You Don't Need Hollywood | Brett Cooper

So you have, um, Mr. Burum, yes? The Pen Dragon cycle and Snow White and the Evil Queen, right? So is that a good order to discuss them in? They are. Yes. So let's start with Mr. B. Mr. Burum is coming out very soon. And what is that?

Mr. Burum is an animated comedy. Here's a look at the trailer for Mr. Burum: "When I was a kid, men were men. Now everyone's wrapped up in feeling real men stuff. Feelings down with red meat, cigarettes, and violence. You and the geriatric Girl Scouts will be bed out in an hour. Burum, Burum, Mr. Burum, bam! B. Richard Burum. Let the record show I'm a dick. Watch Mr. Burum, an all-new animated series from Daily Wire Plus, now streaming."

It is inspired by a character that Adam Corolla has been doing on his radio show for years. He's a—this is a series, a TV series?

TV series, yeah. Um, it is, you know, he is a cozy shop teacher that is like a woodshop teacher in schools who is incredibly traditional, incredibly— you know, everything he does is tangible. It is about as traditional as you can get working with, you know, tools and wood, and he's watching as the world just changes around him as things get more technologically advanced, as the world gets more progressive, as the school is trying to push him out.

Yeah, um, saying your job is not as important. And so it follows his... And what role do you play?

I play his daughter.

I see, I see. And what's the character of his daughter?

She's incredibly— it actually reminds me a lot of myself. She's incredibly precocious, um, very smart, very close with her father.

And who's the target market for it?

I think the target market is people that have felt abandoned by comedy, who watch, you know, animated TV shows.

Is it an adult series?

Adult, okay. Um, and who are wanting comedy that is truthful, that is not afraid to pull punches. Um, that I think that the common man will relate to. It has some satirical elements to it. It's—I wouldn't say that it is satire, but it has many satirical elements to it.

The writing is incredible. They brought me on, and I didn't really know what to expect. And I had done voiceover a lot, um, had not done it in a few years. And that's always interesting because we recorded this whole series. I play a very significant role in it. I have not met Adam yet. I have not—you know, Megan Kelly plays my mother in it. I have never met Megan yet.

Uh, I'm meeting her next week for the first time.

But you record all of this remote, and so I only got to see bits and pieces of it. I knew that the scripts were fantastic, and then I started to sort of see the—it launch.

Um, it launches this month.

Oh, it does?

Yeah, okay. And that's on the Daily Wire?

Yes, that'll be on Daily Wire.

Okay, let's talk about the Pen Dragon cycle.

Yes, so I—that's a huge enterprise for Daily Wire. They’ve poured a tremendous amount of resources into it. It's the biggest swing we've ever taken.

Yeah, Jeremy has ever. So walk through it. I talked to Jeremy a bit about it on my podcast, but let's hear it from your perspective.

So, P Cycle, and I'm sure Jeremy told you this, it is his favorite book series.

Yeah.

From the beginning, I mean, he has wanted to create this TV show for 30 plus years. This is something he's thought about, dreamed about, has physically written scripts for, and it was finally the time when we had the resources. It was a cultural moment, he was able to step away to direct a majority of it. He was the showrunner. He produced it. He wrote a significant portion of it.

Um, this truly is his—I mean, I can't speak for him, but in speaking with him while we were there and seeing him work, this is probably the most important thing that he's ever done. And we went to Hungary. I was there for five months. He was there for seven months.

Were you recording your podcast during that as well?

Yeah, yeah. So we, um, I was the only Daily Wire host that is in the show.

What role did you play?

Um, I play Merlin's wife.

So it is an Aurian legacy tale of, um, and it follows the rise of Christianity through the lens of an Aran—like not speaking, right? Not legacy?

Um, and so I play Merlin's wife.

Is she a good wife?

Or she very—she's a very good wife. She's a good—she's a good character.

She is?

Yes, she's a very, very fun character to play. She is—she has a really beautiful balance of being incredibly strong but also being very feminine and very empathetic and very sympathetic for, um, to Merlin's very unique experiences.

Um, and it was—it was just a very, very fun character to play, and I saw a lot of myself in her. I got to do stunts that I've never done before.

Um, it was amazing. It was fantastic. It was a lot—it was very, very hard work. We were filming.

So how long did you do it?

Five months.

So, right. And how many—how many hours were, um, fil—you know, for the final series? Any idea what's going to come out of it?

I have no idea yet. And I know that they'll probably like—they'll have a first edit and then they'll cut it down and that kind of stuff.

But have you seen any of the edits?

I haven't yet. Jeremy's protected.

And when is it supposed to be—when is that supposed to launch?

I'm not sure yet.

Okay, yeah. Uh, they're in full post-production now. I think that there is already a first round of edits that is finished, and now they're—we have so much VFX that, um, that is going to go into this. So many VFX.

Um, there's just a lot of post-production that has to be done. But the very cool thing is, even though we are using some VFX, we did 90% of everything that you will see on the screen practically. We physically did it all.

There was a—the series starts with an incredible sequence with Spanish bull leapers, and they were physically jumping over these bulls. One of my best friends who played the lead in Pen Dragon, Rose Reed, she was in the arena with these bulls. She trained for months to be able to look like one of these bull leapers. She was having to navigate around the bulls. I was on horseback with a spear, jumping over streams, you know, chasing AR.

Um, we were physically fighting. If there was an explosion that you see on screen, we felt the fire. There's a scene where I'm, you know, running through putting out a fire. I was basically covered in fire protection, which is like a goop that you put on so that you can't be set on fire, running through fire as people were being fully set on fire around me. It was absolutely incredible.

There was—I mean, they did not hold back.

Good thing you said yes to the Daily Wire. Just kidding.

And it's also—it's very special because it's very full circle because I get to go back and do what I love more than anything, which is tell stories, but I get to do it with people who I love and trust, who I know are not exploiting me as a child actor, who share my values, and are genuinely creating content for the betterment of other people.

Right. Well, that's a good deal.

It is. I—I would read scripts that I would be sent in Hollywood, and I would— I would look at it, I’d say, “I don't want to watch this.” Like, these are terrible characters, they're sharing terrible messages. I don't even want to be a vessel through which this gets out to the public.

Right, right. And I knew that—you had—you didn't have that feeling with the Pen Dragon?

No, it's an incredible story. I haven't had that feeling with anything that I've done with AWI. I think Mr. Burum is incredible. I can stand by behind that completely. The Pen Dragon cycle is a perfect mix of something that is meaningful in terms of its values and what it promotes, and the values of the characters that you will fall in love with while also being something that is beautiful and that people objectively can enjoy.

You're not going to sit down and say, “Oh, I'm watching—you know, I'm watching a Christian TV show.” You're going to enjoy it because it actually is very good. But you can know that the people who made it—the hours that were put in—I mean, Jeremy barely slept for seven months, but I've also never seen him happier because this was—yeah, I gained massive respect for him watching this take place.

Um, and he did it masterfully. And so you can feel good watching that, and it's incredible being an actor in that environment and being a vessel because you really are a vessel. You go there, you stand and you mold yourself to the character, and you lose a lot of yourself in doing that if you hate the project.

And if you hate the character you're playing, but if you're able to love the character, if you're able to love the production and the story you're telling, it makes it so much more meaningful, and you feel like you're actually part of something that can impact audiences, can impact the culture in a really important way.

Um, so let's talk about—let's close with Snow White and the Evil Queen.

So you pick to play Snow White?

Yes, yeah.

Once upon a [Music] time in time, a prince would come. [Music] Once upon a time, but now that time is [Music] gone.

So we announced it when we announced Bent Key, which is our children's division. And I think a lot of people assumed that we had already filmed the movie when we released the trailer. It was very backwards; we did not do that.

I was—we were maybe a week into filming Pen Dragon, and I get a text from Jeremy. He just goes, “Where are you?” Like, I'm at my apartment. And he says, “I need you to meet me at the prey. Can you be here in five minutes?” And that was maybe an eight-minute walk.

Like, yes! If you D me ask anything, you say yes, I'll be there. Um, sprint out of the apartment. I get to the lobby of the pr. I sit down, and he says we want to do something that could be— it might be impossible.

And this was at the time that every—it was during the SAG strike, but everything was going viral about Disney's Snow White. Um, everything Disney—of the social order and the demolition of the narrative—what of the traditional narrative? Let’s just rewrite this, be great every time.

Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll improve it.

Yeah, yeah, these not secret gay agenda.

Mmh.

Um, and so that was in the middle of all of this happening, and I had obviously been following it. I had done episodes about it.

No, the gay agenda is a mask. It's just a destructive agenda. It is—it's just a demolition agenda of all traditional values.

We're pro-inclusion, that's the mask, that's the mask.

That's so that if you attack it, you sound like a bigot.

Yeah, then you can't—it's fair.

Yes, they—yeah, no, no, we're just bringing in the marginalized. It's like, yeah, wait till you invite the real monsters out from underneath the rocks you—and you bringing in the marginalized.

We're starting to see that happen already.

Oh, yeah, yeah, the MAPs, the MAPs.

Yeah, oh no, there's worse monsters than them.

Right.

No, no, no, no matter how bad, there's no limit to what people are capable of doing.

Right. And so as you see one extreme emerge, you can be absolutely 100% sure that that new margin has a multiplicity of more extreme margins on its fringe, and there's no end to that.

Well, the end is that everything collapses. That's—that's how this has happened historically.

Yes.

So okay, so Snow White—where are you? Where—where—where are you with this project?

We are in pre-production.

Yeah, you went to see Jeremy and he told—oh yeah, so I went to see Jeremy, and this was as everything with Snow White was happening, and people were very disappointed, very upset about the way that Disney was rolling out this project.

Um, the way that they were—they picked such a fun actress, too. It was, um, and you know, I'm a—you've now heard me speak for I don’t know how many hours we've been talking, but about my love of literature and stories.

And I grew up reading classic literature. I grew up reading the traditional stories. I grew up reading Grimm's, and I love the stories underneath these fairy tales.

And so as somebody who is more traditional and has a love and appreciation for stories, it's very—it's sad to watch these stories be completely destructed for that agenda. And so I had been watching this and commenting on it.

And so Jeremy brings me in and says, “Luckily, luckily, they fail.”

They do, because they're dull and and pry—and obvious, and transgressive in the casual manner, not in the creative manner.

Right. Um, yeah. Jeremy said we want to do the impossible, and we want to—we want to do our own Snow White, and we want to do it in line with the values with which it was written.

We want to honor the story, and we want you to play Snow White. And Jeremy had been watching.

No audition?

Well, I think my audition had been the first month of Pen Dragon.

I understand your audition.

Um, but he hadn't even really seen me act before that. He had, you know, watched my TV shows and that kind of thing, but he really saw me during Pen Dragon.

Uh-huh. Right, right.

And so this was about a month into Pen Dragon or so, and he said, “I'm going to keep you updated, working on a script.”

And at that time, I think he had a very ambitious goal because that's when Snow White was still going to be released right around this time.

He was like, “Let's try to film it during Pen Dragon.” And I was like, “Okay, well, we'll see how this goes." That did not happen, and I'm very glad that it didn't because I think we will do the story justice.

Yes, with the right amount of time in the prep.

And we got back from—no, actually, I'm skipping over the story of how we created the trailer.

But Jeremy started working on music, and he had this idea for the trailer, knew that we were going to be announcing the rollout of Beny and, you know, the 100 episodes of children's content that we had on the platform.

He wanted Snow White and the Evil Queen to be the first feature film that we do on Ben Key.

And so I got a call probably at 4:00 in the afternoon, and he said, “I want you to fly to Trento, Italy, tomorrow, because that's where we had been filming Pen Dragon that week. We jumped back and forth between Italy and Hungary. I want you to get on a plane, and you're going to fly out, and we have a costume that's being worked on for you. Um, they're going to finish it in the next six hours on the plane with you, and you're going to fly out to Torento, drive—you'll fly to Milan, drive four hours up to Trentino. Wake up the next morning, you're going to come up onto a mountain, another hour drive, and then stand in this forest and sing.”

And Jeremy was sending me—oh gosh, I still have the recordings on my phone. One day, I'll leak them to the public. But it's Jeremy on his—on a piano app on his phone, and it's what you hear in the trailer, and he's singing it.

He has an amazing voice and he's an incredible musician, and so he sent me the lyrics. He sent me the song and he said, “Can you have this ready by tomorrow?” I said, “Sure.”

And this man—I have never had to sing this high before, and I'm a soprano, but I'm not that soprano. I texted M of Jeremy, “This is not gonna—you know, I sound like Tweety Bird.”

And so we went back and forth, and he sent me one in a lower octave. I said, “This is much better,” and he was all nervous. He was going, “Breathe, this sounds really low.” Meanwhile, I'm thinking, “This is not really high.”

Um, so I get up to Italy. We record it. Um, we record it in the middle of shooting Pen Dragon, so in the middle of the scene some of my other Pen Dragon cast is six feet away, and at this point they don't even know we're doing this.

Because it has not been announced to anyone. Jeremy said, “Do not tell your mom, do not tell Alex, do not tell anybody. We have like three people who know that this is happening. Nobody can know.”

So I'm sitting here in this princess dress, thinking this is really not the wardrobe that everybody else is wearing; they're going to know. I'm like huddled up, literally hidden.

The rest of the cast is over doing something else. Jeremy says, “Hey, we're going to film a little commercial for a Daily Wire thing that we have to do.”

Gets the crew to turn around, points the cameras on me, and we film this teaser, and then I fly back to Budapest, and I keep going on comment section and keep going on Pen Dragon.

And then I wait to hear what we're going to do with it, and then it launches with Ben Key with a Beny rollout—huge success.

And then I keep—I just sit and I wait. I'm like, “Alright Jeremy, when are we going to film this?”

Got back to Nashville, we wrapped Pen Dragon, it was a raging success. I truly think people are going to love the series, and then we've now rolled into pre-production for Snow White and the Evil Queen.

So I'm in voice lessons, you know, three to four times a week. I was classically trained as a singer when I was young, but I moved more into pop when I was older and have not sung seriously in many years, and so I'm retraining that muscle.

Um, I'm in dance classes every week. It's a musical.

Um, we're super excited about it, and that's what I can tell you. And there's a lot of people that I see comments every single day, and they're like, “What can you tell us about X, Y, and Z?” It's all coming soon.

Um, we'll be able to share more soon, but it is an incredible adventure, and it's just always a joy and an honor to collaborate with Jeremy specifically.

I mean, he's incredibly creative. He takes incredible risks. I think I've learned even more about risk-taking by working for him and working with him.

That was one thing that I felt incredibly comfortable with and excited about when I came to Nashville and I came to Daily Wire was I could not have asked for better mentors in the people that I'm surrounded with.

I mean, I again—I told you, I got this job when I was 19, and I walk into a room and I was, you know, with Jeremy Boring and Dallas Sonnier, who was one of the, you know, greatest producers to come out of Hollywood in recent years, has just an incredible story.

Um, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, Ben—you know, can I mean just you—I mean just the fact that I remember meeting you when we were about to announce that you were joining Daily Wire, and you were doing a photo shoot, and I was in my studio, and I think you would ask, “Could I meet the YouTube girl?” and I about just like fell out of my chair.

Um, but I'm—I just could not have asked for a better group of people, and I—you know, they encourage me. I grow every single day, not just in my career, but I learn from all of you, you know, emotionally and spiritually and in my personal life, and that's just an incredible, incredible gift.

Typical Hollywood story. [Music]