EPISODE LINK: COURTNEY THORNE-SMITH

SUMMARY: Actress and Author Courtney Thorne-Smith joins us to talk about her new podcast, Still the Place and midlife, menopause, friendship and her career.  This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation.

TRANSCRIPT:

Colleen: Welcome back to Hot Flashes and Cool Topics Podcasts. We are on season six, episode one, and we are thrilled that our guest today is actress Courtney Thorne-Smith,
and she’s also a fellow podcaster. So welcome to the show.

Courtney: Thank you. I’m just going to say if anyone here is snoring for those of you can see at home this is my pug Georgie you hear a snoring, I haven’t fallen asleep that’s what happened and if you’re listening the cuteness you just go over and check out the video because Georgie is just adorable insane how cute she is we’re all we’re all animal lovers so we can relate but dogs dogs are proof of god’s love i I really did.

Colleen: You know, someone once said, I heard them say, you know, a dog is a big part of your world, but you are their world. You’re their whole world.

Courtney: Yeah. I was meditating the other day and I had Georgie and I have another little dog, Joey, on my lap. And I thought, wow, it’s like my stuffed animals come to life. It’s like your little dream of your stuffed animals coming to life, especially Georgie, who’s just round and soft soft and fall asleep anywhere. I’m like, oh my God, that’s what I got in these babies. Just unconditional love.

Bridgett: It really is. Great. Well, we are excited to have you on the show.
Colleen: And like I said, you are now a new fellow podcaster. So you just, you launched Still the Place in July, right? And so how’s So how did this come about and how is it going?
Courtney: It’s so funny. A friend of mine called me one morning and said, I had a dream that you had a rewatch podcast. I went, huh. And I called Daphne Zuniga and Laura Layton, who’ve been working on a reboot. And I said, if you guys ever thought of a podcast? And they said, hold on. And Daphne had a connection to eye heart. And it happened so fast. You know when things are supposed to happen? And they just all the doors open. And my, my spiritual, uh, truth right now is I just go through the open door. Like, God just show me the open door. And it was so easy. So I thought, all right, we’re supposed to be doing it. And it has been so much fun. I’m really surprised by it.

Bridgett: I’ve really enjoyed it. Because that time when Melrose place was on, I was a young mother with a little little boy and my husband was an auditor and he was gone two weeks out of every month so Wednesday night was all right get that kid ready for bed turn on the tv bottle feed him and he didn’t know i’m like hey guess who i’m talking to tomorrow but you watched it but you didn’t know he watched it but that was my thing it was like okay i’m here i’m by myself i’m in a city I don’t know anybody else and i’m feeding this baby and i’m watching my shows my guilty pleasures. so yeah I do it it’s it’s it’s just so fun to hear it’s it’s just so fun to hear the rewatchables think about what you all talk about in the scenes and then thinking about oh yeah iremember that i remember what that happened so it’s really been a lot of fun for your former watchers and current listeners

Courtney: Oh, thank you. You know, it’s really, it’s the show, and I worked. I did a lot of things after Marrow’s Place, but it’s the thing that people talk to me about the most to this day because it was a time in their lives. That’s why Laura came up with the name Still the Place. And I just loved it because what people talk about is I had an apartment building like that. We watched it in a group. One of my friends, one of my son’s friends, his dad is a really successful back And he said,
in college, I wrote an article for the paper about Melrose’s place. I was like, oh, my God. It’s so sweet to have something because it was my time, too. I mean, I started, I was 24 when I started it. So that was my time too. And those were the people that I did the show with were my friends. Like we really did get along. We really went through. We dated each other and we talked to each other.

Colleen: We’re going to get there. We’re going to get there. We are still getting there. You know, you started at 24 and shows nowadays when it’s a hit, every aspect of your life is on social media. But you kind of had the best of both worlds where you had the popularity, but you had a little privacy because social media didn’t exist. What was that like to be able to say, okay, this is my professional, this is my personal, because they don’t have that luxury now.

Courtney: So true. You know, Andrew Schue and I, which is what you guys want to talk about, still as adorable as he ever was. He and I dated in the first season when the show started taking off. And we could put on baseball caps and go anywhere. It was so different. I remember one time we were at an award show. We were at an award show. And we were actually offended that they were trying to take a picture of us together. Like, that’s how much we still expected privacy.
Now, there’s no line. I mean, I’m such a dinosaur. I still don’t have social media. Because I came of age in a time when you wanted to protect yourself. And I think, why would I show you a picture of my kid? Like, it doesn’t make sense to me. I’m just of that generation where we still had an expectation of privacy, which I think you’re right. mutual respect. So you would say, I want to do this movie and they go, yeah, you can do that. We won’t start until this. And now a friend of mine’s son is an actor, he did eight episodes of a popular show. And they kept him on hold for 18 months, meaning every time he’d go to them and say, can I do this other project? He’s like, no, we’re going to start any day. We’re going to start any day. In my day, it couldn’t sound older, but whatever, in my day, when we’d take our horse and buggies to work there was this sense of we’re all working together and if you did a series you shot from um July or August until April or may and now we don’t have those schedules there’s no so you knew when you could work and they there was mutual respect now that doesn’t exist so you can be able to go and do eight episodes every two years, and it looks like a lot of money per episode. But we did, like we were talking about this, we did 33 episodes a year, which was insane. It was insane. But you really do make money. Like you make enough money that if you’re careful, that can last you a lifetime. Right. And yeah, I feel for the actors that are really, especially the ones coming out starting today because people assume, oh, their actors, they’re going to make all this money. And then you’re hearing about how they have to wait till the series continues, if it continues. I really feel for them because, yeah, yeah. It used to be, we’d finish in April or May, and then they’d have the up fronts, which is when you presented it to the, to the, what are the people who run all the studios around the little stations around the world. Oh, my good. So you show it to the people who own the stations. I’ll say it that way. Affiliates, affiliates, thank you. And so you knew by then if you were picked up or not, because if you weren’t up fronts, you were picked up. If you weren’t, you weren’t picked up, and you got to go get another job. Yeah. So different. No, it’s so much harder. And for the crew members, it’s harder for everybody to make a living.

Colleen: Were you one of the first people that were cast for Melrose Place and like did they have an idea of who they wanted for each character or did they audition everybody like a lot of people for each character
Courtney: You know I have no idea because you don’t really know when you’re auditioning right like you’re you’re auditioning for a whole bunch of stuff I had auditioned for something else for Spelling I didn’t get it and he said listen kid I’m going to work with you. So old Hollywood. Like he’d be in his office, he’d smoke cigars. It was so, so old Hollywood. And he’d hug you when you walked in. Like, you couldn’t hug people when they walked in now if you were the producer. And then I auditioned for Melrose Place. And it was the same thing. Like, you audition, then you go back, you go back, you back. We had chemistry reads. And a lovely actor named Stephen Fanning played Billy originally. And then just sometimes things don’t work. But if I’ve worked with him. remember i almost got into a fight with that guy like some famous person said it’s like i do remember like he really was so tough Grant it’s a wonderful mix of super sweet and really ethical and a great guy and genuinely tough like he rode a motorcycle to work and said you know i don’t think they’d let an actor do that today

Bridgett: yeah yeah i was listening to that i was dying because i thought oh he’s just acting he’s not. And I’m like, oh he really did almost get into a fight it was Steve McQueen’s son I was like oh it was Steve McQueen’s son and I was like oh and it was it’s been very interesting to hear this little backstory about what was really happening to you guys at the time and there’s so many things you bring up on the podcast that you know at the time I didn’t think oh that that’s super creepy and it’s actually getting a lot of attention that Grant Show was dating a high school or well he wasn’t he wasn’t uh his character was Jake was yeah jake was dating kelly yeah yes and it was kind of like cool and sexy those things don’t age well like a lot like oh that did not age well and i thought well it’ll be a flirtation and then they started kissing i was like no no no

Bridgett: And it’s, it’s funny how that your podcast has brought a lot back to that. Like I’m seeing that in different headlines about, oh, Grant Show like, yeah, that was really creepy.

Courtney: You know, that’s got to see. We didn’t know. And we did promoting still the place we did Tori Spelling and Jenny Gar’s podcast. And we asked her about it. And she said, she goes, no, I didn’t, like they said, this guy’s coming on you’re going to have a all right like nobody questioned it yeah yeah yeah and in one of my first movies I was 17 and my boyfriend was 37 in the movie and it nobody questioned it how strange is that yeah that is really weird it’s strange now and I think you know even at the time calling because I think we’re all about the same age that we at that age didn’t think it was that weird. Not that I, it didn’t happen to me. I didn’t date. It was sexy and romantic. Yes. Yes, that’s what she found out.

Colleen: We interviewed the actor who plays on Almonzo Wilder from Little House in the Prairie. And at the time he was cast to be the husband for Melissa Gilbert. She was 16, just turned 16 and he was 26 in real life. and they had to fall in love and I’m like that would have never happened in today’s day and age and he said it just no one questioned it

Bridgett: I think Melissa wasn’t too thrilled well she was a kid and her mother came on set and cried apparently I think she her mother cried but

Colleen:  None of the cast like no one casting or Michael Landon no one seemed to have a problem with the 10 year age gap for the characters

Bridgett: It was probably realistic for the times right right right because that was like the 1870s or something yeah yeah i mean i was watching a show and they had a young girl and a young boy they were age appropriate kissing and i thought god i wonder if that was her first kiss right like iwonder if that and it was melissa’s yeah yeah i remember i remember reading that a long time ago I think yeah yeah yeah I’m just talking about that yeah it’s so you know bringing up all these great memories from listening to the podcast but what is it like for you to actually do these podcasts where you’re kind of talking about all these things that happened in each episode is it bringing back some great memories. Are you like I’ve totally forgot about that you know i

Courtney: It’s been the sweetest thing that surprised me um it’s It’s like, there’s enough time has passed. The first episode, I was really self -critical, and then it just sort of lifted. And Jenny and Tori had said to us, you’re going to become fans of the show. And I thought, really? And it does. I’m out of my own way now. And one of the things that’s really surprised me is I’m looking at myself at 24. And what I mostly am connecting to is how hard I was on myself then. You know, I remember like wardrobe choices and being self -conscious about shorts and being self -conscious in a bathing suit. And one of the reasons I was so excited to your podcast is, you know, there’s this narrative about, you know, middle age and beyond and, and how hard it is. But I look at it and I think, I love myself so much more now, right? I said to my therapist. I said, you know, objectively, I was more attractive then. And she goes, objective by whose standards? I was like, right? Another reminder, right? Like, I would never talk to myself or talk about my body the way I did then. I would never hurt my body or starve myself today. And I look back at that time and I thought, oh, we glorify being in our 20s. But for me, that was a really hard time. I was so hard on myself. The world seemed hard now. I moved through my days, like with so much gratitude and light. I am immeasurably happier at this time in my life than I was then. In measure, there’s no comparison.

Colleen: It’s like the best kept secret.

Courtney: It really is. It really is. Yes. And that’s why I love your podcast. On one of the ones I listened to, they were talking about you’re not alone like this idea of it and that’s one of the things in my life today i’m surrounded by extraordinary women and we laugh and we talk and we share and there’s not competition like the stuff that happens in your 20s it’s gone we are just each other’s biggest cheerleaders look at us here now like that we’re getting to know you we got on we just started chatting right yeah Yeah, yeah. Oh, I’m so happy to see these women. Hi, how are you? Right. Yeah. It is time. We were so hard on ourselves and it almost always read or heard that women for some reason thought that there was a finite amount of space for other women.

Bridgett: But there’s not, you know, there’s an infinite amount of space for other women in your world and lifting each other up is so much more rewarding than trying, you know, trying to cut someone down. And, you know, you talk about how hard so many people are on themselves, on their younger selves. And I look back and I’m like, you know, I say the same thing you did. Gosh, I look pretty good there. Why was I so mad at myself?

Courtney: Yes. This thing came to my meditation time. I am a big meditator, obviously, comes up a lot. But it was that the competition, the idea of competition and scarcity, which we lived in and we were young, right, that we’re fighting over little scraps. That was the lie. Like infinite love is the truth. And when you move through life expecting, you just go, oh, I’m just going to connect to people. All of a sudden, there’s infinite possibility of connection. If I came into this feeling competitive with you guys, even physically ready, be pulling away, I don’t have it. I expected to have a wonderful time. It’s even more fun than I thought it would be. Thank you. Yeah, of course. But when I was younger, it felt like we were fighting over a limited amount of what, right? And we’re presented as that, as if we’re in competition, but that’s a lie. And if you can stop believing that lie, then you go, oh, I was living behind this veil of this lie. And if I just open the curtain, hi, there everybody is. It’s so true.

Colleen: And I think, you know, I have two daughters. And I’m, I always look at them saying, you know, stopping so hard on yourselves, it’s going to be okay. And I think a lot of it is like, we, we would say things when we were young, like, oh, I’m never going to live through this. I can’t live. And when you realize that, yes, bad things happen and you live through them, it doesn’t seem so extreme anymore. It’s like, yeah, this is fine. I’ll get through it. But when you’re younger, you don’t see that.

Courtney: When you’re younger, you don’t see it. And I remember thinking that I would love myself when I was perfect. I’ll love myself when I’m perfect. And I saw a woman speak one day and she was talking about self -love and that she loved herself. And I consciously thought, well, you must think you’re all that. You must think you’re perfect. But as she continued speaking, I could see that that wasn’t what she was about at all. Love was just pouring out of her, right? She wasn’t. It was, it was just love. And it was really messing with my, with my paradigm of you have to be perfect to love yourself because that wasn’t what she was presenting. And it really messed with my head. And it stuck with me for a long time. And then one day, I was sitting with my friends. And every group of women, we’ve been friends for 30 years. We have a girl’s night almost every Tuesday night and have for 25 years. It’s amazing. And I was thinking about them and I thought, do I love them because they’re perfect? And I thought, no. Like they’re not. In fact, perfect people are boring. I thought they’re funny and smart and honest. And what I love most about them is they’re authentic. Right. I’ve known them for 30 years. And what I see is that they have worked to become more and more and more authentic over time. And I thought, funny, authentic, sometimes messy, sometimes challenge, I get, I’m all of those things. So what if I just choose to love myself like I love my friends? Right. That’s another gift.
Colleen: Another gift with this age.

Courtney: Yeah. Everything from me. Right. Yeah, I find that that that’s another gift, you know, just of getting older, of just letting things. It’s not even to let things go. It’s just like this things shifts and and things are just okay after that like things that used to bother me just they just don’t bother me they’re not important and I’ve found that with other women that I meet so it’s it is a great time of life yeah they’re not important like that idea of competition seems to think and maybe it’s hormonal maybe maybe maybe it’s biological like when you’re young you’re competing because you have to make babies, I don’t know, but as I’ve gotten older, and maybe it’s part of menopause, right? Maybe that intensity just fades away and you go, it’s kind of that sense of what were we fighting about? Right. You know, what was it? I don’t even, I find it hard to connect to that anymore.

Colleen: You know, we’ve talked to experts and your changing hormones do affect some of the ways that your mental health and the way you view things. So it could be a definitely a factor in that, but let’s kind of dive into menopause. Did you, how was your journey with it?

Courtney: Well, I think I’m in perimenopause. I don’t know. I think it’s all. In the beginning, the way I knew I was even in peri menopause was my migraines got really, really bad. And this is like I had male doctors at the time, nothing against male doctors. Some are lovely, but I had male doctors and I said, I had hormonally connected migraines. I used to get migraines when I got my purity when I ovulated. And I started to get them all the time and I said, I think it must be perimenopause. And they said, no, no, no, no, no, no. And they did an MRI and they checked my hearing and they checked my eyes and they tested my hormones. And they said, no, you’re fine. And I said, but it doesn’t make any sense because I’m having migraines all the time. No, no, no, no. And it was such a scary year because I was so sick and I was being put through tests. And then finally I said, I’d like to see a woman doctor. And I walked in and I sat down in her office. And she said, what’s going on? And I said, I have hormonally driven migraines. And I have them all the time. And I think at the time I was 46 or 7. And I said, I’m having migraines all the time. I think it’s premenopause. She goes, yeah, that rings true. Wow. Treat you. That’s great. And getting heard. Exactly. Being heard. I said, you can be tested me. She goes, yeah, but peri menopause, like one day you’re going to be fine, one day you’re not. So I felt like having a female doctor who listened to my experience. And then they put me on the pill for many years just to even everything out so that I wouldn’t have the up and down migraines. and that helped a lot. Migraine medicines have come a long way. And now I’m off the pill. Now I’m 56. I’m off the pill and I’m on the patch and that’s been amazing.
Bridgett: I have a patch too. Yeah, I like it. But I am menopausal. Like, you know, there’s so many amazing things that Colleen and I have found out since doing this podcast that this menopause episode, it can start 10 years before you go into menopause. It can, you know, it can cause so many, I can’t even remember the number of symptoms. I think they were like 64 and up.
Courtney:  It’s because it’s women. There’s not enough research. Like any people are starting to speak up, and that’s why I switched to mostly women doctors. Again, no offense to men. I love men. But in terms of doctors, I really felt like it was important to have a woman who could say, here’s what I did? Because I’ll ask my doctor, what did you do? Like, what’s your experience? What do you prefer? What patch do you prefer? How has that been for you? We sort of walk each other through it. And no offense, men don’t have that shift. And maybe I am in menopause now. I don’t know. It was so smooth from the pill to the patch that maybe I just sort of wrote it out.
Colleen: It’s 12 months of no cycle. Menopause is one day. So once you’ve had 12 months of no cycle, you’re postmenopausal. That’s how that works.

Courtney: Right. Well, I was on the pill continuously because of my migraines. So you don’t know. Yeah, you wouldn’t be known. When I went off the pill, I did have a couple periods. And I had to go by tampons. And I was sure the checkout person was going to say, oh, sweetie are you sure i was calling my girlfriend i think you put this yes do they what’s what’s the stuff now like are you sure you know what the kids doing now

Bridgett:I know i mean having you know Colleen and i have daughters and hearing from them all the stuff you know i’m like i don’t miss it what’s a cup what’s a cup like the real cups i’m like what are you talking about Maggie you know

Courtney: Sorry thank you remember feeling like so sad and discombobulated and you’re yelling at your boyfriend and you’re mad at your friends and your everything’s awful in your light and then you get your period and you’re like oh that’s what it was
Colleen: No matter how long you had it you still did that anyway like you were like oh yeah it is the 12th I forgot you know it’s like no matter how many years you have your period, you still would forget that all of the, you know, mood swings. And then you go through menopause and you have the same thing. You go through mood swings and hot flashes and.
Bridgett: Oh, yeah. I mean, some people go through it. Great. They don’t have the symptoms. I had a lot of them. I had like, I would have 10 hot flashes an hour.
Courtney: Really? An hour? An hour.

Bridgett: I would move. I would do this and get a thing of water and I would break

Colleen: Yes. And I used to tease her because she went through menopause at a very young age. She was like 47 when she went to 47, 48.  And I was 55 still regular as could be. And I’m like, I’m going to be the oldest living woman with my period. Like, when is this going to stop?

Bridgett: I would tell her, you’re going to get pregnant. You’re going to get pregnant. She said my daughter’s raising that kid.
Colleen: But she actually brought me over an award like when i was 12 months in with no cycle that it was

Bridgett: yeah we got that from Karen Duffy said she would give all her friends an old trophy and slap on uh congratulations your finished period and so i said okay i found an old trophy and brought it to her house i was very excited yeah and then she gave it back to me i was like what am i going to do with them what i want to do with it anyway

Courtney: I love what you’re saying. I love this point of view, which is it told you, oh, no, oh, no menopause. But the other truth is it’s freedom. Like I has actually forgotten until we’re talking about it right now, how horrible that I had very irregular periods. So I never knew. It was kind of every six weeksish. So I hadn’t even thought until we’re just talking about, wow, I don’t have to go through that anymore. That was awful. Yes. You don’t have to worry about vacations. You don’t have to worry about having heavy periods and being uncomfortable. I mean, there’s a lot of freedom that comes with that. Right. There is. Mm -hmm. So it’s so bad. You told the story that it was bad news because it doesn’t feel like bad news.

Colleen: I think a man did. I think they attach age to it. Like they just attach age so much to, oh, you’re past your prime, your postmenopausal. When you’re like, I don’t want to have children right now. I did like, why does that matter? Yes, there are other things obviously our body changes and, but our body’s always changing. You know, your, your postpartum, you’re postmenopausal, you’re getting your periods. So I think it just got a bad rap for a lot of.

Courntney: Like I, I obviously in my 20s I may have been anyway it doesn’t matter younger more nubile but man I was a pain in the ass I really was like very dramatic ups and downs I’ll tell you what for like I am even Stephen now yeah no it is just weird that I have a bad day now yeah it is amazing
Bridgett: That’s nice yeah it is amazing because yeah it would be so moody and it is just like kind of getting this even thing and I went through you know with emptiness which I know you will go through a couple years years yeah and that was tough that was another part that was really really hard and then I said COVID cured it because they came back and but like yeah they came back for for you know six months or something and i went okay that cured it and my son just headed back to his home today we had a vacation and i’m like okay this is the first time i didn’t cry when my children left so i didn’t cry i’m so proud of myself you know that and he’s he edits these so i’m going to be like i still miss you but but i didn’t cry so those are different little things that you go through uh parents aging oh aging,

Colleen: Just things like that that can really, you know, women our age really can relate to a lot of things that we have in common. Like you said, the competition is out of the way. You’re not trying to secure that job. You’re not trying to, oh, this one is doing this. You don’t really care. Like, you know, wish you well, good luck. I hope it goes well. But there’s no competition anymore. We just want to lift everybody’s voices because everyone has a unique voice and a unique experience. And I think that’s a big difference as we get older. Has it been, you know, in saying that, how has it been being together on the podcast? You guys worked together in your 20s and 30s. What’s it like now working together?

Courtney: It’s so sweet. And we did, all of this stuff started started happening at the 25th anniversary of Melrose Place, which was like eight years ago now, which is crazy. They got some of us together in New York to do a reunion. And that’s when all this stuff sort of sparked. And it was so much fun because at the time we were doing it, not only were we all in our 20s and with everything that entails, we were working 16 hours a day, photo shoots on weekends, all of this. It was very intense. So it’s nice to come back together all so relaxed and really get to look back at this time. And without any of that noise, without any of that noise, like we’re all happy. Most of us are married or were married. A lot of us have kids. Daphne doesn’t have kids, but she just got married, which is adorable. She has a new, she’s a newlywed, which is adorable. Laura and Doug are so cute the other day, Laura called Doug because he was in a scene and she got to call her husband who obviously she met on the show and it was so sweet they have kids together they have step kids together it’s so sweet um it’s really fun it’s so long ago that it’s almost like you’re talking about another life and somebody said it’s interesting one of our guests said it’s bittersweet because life was all possibility then and this is a great thing after you mentioned empty nest and i thought, and I had to interrupt and say, you know what, I feel like now my life is so full of possibility. I don’t have that sense. Now, you know, I think that God gives us this time in between having little kids and the kids leaving when they get really independent. My kid is 16. He’s learning to drive. Like, he’s really independent. So I remember, I remember when he was 10 or 11 and he started closing his playroom door, right? And we went from Mommy, Mommy play Legos with me to closing the door. And I thought, wow, I have to get busy because I don’t want to be sitting outside the door and have him say to his friends, we have to let my mom play with us. She has nothing else to do. Like I really thought, right? I went back to school online. I didn’t go to college. I started working right out of high school. And I started writing again,
which is something I’ve always loved. And I did a lot before my son was born and then he was born. And I started writing again. And I, I’m very busy with my friends. And I have a lot of hobbies. You know, anybody who’s figuring out what am I going to do after empty nest, go on Coursera. I was trying to figure out, I was writing something. I was trying to figure out the difference between a colon and a semicolon. I just clicked on a grammar class on Coursera. Like the world is our oyster today. We don’t have to be bored. You don’t have to be lonely. One of my friends emptiness, she started going on meetup. And she started meeting with these groups of people who were doing book clubs and all this stuff.
Like, it’s a really exciting time to have more time available. I don’t think we have to tell this sad story. I feel super excited about the next phase of my life.
Bridgett: Right. Yeah, there’s so much, you know, the possibilities of travel, just like you were saying, meeting people, different groups, getting involved with something that maybe you never tried before. And then you thought, okay, well, now’s a great time to try it. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s not really a failure. It’s just something that you tried. And maybe you didn’t like it. And you try something else. So it just, it is a really wonderful time.

Courtney: Yes. It’s like it’s hard to remember who we are before we were parents, right? Because parenthood is so impactful. It changes how we moved through the world. But then it was like, who was I before? And I had to figure that out. And now like I hang out with my dogs. I write. I meditate. I see friends. I cook. Like I have this really grateful life. I remember when my dad retired and he had worked so hard his whole life. And he said about a year after retirement, he said, I used to wonder what I would do after I retired. Now I can’t imagine how I ever had time to work. Yeah. Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. I love you. Wow. Wow. Well, speaking of times,

Bridgett: I wanted to talk about the differences, what you see.  i’m laughing i’m thinking about it i’m sorry it’s in my head the things that you see in the old episodes and then you think about them now and i was i watched the first scene and i think i don’t know why i found this so funny it’s it isn’t funny that your roommate skipped out on you in that first episode left you with rent but you said natalie it’s your day to make the coffee i’m like they make coffee for each other as fruit. I just, I thought, you know, now you’d go get you Starbucks or or you’d have your pod or your espresso or your curing. And I don’t know why I thought that was so funny. But like, what are some things that stand out to you that are so different from the 90s when you were making, like that are in the episodes that would not happen now?
Courtney: Well, no cell phones, right? Like, how do we find each other if you if you’re out somewhere and you miss each other it’s over um and then in that first episode when Alison like put something in the newspaper and people just come to her door right that’s crazy a young single woman that’s so crazy um how much rent was was making a laugh that was so interesting and it’s it i thought the clothes were going to be so embarrassing but they’ve all come back right actually look pretty fashionable yeah yeah you could do that yeah if you keep it long enough it comes back into style I’ve kept it comes back into style so the timing for the podcast is really good because those clothes are back in style I’m looking forward to now we’re doing I don’t know if you guys probably didn’t watch it in the beginning but the first 12 episodes it’s kind of eight nice kids trying to make it and we almost got canceled because it wasn’t really we I think our numbers were falling off after Melrose nothing was really happening and then Heather came on as a bad guy and Laura came on and it started to get more dramatic so that’s what I’m looking forward to like I’m looking forward to uh the apartment building blowing up um Marcia, what was Marcia’s name on the show? Kimberly. Kimberly, thanks. Take off the wig. Yeah, like I’m ready for Michael and Josie to stop doing like regular marriage fights and for him to get really mean and dark,
remember?

Courtney: Oh, yes. I’m excited for. I want the action to start. I’m ready. Oh, it was sweet. And I love watching these. It really brings back a lot of sweet memories, but I want things to get dramatic.

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 UP ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 23rd