Episode 294: The Name Of The Game with Felicia Day
Doree has a new prod she’s loving and Kate can’t wait to hear all the updates. Then, longtime dream guest Felicia Day joins them to talk about video games as self care, not giving up on the stories that matter to you, her fave sunscreen, and growing up with a plastic surgeon dad.
Photo Credit: Sela Shiloni
Mentioned in this Episode
Fifth Avenue Rebels by Joanna Shupe
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Transcript
Kate: Hello, welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I'm Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And look, we're not experts, okay?
Doree: We're not. We're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums
Kate: And other things
Doree: And so many other things.
Kate: Although you're coming in hot because you're using a new moisturizer. Who?
Doree: Kate?
Kate: There's a lot. I don't know right now.
Doree: I know, I know. Look, we had a break and a lot happened.
Kate: Yeah. I feel like you've gone through a transformation over this kind of holiday downtime. And look, I understand I don't need to be brought along on every ride, but I am. Lemme just say I'm excited to catch up and I want to know what? Tell me more.
Doree: So this brand reached out to me on shop my, which is the influencer platform that we use for product recommendations. And they said, can we send you some products? We make makeup brushes and we have a couple of skincare products. And I said, yeah, great. And they sent me some of their makeup brushes, which are lovely, and they also sent me two of their moisturizers and their cleanser. Their cleanser is lovely, I like it. But I really like their moisturizers and I especially like their intense hydration cream. Now they describe it as a rich and substantial texture. I think that this is what you, Kate Spencer would describe as a thick cream.
Kate: Hashtag thick.
Doree: Hashtag thick.
Kate: Okay. I'm listening.
Doree: And what I like also, it is fragrance free. It is essential oils free. I could go on a whole rant about essential oils and skincare, but I'm not really a fan. I feel like they're often, they can be irritating to people's skin. The fragrance, I often personally find irritating and they just sneak up on you. You're like, oh, this is natural, but scented, this has no scent. I love that. It has shea butter, it has niacinamide, it has glycerin, it has macadamia seed oil, has an algae complex, has adenine. I have no idea what that is. They also tell you what percentage of the product those things are, which I feel like is rare, which they also do this thing where they call it community input from their users. So the regular price of the intense hydration cream is $26, which I feel like is reasonable. But you can also get a concept store discount, which costs $12, and then they will send you a feedback form 60 days after you buy it and you just have to give them your feedback.
Kate: Oh, now this is a cool concept. So it's almost like you're a test, you're kind of reviewing the product.
Doree: A tester. Yes, exactly.
Kate: That's interesting.
Doree: And then I guess they tweak their products based on feedback. They say that we design best in class products by crowdsourcing customer feedback. So I don't know. That's cool. It's not greasy. It's very hydrating. It's like, it's great. It's exactly what I was looking for in a night moisturizer.
Kate: Well, I'm excited that you're starting this new year off with nourished skin.
Doree: Thank you, Kate. I don't make many prod recommendations anymore, but I felt like I needed to make this prod recommendation.
Kate: You don't, and I find that you're settled into your routine. You know what you like.
Doree: I do. I do.
Kate: Yeah. And so that means you really like this.
Doree: I do. I really like this. It's been kind of dry here in la.
Kate: Oh, it's so dry. Yes,
Doree: And I need something very thick.
Kate: You sound like one of my romance novels. Well, I had a chuckle because I was kind of just doing some reading on some test results. I got back after getting some blood results and one of the things I was reading suggested that I start taking coq 10 and I was like, ha, that reminds me of Doree. Except she puts it on her face. Well that guess you were also taking coq 10 at the time, correct?
Doree: Yeah, when I was doing IVF, they had me take coq 10 before my egg retrieval. coq 10 is one of those things that is just good for you,
Kate: Like vitamin C and olive oil, I know
Doree: It just does all these things for your cardiovascular health and all kinds of, it gets your blood pumping. It's good stuff.
Kate: Well, I might be taking it and I just was like, everything is full circle with this podcast. One minute we're putting CoQ10 on our faces and the next minute we need it for heart health.
Doree: I mean, yeah, I have been using the Indie Lee coq 10 spray pretty religiously
Kate: Is pretty nice. Yeah, indie Lee. Okay. I haven't heard them mentioned either. You seem to have a whole world going on right now that I need more information on.
Doree: Listen, Kate. I'm an open book.
Kate: You are. Well, is this kind of also part of your new year? Kind of refresh a little bit. Do you feel like,
Doree: Go on.
Kate: I just didn't know if your work refresh that you've been doing, I guess we could call it or Yoga refresh, you've been working on consistent practices in all those areas.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: Do you feel like that's also happening with your prods?
Doree: Maybe. I mean, this moisturizer I just got a couple weeks ago.
Kate: Okay. So it's too soon to say
Doree: It's a little too soon to say, but so far so good. I I'm really into it. Yeah. Kate, I mean you wrote in our little document here. I don't know if I'm feeling terrified or optimistic about this new year.
Kate: Could go either way. I don't know. I don't know. I'm having a lot of anxiety right now.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: I'm talking about consistency. I had been doing therapy one or two times a month. I'm about to get back into some weekly therapy. I think that'll be good for me.
Doree: Nice.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of anxiety and just last night I had to do some breathing exercises at one in the morning where I was like, I could either sit here and marinate in self-loathing and self-doubt for until seven in the morning or I could try to calm myself down and it actually worked. I was shocked.
Doree: Oh good.
Kate: I was shocked that I fell asleep. I was starting to have my brain kind of does stuff when it gets into this kind of heightened state. It can be really hard to quiet it all down. I don't know how to describe this. I think this is an ADD thing actually. I get a song. It's beyond getting a song stuck in my head. It's like the song is living inside of me and I can't turn it off and then I get get super spiral negative thoughts. I mean, look, there's so much awful stuff happening in the world that is impacting people and it can be very hard to then be like, today I'm going to Instagram the book I'm working on. It just everything can feel very, I am struggling to feel like I can hold space for everything because sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by sorrow. I realize that sounds very bleak and I don't mean it to be, I am not in a state where don't think I'm depressed. I just think sometimes it is really hard to hold the grief around us on what's happening. Not even just what's happening on a global level, but then in our own lives it's like sometimes it, it's so overwhelming to experience what's happening in the world that it's like also shit is just hard in our own lives sometimes. So I have to learn how to make space for that, but also learn how to turn it off when it starts to become too much. Which again, it's like I realize not everybody has that. And then I start feeling, then I spiral into that where I'm like, I can turn this off and not everyone can Doree. I just love a spiral. I love a spiral.
Doree: I get it. I mean, yeah, I get it.
Kate: So I think also when you have a full on fucking anxiety disorder, feeding the beast of your anxiety is not always the best choice. So I guess that's more what I'm saying is I have to tame the beast, the anxiety beast. But I also do think there is also a part of me, you and I talked on our Patreon exclusive casual chat about this. Regardless of all the messaging about New Year and new change and all this, there is this kind of nice feeling of pressing the clear button on a calculator.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: That feeling when you're a big number and then you clear it and you're just like, oh, thank God I'm back. There is that feeling in this month that I do appreciate and I do like to take a minute to just kind of reset a little bit and be like, okay, well how am I going to go into this year? And then obviously the year can do its own fucking you have no control over it. I did that last year and then last year threw me for a loop. Yeah. But that's just what I've been thinking about, I guess.
Doree: Yeah. I mean I think having a sort of externally imposed opportunity for reset, such as the change of the calendar year, you obviously don't have to buy into it or take advantage of it, but for me personally, 2023 was a lot and it did feel good for me to press the clear button on the calculator.
Kate: Same. I think same. There's just that kind of nice feeling of, it's not even wiping the slate clean because you're not disregarding all the things that have come before, but it's just a little bit of like, okay, I can close that book.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: Well, should we open the book of the interview of this episode? It was a weak segue. I'll work on my segues in 2024.
Doree: Yes, let's do that.
Kate: Alright, well before we share our guest, I do just want to note that you can always visit our website, which is Forever35podcast.com. We're on Instagram @Forever35podcast, the shop my shelf that Doree mentioned. You can find some of our products that we love at Shopmy.us/forever35 and we are on Patreon. You can sign up to join us for bonus content there at $5 a month. It's patreon.com/forever35, and you can also sign up for our newsletter at Forever35podcast.com/newsletter. If you want to share a moisturizer you're loving or your feelings about starting this new year or really your feelings about anything else, you can leave us a voicemail. You can send us a text message at (781) 591-0390. You can also email us at Forever35podcast@gmail.com. Now on to our guest. Today we're talking to the great legend Felicia Day,
Doree: A legend
Kate: That's really kind of the only way to describe her, right?
Doree: Yeah,
Kate: A legend.
Doree: She's a legend.
Kate: She has appeared in numerous TV shows and films including Supernatural, Eureka and The Magicians. She has been on the web series, the Guild. What else? She created a production company called Geek and Sundry that had over 2 million YouTube subscribers
Doree: In a lot of ways. She was far ahead of her time when it came to internet things.
Kate: Always one of the earliest adopters.
Doree: Yes, and it's very cool. It was very cool to talk to her and have her kind of reflect on her own career and where she's at now and what she's doing now. She's this new audible series that's very cool. And she's a very interesting person.
Kate: She really is. I really enjoyed our chat with her.
Doree: So did I
Kate: Without further ado, here is Felicia Day,
Doree: Felicia.
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35.
Felicia: Hi. I'm so happy to be here. I love your title. I love you guys already.
Kate: We are very pumped. We're very pumped about this. We've got a lot of questions. We've already had an engaging conversation before we started recording about stool samples for the doctor. I mean, listen, we are going to get into it. Before we dig deeper into our conversation, we like to ask every guest on Forever35 about a self-care practice that they have that means a lot in their life. Judging from your reaction, you clasped your hands to your chest. Does that mean you have one that resonates with you?
Felicia: Well, listen, no, I kind of got excited because I saw you guys cover skincare and I never get to talk about skincare because I'm always doing geeky podcasts or comedy and no one wants to talk about what's really important in life, which is lotions for your face. So if we want to touch on that later, I mean, I guess my self-care is that I get to play video games and I use it as an excuse to get away from my daughter, but also just keep me going because I love video games. But transitioning to a parent, I have a 6-year-old, it kind of encouraged me to let go of things that probably weren't that important in my life, but video games are super important to me, and so the fact that I get to do them a couple times a week as an excuse for work is very important for me. I wish I could say that I do sound baths or yoga or anything probably better for my spirit, but no, no, I just like to hold a sword virtually or grow a plant virtually and just kind of sit there on a heating pad and just kind of play. That's me.
Doree: I think you are the first gamer who we've had on the show.
Felicia: Really? Oh, I'm so honored and flattered.
Doree: I think so. Kate, is that accurate?
Kate: Yes, I believe it is. I mean, unless you count, you and I dabbling in animal Crossing, which I don't count.
Felicia: It's a game. I mean, I count it,
Kate: but it's a game. But I think you are the first person who I feel like we've had that is truly passionate about gaming and is a long lifetime player essentially.
Felicia: I have to tell you, animal crossing, I wish I could show you my island because I decorated my house over Covid just like Restoration Hardware. It is a beautifully laid out house. I do have a public code somewhere, but I think you guys would be proud of the way that I very tastefully decorated my house. The rest is just a ride of color and strange squirrels and everything like that. But I do feel like I brought some taste to my island area. Yeah, I would love to see you guys because love this. You clearly have a very good fashion sense.
Kate: Mine is now covered in snow and leaves.
Doree: I was going to say mine probably has so many weeds at this point, and the villagers would be like, where have you been?
Kate: Villagers would be so mad.
Felicia: They're so passive aggressive. They're like, oh, it's been a while.
Doree: They're so passive aggressive. Oh my gosh.
Felicia: But I'm a gamer. I love it. I do it with my daughter. She's going to be a gamer. Hopefully we have that in common, and I don't think it's that niche, but it is something that especially women don't talk about a lot, especially my age. It's one of those things like, Hey lady, get over it. I'm like, no, I'm not going to get over it. Sorry. I just love it.
Doree: Yeah. How did you get into gaming as a kid?
Felicia: My mom played video games on a computer. She played text adventure games, and we had an Atari, but she never really got any consoles for us, but we played a lot of games on the pc. So yeah, I think you got to have to see your parent do it. Although I've talked to other people who said that, no, my parents didn't game, but I got it from a sibling or a friend at school. Yeah. So you kind of have to see other people do it and want to join that lifestyle and have it as your hobby, just like anything else.
Kate: Can I just ask about sitting on a heating pad? Oh. Can you tell us a little bit about this set that you have?
Felicia: Why would you not sit on a heating pad, ladies?
Kate: Do you sit on a heating pad all the time?
Felicia: Well, okay. I had some really bad back problems this year. I had a pillow accident, which is the most middle aged thing you can talk about. I just slipped on a pillow wrong. I was traveling a lot for work and I had a nerve compression that was so painful, and I went to every place to try to get it done. I accidentally went to a reiki healer who just told me it was my kidney and just hovered her hands over me for $250. I went the gamut of la, sort of new age healing. Finally, the one thing that actually worked was just hiring a trainer to come and make me work out twice a week. I'm very lazy physically, but it got me into the habit of just being warm all the time like a cat. And so I just sit on a heating pad when I'm doing gaming or working on a, and I just tell you it's great. I recommend it highly.
Doree: Kate, I feel like you could get into the heating pad life.
Kate: Well, I sleep with a heating. I have a heating pad in my bed that turns off after two hours in the winter. That's like a winter thing, but I'll put it at my feet. I also a tiny hand USB charged hand warmer that I keep at my desk and I have a space heater at my feet. I love being warm. I hate being cold.
Felicia: We're like lizards. I agree with you. I want that USB hand warmer, but that feels like the best stalking stuffer I can imagine. I've never seen anything like that.
Kate: Yes, I will share a link with you. I don't know, last year I was so cold in my little office space that I somehow Googled hand war. I don't know. I don't know where it came from, but I feel you on the need to be warm. But you said something. Oh my gosh. Now I'm spacing. But you said something I wanted to ask about. Hold on, let me wait. You sitting on a heating pad? Oh, you said the thing that helped was exercising, and I find this really interesting as I am starting to exercise, I exercise twice a week in a small fitness group with the intention of mobility and wanting to be able to move without pain as I get older. And I guess I'm just curious to learn a little bit more. You had this thing with your neck after the pillow, and then did you find strengthening or stretching or moving helped alleviate the pain?
Felicia: Yeah, It helped. I mean, nothing else helped. I did acupuncture, I did pain. I was about to go in and get some extreme stuff done. I just got the guy to come in and it's just an expense. I have the price of going old. I'm not going to go dancing once a week or twice a week. I'm not going to go to, ever since I used to use ClassPass and go to dancing and bar method and all that stuff. I have a child any minute away from her is doing the things I need to do. And that's not self-care, which okay, that's a life balance I need to figure out. But yeah, I wasn't working out. I bought an elliptical. I'm looking at it. I fully intend on getting on it one day. It's very pretty. It's in the corner of my room. And so I essentially was the part of my back where I had the nerve compression was where you're hunching over on a computer all day. And so basically I was like, I am not going to do these bands by myself. I don't even know how I would do that. This is the price of getting old, having someone come twice a week and just give me an hour workout and do all the bands. And within a week I was feeling better. And within three weeks I was like, oh, wow. So you know what? I tried everything that was quick fixie and just get it better. And I think it's just a lifestyle thing.
Kate: Yeah. One of our past guests who's an author, Jasmine Guillory talks about how she started doing yoga every day and how her back pain, just chronic back pain just was so alleviated just by the practice of gentle movement, which I think we forget sometimes. I forget, which is I sit in this chair 12 hours a day and you're obviously a gamer, so you're in a chair unless you stand in game. Anybody on a walking pad gaming
Felicia: Or I will say that I have in the corner, the other corner next behind my elliptical, which I do not get on, and I just have to do it 15 minutes a day, guys, 15 minutes a day will do it. I have a standing desk with a treadmill underneath, and I will say that I use it not for gaming, but when I have to watch it, I do a lot of hosting and sometimes I have to watch TV shows or I just want to watch a TV show. That's the best way. I can't do creative work when I'm walking. I can't do first draft creative work, but I can do any kind of emails, any of that. And I will say that it does help. It does. Just moving your body, you're absolutely right. We shouldn't be sedentary. We should be in a field. We should all be dead at 30. But I guess biologically
Doree: We all died in childbirth. But yes,
Felicia: But my child is going to turn seven, and according to the history, I should be sending her off to do a trade. At that age, she should be out of the house. So we're different now, but we do need to maintain some body awareness.
Doree: Yes. You mentioned that you game with your daughter now. I'd love to hear about that and what games you play together, what her relationship is like with gaming. I think for some parents there's a fear around games, video games, and I'm wondering what would you say to people, maybe their kids are interested in video games, but they don't know how to kind of navigate that world if they're not gamers themselves or even if they are.
Felicia: Yeah, I think it's a tricky, I mean, screen time in general is tricky. It's really tricky. And I try to screen what my daughter watches and she doesn't. Okay. She didn't watch, she didn't look at any screens until she was three years old. I was very, very strict. No phone games, no nothing, no videos, and it was hard. I mean, flew a lot. There were a lot of stickers all over that I had to clean up at the end of a flight. But it was important to me. I know that the studies show that especially under two, it's not good for them to watch Quick cut things. It's not good for their brain development. So I was super strict, and then when she was three, I was like, okay, baby, we're going to play switch. So I, And I will say that I would kind of rather her watch a video game and play a video. She generally watches me play. She, she's not really comfortable with using her controller. Even now. She plays a couple of games on her iPad now that we fly. I have some screen games. Some of them are programming, some of them are reading. Some of them are just fun, be jeweled or a Tetris block party or something like that. But to me, that's an active brain versus a passive brain. And I don't, unless you're allowing your child to play six hours a day with strangers online, which Roblox is something I will never let her play. But Minecraft is Lego in a video game. So what's wrong with that? What is wrong with learning strategy, thinking ahead, being active. So I personally think it's healthy and the times that we play together, she's eating a fruit plate or a vegetable plate and telling me, Hey, mama, ground pound when we're playing Mario. So to me, it's a bonding thing. To me, it is an active technical brain thing. And as long as you're aware, I don't think there's a problem. Now, the violence of video games, I don't even play Zelda with her. I'm afraid we're killing animals. I get it. Everybody's level is different. Some kids are playing call it duty at six. I don't want to judge, but I do judge a little bit. But at the end of the day, you just have to be consistent and kind of establish some parameters. And we've played board games since she was a very small kid, and I think that is an amazing way to bring your family together. So yeah, long story short, I'm pro graming, but with a caveat that everything should have limits and be supervised
Kate: Also, it sounds like you set the boundaries that are right for you and your family. Right,
Felicia: exactly.
Kate: Every family is different. Every parent child relationship is different. I think I like your approach.
Felicia: I appreciate that. I mean, I would love for her to actually use the controller and I keep trying to find different controllers where she feels comfortable. I would definitely, if you're thinking about that with your kid, definitely I would think the Switch is a really wonderful platform where you can get more violent games on there, but they're very limited. And if you limit them to physical cartridges, all the Mario games are amazing. Toads of venture, Yoshi's, craft world, Mario Party, Mario, Mario Kart, all those are fun things you could do together. And so I think that the challenge is you're like, oh, go escape into a screen and live your own life by yourself. I think that's where I feel a little bit wary, even when she's on her yo to listening to a story, I'm like, oh, I should be in there kind of enjoying this with her because we're all going to end up on our screens by ourselves later. Let's try to preserve that as long as possible. Yeah.
Kate: I do love Mario Kart. My family will have a Mario Kart night and play altogether, and I am excruciatingly bad, but I fricking love it. I love it so much, and it is fun to do. I like what you're saying. That's an active thing mean. Could we also be going for a walk here, but we don't want to, I want to play fricking Mario Kart. I wanted to ask about your experience now as a Gen X. I think you're right on the cusp like I am, but technically, gen Xer observing the digital world and the internet and the way it's kind of transformed, you're a person. When I think of you and your role in the culture, I think of you as a very longstanding person of the internet and an expert on it. How does it feel to be observing it as somebody now of an older generation watching the Gen Z kind of takeover and have their own way of doing the internet?
Felicia: I mean, it's interesting. Yeah, you're right. I think I'm on the one year where it goes from millennial to Gen X. So I feel like I was one of those people who saw people first starting to use the internet. And that was kind of a cultural thing around my family because my grandfather was a scientist. He kind of introduced the internet to us and that sort of communicating with people online way before anybody else. And that is the advantage to my career. But it's very different now. Everyone is weaned on it. In fact, we're like three generations in almost, or at least a whole generation. And I think, I guess you have to look at all change in society as being something that you just have to navigate with new tools and you have to accept and understand, don't try to adapt in a sad way. Hey, hipster kid, don't do that. But I do think that there's a lot of, I freedoms have been given to people because of the ability to find your people online or find your interests and be supported. But there's also a lot of situations where it's weaponized that isolation is sort of create festering sores of opinions where you feel in doing it, even though it's not widely acceptable. And for me, I guess the worst thing is the aspect as a parent thinking about online bullying and what women now are taught to do to reinforce their engagement and popularity, which is very much the superficial part of the world. And so I think that's really tough to have a public persona when you're a developing child because it separates yourself from developing who you are as you ought. And I guess that's the thing that worries me the most. No solutions here.
Kate: No, no. I have a 13-year-old, so every day she gets older and kind of more entrenched in digital culture because that is the world, especially these kids who are coming out of age in a pandemic when so many of them were in school online. And that's how they communicated and played with friends. And my kids and I were reminiscing about their Zoom birthday parties that they had to have.
Felicia: Oh my Gosh.
Kate: Yeah. I mean, I was just kind of like, oh, Jesus fucking Christ. You've had some weird shit the last four years. And these are lighthearted memories, not to mention all the really traumatic stuff, but it's interesting watching the way they engage online. And I think you're right. We all had a moment where the world existed before the internet. And they never have.
Felicia: Never. Yeah. And I mean, at the end of the day, it's just different and it's not going away. I do. I mean, some part of me, it's like, are we in touch with reality at all? Do we know what it feels like to dig a hole of dirt? And do we see these issues that, I mean, the advocacy of TikTok generation is amazing and they know the strength of their voices, but are they experiencing this firsthand so that it feels organic and real to them? Or is it a mass demonstrative thing you experiencing environmental impact or homelessness? Or are you experiencing these in person or are you theoretically supporting them? And for me, hands-on experience is so important and seeing things firsthand so that, yeah, cute lemur videos make you like lemurs, but unless you see a lemur in person, are you going to care about that animal becoming extinct? I don't think so. I think there is a tactile, there still is a need for in-person interactions and in-person experiences that hopefully that is still part and parcel of a teenager's world. But I don't know. It's tough.
Kate: I haven't dug a hole I don't think in a long time, but I did dig a lot of holes while playing animal crossing. So there you go.
Felicia: I grew a turnip and that inspired me to go buy a turnip at the Farmer's market, Which I had never had. So there you go. I think it goes both ways.
Kate: See,
Doree: oh my gosh.
Kate: It can influence your real life.
Felicia: Yeah.
Kate: In addition to gaming with kids, do you have thoughts for us or our listeners or people who are like, I'd like to play a game. Would you recommend that adults also start with a switch? I mean, I love the switch, but
Felicia: I lovea switch too. I mean, I think if you're into gaming, I think iPad and iPhone are probably a really good way. I mean, there's some amazing games on there, whether it's just a puzzle game Bejo, or you're playing Stardew Valley, which is one of my favorite games of all time.
Kate: I need to get into Stardew Valley. I think
Felicia: It's so good. And you can play at co-op. I mean, one of my favorite memories is over Covid playing it with three of my friends online. I mean, I stream video games on Twitch, part of my job or hobby, but at the end of the day, we played offline as well, and we all had this farm and we're growing things and we're mining, and it's a great game. And the wonderful thing about gaming is that there's so many different kinds of games. You could be Tower Defense person, like Kingdom Brush is a great one where you're planning ahead and you're strategically doing it, or if you like that visceral, sort of aggressive FPS I'm shooting and I'm getting that adrenaline high. I don't particularly like that. I play Fortnite only because I'm chatty with my friends when I do it and I'm shopping for better guns and then I die and it's fine. I don't like being hunted as a hobby, so that's not for me. But some people enjoy that adrenal of Rush and then some of them like roleplaying, and you could play a wonderful roleplaying game. So I would recommend feeling out what kind of game you like. The wonderful thing is right now, there's so many wonderful farming games like Coral Island and my time at Porsche and all these ones where you're like, I just took my grandfather's farm over and I need to make it nicer and I can marry someone in the village. And they're so wonderful. And I play all of them because they're just Comfort Food.
Kate: That's amazing.
Doree: I was just going to say, it sounds so calming.
Kate: Coral Island, and then what was the other one you said?
Felicia: My time at Porsche and Fay Farm, those are three that are basically Stardy Valley, but they're just a little more fancy graphics. Stardy Valley is, I mean, it's just the height of all of it. It's wonderful. But also there's a game called Vampire Survivors. I play, and I deliberately do not, it's just kind of like an arcade game you play in the eighties, and I don't have a PC game to travel with. I'm like, Felicia, you should be writing. But this one will play on my Mac with a track pad, and I put a hundred hours into it on planes.
Doree: Oh, wow.
Felicia: It's for mobile too, and it's just a simple game. You're going around powering up and just shooting vampires. It's fun.
Kate: Okay. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Doree: Can we talk about Third Eye?
Felicia: Yes, I'd love to.
Doree: Yeah. Your new Audible original with a star-Studded Cast. Yeah. Can you tell us, I mean, I know it was a long creative process.
Felicia: It was. So, yeah, I could tell you it's an audible original, so I hate calling it a podcast. When you think of a podcast, you think of you guys, really fun people make it up as you go along doing a regular, this is more like a movie or a television show in audio. And it took, I mean, I wrote it for years, and then it took a whole year to record and do all the post-production. It's like AAA movie and audio, and it's about a chosen one, one of those fantasy characters, kind of like a Harry Potter. Imagine if Harry Potter lost his battle against Voldemort and just choked, and 15 years later, how do you live with yourself as this big loser who basically failed everybody around them? And so I played the league character, the chosen one, Laurel, and her life gets blown up when a young girl comes in and it's like, you're my hero. And she's like, what? So yeah, it's a really fun comedy. It stars me and Neil Gaman, who is incredible, and Sean Aston from Lord of the Rings and London Hughes, a hilarious British comic, Lily Picchu, who's a streamer and really, really talented and Will Wheaton, we have cameos, weird Al, comes in and is a Sprite. So I called in all my favors for my friends, it is my baby. It's like 400 pages, 10 episodes of TV I wrote for audio, and I made it because I couldn't get it made traditionally through television. I was like, I love this story. I got to make it.
Kate: After reading, you had worked on this in some capacity for five years. I imagine there were a lot of ups and downs, and I identify I, I'm projecting, but as a creative, I know there are sometimes moments where you're like, what is the point? This is never going to happen. Why do I do this? Why do I make this? What the hell am I doing?
Felicia: It's every day. That is every day. I can't say that I'm very,
Kate: How do you stick with, but how do you stick with it? Because here it is, it's been made. What were the low moments? And as a person who works in an industry and creates things, how do you stick with it when you kind of feel like nobody else but you sees your vision?
Felicia: I hear you. I mean, made my reputation by creating a show called The Guild, which was a web series. And this was right when 2007 I started making the show. Nobody even knew what YouTube was. So everything that I found creative fulfillment in has been something I did on my own. And anything I've gotten from Hollywood was as a result of doing stuff outside the box and just making it and getting it out there. And I have gotten trapped many times in Hollywood doing development and being paid very well for just to write stories that are later thrown out or never used. And it got to me so badly. And when I pitched this as a television show, boy, I think it was 2016, and nobody wanted it. I was so pained by it. It took a couple years for me to even get writing again, I am not even exaggerating, but in the end of the day, I think you have to know what stories are yours and what is so important. And the wonderful thing about the time that we live in is that you can figure out a way to make a story for free and get it to audience no matter what. You might not reach millions of people, but you're going to get it out there and you're going to get it made and be able to move on. And I get stuck on projects because I think they're important, and only I can tell them these stories, and I got to get it out there. So the fact that Audible was able to give me a budget and make the production so lovely, I mean, it really is a big feature. AAA movie in the production of it is such an honor. But at the end of the day, making this despite people saying no over and over again and figuring out somebody to buy it, and having covid hit and having to do it all on my own, and unlike having, I expected to have other writers help me write 10 episodes of television essentially, and didn't happen, and years went by and I just kept plugging away. I was like, I can't give up. I'm not going to give up. Because ultimately life is very short, and our careers are pretty short, and you're only going to make a finite number of things in this world and make sure they count and make sure, unless they're paying you a of money, do things that really are only project that you can do. And so that's kind of making Third Eye really has hammered that point hard for me in that, yeah, I might just pay my bills acting and hosting and being a face for Hollywood, which is fine. I love doing that, but my stories can't die in development. They have to be told whether it's a graphic novel, whether it's a Kindle Single, I Self-publish, whether it's a TikTok series that I just do on my phone in my house, I got to make stuff or what's the point of it? If you're a creator, you need to make stuff. So I guess my recommendation was make sure what you're trying to say is important enough that if you say it, only a couple people will be reached, but they'll be really, really changed because of it, and that is worth working on. And that's how I approach a third eye.
Kate: I love that. That is very good.
Felicia: You're thinking, I could see your eyes. You're like, Hmm, is what I'm working on important enough? I had to ask myself that question a lot.
Doree: Yeah. I always think it's so interesting to hear how people deal with rejection because in Hollywood, I mean in any industry, but Hollywood especially, you were saying 2016, you pitched this as a TV show, no one wanted it. I think for a lot of us, that would kind of be the end of the road and the fact that now we're in 2023 and we're talking about this new audible series that you have, and you stuck with it in a way that I think a lot of people probably would not have. And I think for me, that's also a good reminder because I can, it's hard not to take that rejection, not just very personally, but also as like a, okay, well, this door's closed.
Felicia: Yeah. Well, especially with Hollywood, I've learned that you really have to separate your creator self and your business self. And Hollywood is a business. It's a business of creativity, but it's a business. And if their business isn't, it's like you're a shoe salesman, and if you're selling moccasins and they don't want to buy moccasins right now, that's not what they think is going to hit. You can't really be angry because it's their business, but you can't say nobody's ever going to want to buy moccasins. You could be like, I'm going to start my own moccasin shop, or I'll just wear these moccasins for myself. If you abandon yourself over and over again, then you're just creating to please someone else. And that's not what a creator is, right? Yeah. I could tell you so many terrible sitcom ideas. I was like, okay, maybe they'll buy this. Maybe it's a nerdy girl and she's matchmaking terrible, and those are stories I don't want to seen done. I've just wanted them approved of. And yeah, you maybe have to do that to pay your bills, but unless you have that creativity in your life where you're working on that one thing that you have to have made no matter what, no matter the format, then you can feel really hollow and get more depressed because you're not resilient, because you're not being true to yourself.
Doree: Well, Felicia, I think we have both been admiring your skin this entire podcast.
Felicia: Yes. Skincare, yes.
Kate: It's time.
Doree: And we'd love to talk to you about your skincare. What do you do? Is this something that brings you joy? It seems like it does, but we want to hear all that.
Kate: No, I'm really into my skin. No, no, no. My dad's a plastic surgeon, but he just retired just in time for me to need work done, and he's not there for it. I haven't got anything but Botox done my whole life.
Is he a cosmetic plastic surgeon?
Felicia: Yes, yes. But again, he just retired. So I'm SOL, but I've always been told my whole life, stay out of the sun because you're pale and nothing good can come from that. So his and my mother's reinforcing never go in the sun definitely has served me. So if my kid doesn't want sunscreen on her face, I'm like, do you want to look like leather when you're old? Okay, let me put this on your face. So that's how I deal with my child, because honestly, most skin damage is all done in the sun. It's all sun. So I'm super, super into sunscreens, which I'm very obsessed with and have a lot of opinions about. I started really getting into skincare and trying serums and trying to just take it more seriously. And a lot of the things I went through were very expensive, and they didn't really work for my skin. And in fact, I developed rosacea and my skin was peeling, and I was like, you got to stop. So I recently just redid my whole routine this year, and I have to say I am nailing it for my skin, and I could go into all the products because I am very passionate.
Kate: Go into it, go into it.
Felicia: So at night, I use snail mucin, the cost rx. I'm sure you've seen that. Love it. I have very dry skin, by the way, and so that's something that I use as my basis. I do oil cleanse, so I clean my skin with oil, which is really important to me. Again, very dry skin. Then I use this thing called, which is the game changer. It's called Puritan, and most people never heard of this. It's a Rosa never heard you've heard of it, Kate?
Kate: No, no, no. Never heard of it.
Felicia: So it's a rosacea medicine. But remember kinase, remember Courtney Cox long ago was advertising this thing called kinase, which was like a doctor brand that you get at the dermatologist.
Doree: I do not remember this.
Felicia: So anyway, that was the holy grail of my skin routine. Many years ago. They went bankrupt, and the only formulation of the thing that's in that is basically it was bought by Puritan, so they're the only skin product that has this stuff in it that kinase used. And I was devastated when I lost kinase, and I swear that's when my skincare started going downhill. So anyway, I started using Puritan again and all the redness from using way too many acids and serums went away. My skin is super even, and it's beautiful. So highly recommend it. Then on top of that, I use the Do Instant Angel moisturizer and some Kell's eye cream, and that's it. Sometimes I'll use a hydrolic acid just like once a week, but again, it just dries my skin out and some C, but I try not to get into it. Serums actually are not good for my skin, and that's what I discovered. So that's my skincare routine, and I use Dr. Hka in the morning rose cream, and that's it, and then I put my sunscreen.
Kate: I love the way that stuff smells too. When you said the Kiehl's eye cream, are you using the avocado eye cream?
Felicia: Yes. I really like it. I've used so many. I don't know if you have a better eye cream rec me because I,
Kate: No, I just started using that because a friend was like, I've been using this eye cream for 20 years, and I was like, intriguing.
Felicia: It works. I've spent a lot of money, and then on top of it, I'll put aquifer on my cheeks and around my eyes just to kind of slug it, but it's a mid slug. It's not a total slug.
Kate: So you're really about hydrating and sun protection?
Felicia: Yes, and I will say the best sunscreen I've ever experienced is my new passion. You can only get it in London and Australia. It's called Ultraviolet, and it has something in it that is not approved by the FDA yet. I'm hoping it'll change next year. It is the best sunscreen I've ever used, and it's tinted. So basically it's the best BB cream ever. I will wear a zinc, I'll wear any other brand, and I'll get a little bit of sun damage. I'll see my freckles come up if I'm out in the sun, if I was just using a physical sunscreen, this stuff doesn't let anything in, and it looks beautiful. So if you're in London, go to Eskin, I guess is where I got it, and get one of these tinted moisturizing sunscreens. Unbelievable.
Doree: Kate, someone in our Discord, our Patreon Discord has recommended the sunscreen, and I looked into getting it, and you can order it from Australia, but I think it's like $50 to ship it, and I was like, so I guess I just have to get someone,
Kate: I should just go to London.
Doree: We're going to need to just go to London.
Kate: I wanted to ask about growing up with a plastic surgeon father.
Felicia: Oh, yeah.
Kate: Did that influence or skew or change your thoughts on the beauty industry, body image, body acceptance? Is it something you talk about with your dad? I think you're the first person I've ever met who has a plastic surgeon, parent.
Felicia: Well, I did have a breast implant next to the phone to play with because they're kind of fun to just jiggle around. That would be a kid. One thing, as a kid, you're just like, that's amazing thing.
Kate: Oh my God.
Felicia: But I mean, obviously I still have my original nose clearly, and the couple times I kind, because over the years, many people have said, oh, you need a little work done. I would recommend, I've literally had people tell me that you probably work more if you got your nose fixed. I just did Invisalign, but I have a bad overbite and I have a little bit of a not perfect nose. And the couple times I brought it up to him, he's like, no, Hollywood's making you paranoid. Stop it. So it was very sweet of him to not emphasize that at all, and to be really clear about how the influence of other people are making. You want to change your face versus you organically want this for yourself. I'm not going to judge anybody who does anything to their face, although Bcal fat removal is very bad. He's, I think it's criminal that people do that kind of operation because later you're going to regret it so much, but at the end of the day, as long as you're feeling confident for you and not trying to live up to a TikTok filter or something, do whatever you want. It's your body. But I will say that the younger you are, the more you have to kind of question what's influencing me and should I abandon my face? I was in acting class with a very famous actor who got a nose job, and I was just like, oh, I really loved her face before she looked so interesting, but that she became super famous with her new perfect nose, and it's like, well, what's reinforced having these artificially perfect faces? So how do we win? It's hard to win.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: Yeah. There's no good answer on that one, I don't think. Right? There's no way through it easily.
Felicia: No, there isn't. Especially aging. I mean, the kind of pressure that you're under and what are you going to get done, and is this necessary? Is this going to make you look good? Are you going to become this nightmarish, puffy person with too much filler? Are your lips going to have a long-term terrible effect if you get all these lip implants, long-term repercussions that people need to think about. And again, weight, body image, your face. I hate that most TikTok filters will make my nose smaller, and I'll be like, I look prettier that way, and I hate that. I even think that, and at this point, it would be weird. Well known enough, I can't get my nose done. It would just be like, oh, I'm the sad woman who's trying to clinging to something. But yeah, I hate that the society puts that in my mind because although guys probably experience it a little bit, the fact that we have to think about it every day is just not fair.
Doree: Yeah. Yes.
Kate: Well, this has been a real treat getting to talk to you today. Felicia. Thank you for coming on with your wisdom and your wit and teaching us about skincare lines I've never heard of.
Felicia: Thank you. I'm just so excited to talk about skincare products. I really was. I was like, these ladies know what it's about.
Kate: Sometimes it's just fun to think about a cream.
Felicia: I love it. There's nothing better than samples. If you are looking for a present for someone, just get them a bunch of samples. There should just be a sample. I know the Sephora checkout line is kind of just all samples, but tiny bottles of things that you can sample are just the best thing in the world.
Kate: Well,
Felicia: Stocking up Santa,
Kate: The Sephora checkout line with all the little teeny travel size things that can add up real fast, you can put three of those in a basket and you're looking at a hundred bucks and all of a sudden you're like, but this is so tiny.
Felicia: Yeah. I mean, if you look in the grocery store, if you look at mac and cheese, it'll tell you the cents per ounce. If they did se Sephora, you'd never buy anything tiny there at all.
Kate: Your good point cents per ounce, you don't even want to know.
Felicia: Nope, don't want to do it. It's dollars per ounce.
Kate: Felicia, where can folks who are listening find you and find your work?
Felicia: You can find me everywhere @FeliciaDay, although Felicia.Day is me on TikTok, and that's also my website, Felicia.Day, which is cool. I have a newsletter. I have a couple podcasts that I do, and Third Eye, I can be found at audible.com/ThirdEye so yeah, pick up something that I made or just come watch me play video games. That's fun too.
Doree: Thank you so much.
Felicia: Thanks a lot.
Kate: I'm really glad we got to have Felicia on. She's someone we have talked about having as a guest for a long time,
Doree: So long,
Kate: And someone I have always followed for years. I actually, in talking to her, I was like, oh my gosh. This is a person I have observed online for over a decade. Whoa.
Doree: Wow.
Kate: That went fast.
Doree: Yeah. Well, Kate.
Kate: Yeah,
Doree: We are.
Kate: It's time for 2024 intentions Doree.
Doree: How are you feeling about what you mentioned in the last episode and where you're at now?
Kate: Okay. My last episode intention was just to read, and it's so I am now in the final book of this book series that I have basically devoured, called The Fifth Avenue Rebels by Joanna Sheep. I weirdly read them back. I read them in no order. I read them in the wrong order. It was just what I could get online on my library app, but it's fine. They work as standalone books, and I have fucking loved every second of it. I've loved every second
Doree: Love
Kate: Give me some High Society, 1895 romances.
Doree: Yes,
Kate: I am having a blast. And it's funny though. I had read three of them and I had the last one downloaded from the library, and still I was like, I still kind of procrastinated picking it up, even though I knew I would want to read it. I just like, why am I still looking at my phone as opposed to looking at this book that I know I want to read? That's just something for me to think about and to consider. I will say that I have the Opal app on my phone, and I have very heavily limited social media and access to other of my distracting sites, and that has kind of been helpful. So anyway, I am loving this series. I'm sad that I'm about to finish the last book in the series. I've loved reading, so I'll probably just now go through and read every Joanna shoot book I can get my hands on and do that little cycle that I get into this week. Got, as I mentioned, I'm trying to get better about being consistent with therapy. I have to do some mental health care, and I wrote this before I had my little one in the morning spiral last night, but I think I've got to do just a little bit of reflection and just kind of taking note of some things.
Doree: Yes, yes, yes.
Kate: I'm not even sure I have a specific goal with this. More just being conscious of the fact that I have things that are challenging and just to, I don't know, make space for myself and be kind to myself about it, but also know that I need to do better when I am addressing those things.
Doree: Yeah, yeah, I hear that. I hear that
Kate: My OCD has been kind of raring up in the last month or so, and I tend to find it goes, it's okay. It comes and goes. I don't know if anybody else finds this with the intrusive thought situation, so it's been really heightened. So that's one thing that I've been struggling with that I am trying to kind of dig into a little bit. Yeah,
Doree: That's stressful.
Kate: It's not fun. How was your screenplay challenge, Doree last week? I mean, I actually know. Spoiler alert, I got a glimpse. I know how this turns out, but tell us where you were last time we talked you were doing a screenplay challenge.
Doree: Yes, I was all set to my friend Alyssa Sussman's. She put together a little group of people who were going to write a screenplay in the month of January, and we recorded that episode before the holidays. And over the holidays, I had some kind of real honest conversations with myself about work and just sort of where I'm at. And I was like, oh, I'm using this to procrastinate.
Kate: Oh, ooh. Yep.
Doree: The thought of starting a new project is very exciting. The beginning, sexy things are very exciting. And then when it comes to the hard part of actually finishing it, I'm like, let's start something else. And so that's why I haven't finished this book of mine, and I was like, I need to finish my book. But I actually credit Alyssa for giving me the idea, the confidence, whatever, to think, oh, I could finish my book in the month of January. The way she broke it down about writing a screenplay, I was like, oh, that makes sense. And then I was like, but oh, I could do that with my book. The light bulb went off. You know what I mean? And I was just like, okay, well, this is what I need to do. So I decided instead to finish my book in January, but using inspo from Alyssa's screenplay challenge,
Kate: All right, the heat is on.
Doree: The heat is on. So this week, my intention is to just kind of stay in the habit of consistency. And I mentioned this on the casual chat on Friday for our Patreon, but my new mantra in all Things for the new year is 10 minutes is better than zero. And that's for writing, that's for yoga. I'm trying to do yoga every day to help my back, which has been hurting, just be more flexible. As I get older, I'm like, oh, I'm getting a little creaky here, but 10 minutes, sure. Would I be better off doing a 45 minute yoga class? Probably,
Kate: No, not necessarily.
Doree: But a 10 minute yoga class is better than a zero minute yoga class no matter what.
Kate: That is true.
Doree: So I'm trying to apply that to many different aspects of my life and try to let go of the idea of perfection in all things and holding myself to unattainable standards in all things trying to break free. Kate,
Kate: That's a wonderful intention.
Doree: Thank you.
Kate: Thank you. Well, if you want to hear us talk more about this, join our Patreon because we did get into this deeper in our casual chat episode last week.
Doree: We sure did.
Kate: And a friendly reminder here that Forever35 is hosted and produced by us Doree Shafrir and Kate Spencer. It's also produced and edited by Sam Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager, and our network partner is a cast and happy new Year. Thank you all for listening.
Doree: Bye.