Jake Shane on Movie Debut, OCD, and Podcast Philosophy
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- Jake Shane made his movie debut in Wishful Thinking, which premiered at SXSW, acting alongside Maya Hawke and Louis Pullman, and is developing a semi-autobiographical comedy series at Hulu.
- Maya Hawke walked Shane through film set basics on his nervous first day of shooting; director Graham Parkes tailored scenes to him mid-production and built in room for improv.
- Shane says starting medication in 2020 "really changed my life" and credits a senior-year college theater class with pulling him back to acting, which he calls the thing that "feels natural."
- Shane told Rolling Stone his podcast Therapuss isn't journalism and that he always lets guests cut anything they want from episodes, saying it would be "selfish" not to honor their discomfort.
- Shane attributes a constant fear that "everything is about to disappear" to an eighth-grade moment in a Claire's on the Upper West Side where he caught himself feeling happy, then had "such a horrible summer."
- Shane's picks for the five funniest people of all time: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, Meg Stalter, and Joan Rivers — whose Fashion Police he watched with his mom as a kid.
Why it matters: Shane credits starting medication in 2020 with enabling his pivot to acting, and his Therapuss stance — letting guests cut anything, refusing to call it journalism — positions him apart from traditional interviewers in a crowded creator-interview space. With a SXSW film debut and a Hulu series in development, he's a live test of how far short-form internet fame travels inside legacy Hollywood.
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