

LISA JAKUB: It's fascinating to watch other people's reactions to the fact that I used to have a certain job before. Nobody's like, oh, my God, you used to work at a bank that totally changes everything about how I think about you. If people don't know that I used to be an actor, when they find out, they change.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

LISA JAKUB: Like, we can't just talk about normal things. All of the conversations need to revolve around what Robin Williams was like or kind of giving you the strong arm and creating a bit of space. They feel like I am somehow fundamentally unrelatable.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Has something changed, you know, from that time when you were in college, first seeing those kind of articles too, maybe when you see it nowadays, is it still kind of scary that you're being thought about in that way? Or do you feel like you've worked through that a bit?

LISA JAKUB: I think I've worked through it a bit, actually. Now, when I see it, I try to take it in what I hope is the intent of the article, which is kind of a sweet nostalgia kind of thing. And knowing that some of the movies that I did were meaningful and important to people, a lot of the movies I did were not meaningful at all to people. So it's nice to know that at least some of them were. I can step back from it a little bit and not take it as personally and not have it shake me. I think the way that it used to. And a big reason for that is the fact that I sort of shifted my view of what success is. For a long time, I felt like I had to live up to the fact that I was in these two blockbuster movies before the time I could buy a drink, you know.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

LISA JAKUB: And it's kind of like, well, shit, where do I go from here? And everybody just kept telling me that being an actor and being in movies and living in L.A. was the height of what anyone could ever achieve. And it turns out they were all totally wrong. What I believed to be a successful life was very different from that. It had to do with making an authentic contribution to the world and feeling good in my own skin, even if that didn't look impressive to the outside world, that is what success really is.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I love that.

LISA JAKUB: Thank you. It took me a while to get there. Yeah. I'm glad you like it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I said that as if that was like you just baked a little pie instead of like this is my philosophy..

HARVINDER WADHWA: But this is not easy. This is not easy to achieve. Let's put it that way.

LISA JAKUB: It is absolutely not easy to achieve. It probably took me ten years to get there.

HARVINDER WADHWA: People who don't know you, you know, behave like you are any other person. But people then when they find out you're an ex-actor, what do you, how do you expect them to behave with you?

LISA JAKUB: How would I like people to respond?

HARVINDER WADHWA: OK, like is a better term rather than expect.

LISA JAKUB: Yes, OK. I think for a long time after I left, I wanted to pretend that my acting career had just never happened. I wanted to bury it. I wanted to bury Lydia. I wanted it just to all be done. I joke about this that it's going to say, you know, Lydia lies here on my tombstone, that it's just something I did for four months when I was 14 will just be something I will carry forever, for better and for worse. What I have eventually gotten to, which I think is a much healthier place, and my therapist will tell you it's a much, much healthier place is this was a chapter in my life. It was meaningful, but it is not as meaningful as my present. So I think my ideal reaction to anyone who finds out that I used to be an actor is, oh, that's really cool. What are you up to now? What brings you joy now? What are you interested in? How do you spend your days? What do you love? Ask me that. And like that is perfect. Like, let's acknowledge that it happened and move on.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: That's actually I guess that's a really lovely way to frame this question. So it seems like this question could be really kind of wonderful if you're not asking it in a very click baity or try to put you down kind of context.

LISA JAKUB: Yeah, I think it really can be, because we all change. We all become different versions of ourself. We evolve as humans. So how did they evolve?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

LISA JAKUB: And so if it can take on that tone, I think that that is so much more lovely.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Harv, hate to movie quiz you again, but this one is one of my favorites of all time. Have you seen School of Rock?

HARVINDER WADHWA: OK, now I've heard about it and I will put it on my to watch list after I retire from my job.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: OK, I'm really excited because our next guest, Rivkah Reyes played Katie, one of the kids in the band in School of Rock and Rivkah now hosts a podcast called Where Are We Now? where they interview other people who are in the spotlight as kids. Kind of differently from Lisa, Rivkah is still in the entertainment industry and still gets this question.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So, Rivkah I wanted to start as a queer School of Rock fan by telling you how much I loved your tweet, you probably know the one someone said, I wonder how the bassist from School of Rock is doing. And you replied, I'm gay now.

RIVKAH REYES: I'm gay now!

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I thought this was just the perfect answer to the question. I love that you were like, this is what the people need to know.

RIVKAH REYES: That is all they needed to know in that moment. And honestly, the reason I found that tweet was because sometimes when I need validation, I like I'll look on Twitter in the search for School of Rock bassist or Katie School of Rock, like search my own name. And then that was like the first thing that came up. And I was just like, I'm gay now. And that tweet went so viral I was not expecting it. A lot of my like idols that are gay, like, retweeted that tweet or liked it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh my gosh.

RIVKAH REYES: Or commented on it, like you go girl. Like okay. Like you see what happens sometimes. Sometimes when you seek for validation you get it in a big way.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So that is a good lesson to hang on to.

RIVKAH REYES: Yeah, yeah!

HARVINDER WADHWA: So Rivkah, do you recall when was the first time you saw “Where are you now?”, about you in one of those celebrity gossip sites?

RIVKAH REYES: I saw one that was and I'm not exaggerating the title was like “52 child stars that you probably forgot about” and I was on there. And that was a very large bruise to my ego being there. But then some of the other ones that were on there, I was like, oh, my God, I did forget about them. I wonder what they are up to now. So it worked. It got me, you know, I was like, damn, like, sucks the way that was worded but I get like they're writers. They need to, you know, get the click. And then, of course, the picture that they used of me wasn't my favorite picture. So it sent me, at the time, I was in a very low place mentally and I didn't really have the tools that I have now. I wasn't in therapy yet. And like, I definitely spiraled about it and like went down a dark rabbit hole of, like, looking at like getting my jaw fixed, or like getting plastic surgery and stuff. Oh, by the way, this is like what I was in college. So like to be thinking about Botox when you're like literally 19 is a lot, very dramatic. But that was the first BuzzFeed article that I saw. And then like around the ten year reunion, which was like shortly after I saw that, Entertainment Weekly did a big piece where they like interviewed us all and did a big shoot and like that felt really good because we got to tell them what we were up to rather than them just pulling random facts that were kind of not real and not right from Twitter or like from Wikipedia or IMDb. Like, I was all bitter because I post a lot about theater when I was in college as a theater major, and that, like, didn't count in Hollywood's eyes because it wasn't Hollywood. It was just like, you know, college theater. But I got really flustered about it because I have been acting the whole time. I never quit. And they make it seem like I fucking quit.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: But it's all there. I'm doing the thing! Look a this weird costume I wore!

RIVKAH REYES: I’m doing it! Look at me in this ratty wig playing Olivia in Shakespeare. I was Olivia in Twelfth Night, damn it!

HARVINDER WADHWA: So if I may understand that, you are still in the film industry correct?

RIVKAH REYES: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So because you have and if I may use the term you have grown in the industry, so why would there be any fascination about where you are now because you are still in the industry?

RIVKAH REYES: Yeah, I think just because School of Rock was such a monumental thing for a lot of people. I get a lot of folks that message me and say my daughter picked up the guitar because of you or I picked up, you know, playing piano in a band because I saw you in a band and thought, oh, wow, girls can be in bands too. When I do my little manic Twitter searches, where I’m like “gotta get validated.” Yeah, I think that there was this collective interest in where the kids from School of Rock were now. And all of us are doing such cool things like there's a handful of us that are still in the industry and then there's others, like one of them is a lawyer. He's my lawyer.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh damn. Nice. Love that.

RIVKAH REYES: Yeah, yeah. We love him! And then, you know, one of them's about to do a show off Broadway and one of them's got a pretty thriving music career in the country scene. And another one just released another album. And like we're all doing so well. And I figured, like, everyone deserves to know where we are from us and not from some shitty, like PopSugar BuzzFeed bullshit publication. And that is where the podcast comes in. So a lot of the kids from School of Rock have been guests already. I think all of the gay ones, we tackled that first.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Love that you’re doing that.

RIVKAH REYES: Yeah, Brian and Z and Cole and myself are the four gays so far. There's still time. I'm sure some of them are bi at the very least!

HARVINDER WADHWA: There's no recruitment drive going on, right?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: The gay agenda.

RIVKAH REYES: The agenda!

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: It's recruiting.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So Rivkah, to understand this better, you had a past and then you have a present which are somewhat different. Do you want to be remembered with your past or that happened and then you would rather people acknowledge you more for your present?

RIVKAH REYES: Well, the cool thing is, is that the past becomes a part of the present, depending on what I carry over from the past. Like I have a very dark past. I'm pretty open about it on the Internet that I have struggled with mental health stuff, with addiction, with, you know, eating disorders and all of that, and just a nightmare of like high school and college and being bullied and stuff. And I can either sit in my shitty diaper and cry about that and be bitter and jaded like I was, or I can use it and, you know capitalize it as an opportunity to show people, hey, I survived, I came back from this and I'm thriving now

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Totally.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And that brings me to my next two questions are Part A, Part B. So all this difficulty you faced, right from mental health or to depression, et cetera. Was it or could it be attributed to your stardom or this was who you are?

RIVKAH REYES: Yeah. It's funny like in the sobriety community. I always hear people be like I was born an alcoholic. I don't know that I was born an alcoholic, but definitely addiction runs in my family. I definitely was a very dramatic child. I had a lot of anxiety when I was a little kid that was definitely exacerbated by being thrust into the public eye so young. Yeah, I think that it was a combination of pressure from my family, pressure from my friends, you know, pressure from my guitar teacher and then the bullying that happened when I came back to school after being on set for four months, having the fucking time of my life and like coming back to school and having all the kids being like, what, you think you better than us.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And you are, you are.

RIVKAH REYES: Well, I didn't know that yet. I didn't know that Harv! I didn't think that. Kids are fucking mean in Chicago, I mean, kids are mean in general. But like, I'm sure in Canada, not so much.

HARVINDER WADHWA: We say sorry after.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'm sorry. Yeah, it's just bullying but they say sorry after.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I would have assumed that because of your stardom, all your classmates would be fawning over you as opposed to bullying you?

RIVKAH REYES: Sure, do did I! It wasn't the case. It wasn't the case, Harv! I mean, I had a bunch of people that were like [whispers] when I came in and they were like, that’s the girl from School of Rock, I heard she's a really stuck up bitch. Oh, my friend went to Mount Carmel with her and went to summer camp with her and said that she was like, super, super slutty. I’m like fourteen, like I can't be that slutty yet!

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh my god. Jesus, give me time people!

RIVKAH REYES: Give me time to become the slut that I am. And then of course, well, that's what it did. And that's what it started the peer pressure from, you know, I already tried dabbled in drinking and stuff when I was like eleven. I had like a little champagne at the Toronto Film Festival. Brag. Very fancy!

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh my god.

RIVKAH REYES: And then, of course, shortly after when I was like fifteen, I started drinking heavily, like obsessing over when the next time I was going to be able to get drunk or smoke weed or smoke cigarettes behind my parents back and like rebellion became this big drug. And I started failing all my classes and, you know, high school just fell apart. I really fell apart. So, yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So would you have preferred that your stardom had come a couple of years later so that you had more maturity to manage the stress you were going through?

RIVKAH REYES: No, I think everything happened exactly when it was supposed to happen. I look at my life and I think this might be maybe the writer in my brain or whatever. I'm looking at my life as this Joseph Campbell hero story.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

RIVKAH REYES: Where, you know, like, you know. Yes. Like the initiating incident is that like I had this big thing happen when I was ten that I maybe wasn't ready for or like I, I perceive. Right. I judged that I wasn't ready for, but like the universe gave it to me because they were like, look, you're a fucking star. Like now cutting to like nearly twenty years after School of Rock, any time I'm on a film set is where I feel like just the most like give me that, like, you know, or on stage, like doing, you know, whether that's a theater thing or like a stand up thing or comedy, whatever, in front of an audience or in front of a camera. I fucking drive and I know that's where I belong. So like, had I not found that out at ten, I maybe wouldn't have found that out at all, you know?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right. You've mentioned a bit about how it feels good to be able to tell your own story rather than people finding random bits on the internet, and you started a whole podcast with that idea, you know, talking to other child actors about where are you now. Why do you think it's important for you to be the ones telling your own stories?

RIVKAH REYES: Well, my whole thought is that we tell it better. We're the ones that are there, like we're the ones that are experiencing it rather than some glossed over, like tidbit like that's kind of just like a throwaway thing, like where the facts are not usually like there's at least one thing that's a little bit wrong and it drives me insane still to this day when I'll see like they didn't really act anymore after school, I was like, bitch, I've been acting the whole fucking time. I'm like, if you just follow me on any social media or like actually took the time to go but not everybody has that amount of time. Right? Like, I rather than like, you know, asking my guests, I don't really do much research. Like, I'll watch, you know, if it's a guest that I haven't spoken to before or like I'll watch some of their work, but with the knowledge that they were kids, like they were teenagers! You know Degrassi, I loved Degrassi. I watched so many episodes of Degrassi too for having Andrea Lewis on my show who played Hazel. But I also watched her like self produced stuff that's like so much like wealth and depth of her. That's just the essence of her, you know. And now more than anything it's like the way that I feel like the way the press outlets talk about, like non-binary and trans people is so fucked where it's like, you know, Rivkah Reyes, who formerly went by this name, who used to use the pronouns she/her, who now uses the pronouns. It's like just fucking say, like, you don't have to, you know, say, a trans and non-binary person's old name. You never have to, it costs zero dollars not to. But I think it's important that we get to tell our own stories because sometimes our is all we have. Like that's you know, it is really all I have. Like what? You know, I have a desk full of skincare products and books on the shelf and fucking art on the wall. But like, really all I actually physically have is like this, the story of my life. I just think it's important that we get to tell our own stories so that when those shitty BuzzFeed like stars you forgot about article comes out, we know that we told our story somewhere better.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: To close out then Rivkah, do you think that asking “where are they now?” about a former child actor, you know, we’re Inappropriate Questions, we are all about inappropriate questions? Is this an inappropriate question?

RIVKAH REYES: You got me. I think that it's not so much inappropriate, but I think the question is like ask the person themselves where they are, where are you now? Ask yourself, where am I now? I think that's a more exciting question, to be honest. Like rather than looking on their IMDb and being like, oh, I don't really do that much after that thing. Like, you don't know, they had a whole life. They have a whole life outside of IMDb credits.

[Music]

HARVINDER WADHWA: So Elena, what are your thoughts?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I thought that this episode was really interesting in that this question is another one of those that isn't purely good or bad. It can come from this nice place of nostalgia and almost like missing a friend, or it can come from this dark side of wanting to feel superior and wanting to tear someone down who you think has had it better than you and now you think you have it better. So I found it interesting that this is one of those questions that we sometimes talk about on the show that can really kind of go either way depending on intent and execution.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I 100 per cent agree. And as you were saying these things, I was thinking I remember of an instance when I was very little. The new thing was VCRs. Do you even know what a VCR is Elena?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yes.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So anyhow, one of my cousins had a business of VCRs, so they watched a particular movie so many times because it was free for them that they thought those actors were actually their friends.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Wow!

HARVINDER WADHWA: So that was what we discussed with the Rivkah as well as Lisa, that there is that intimacy component. There's a whole dark side to it, too.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, for sure.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And Elena I'm reminding you again, do remind me to take your autograph when I meet you next time.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: OK, well, you can have my autograph when I come over and we watch Mrs. Doubtfire and School of Rock and like, maybe we'll throw like Star Wars in there.

HARVINDER WADHWA: OK, now you're pushing it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: OK once you're retired mind you.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yes, yes, yes.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Once you're retired.

[Theme]

HARVINDER WADHWA: I'm Harvinder Wadhwa.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Thanks for getting inappropriate for us.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: A huge thanks to our guests Lisa Jakub and Rivkah Reyes.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @IQ_podcast and to find a full transcript of this episode, make sure to visit cbc.ca/iqpodcast.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: The podcasting pals behind this podcast are Sabrina Bertsch, Cindy Long and myself. The show is mixed by Andrew Norton. Our chase producer is Sarah Melton and our digital producer is SK Robert. Our senior producer is Geoff Turner and our executive producer is Arif Noorani.

[Theme out]

HARVINDER WADHWA: An inappropriate question is like being a podcast celebrity and never being recognized.

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Transcript: Inappropriate Questions Season 3, Episode 13

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