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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast More of what You

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Here weekday Afternoons on the Drive.
Created by Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning

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Kurt Smeaton. You know from Ship's
Creek Children. Ruin Everything is his new

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half hour comedy that follows him and
his his wife and their new adventures of

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having kids when they're not necessarily used
to it. Is that a fair assessment?

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Totally fair assessment. You know you
have kids, you know you have

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a relationship and with just two adults, and then when you add start adding

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kids, it changes everything. A
lot of stuff gets changed in for the

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worst. But there's also a lot
of beautiful moments they get added too,

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and that's what it shows about.
I don't know if you ever saw the

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comedian Gallagher's routine where he talks about
having a child for the first time,

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and he talks about how you know
your friends that you to party with call

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up and say, hey, you
want to go out. We'll go to

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dinner, we'll go dancing, we'll
drive, we'll pay, and you say

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no, And then he threw out
an anchor with a diaper on it thunk

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on the stage. We have a
baby. Yeah exactly, Yeah, that's

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that's you know, those relationships,
you know, it's funny. I had

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one of those, a pair of
friends like that, and I was just

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hit with them last night because they
just had a baby, they had their

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first baby, and they're in their
forties now, and I'm like, oh,

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you you've really, you've really,
you've gotten used to your lifestyle with

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the drinking wine and having nice furniture, and that's all that's all going to

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get wreck someone's And I incidentally a
Kurtch meetings with us, you know him

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from Ship's Creek, and his newest
children ruined everything. It's on the c

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W. I don't have children,
so I can kind of laugh at this

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too. But friends of mine will
get into my car and my car almost

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has three hundred thousand miles on it, but you'd never know, and they

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say, oh, my goodness,
how do you keep such a good care

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of your car? And I just
look at them, saying, I don't

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have kids. It's it's sometimes I
look back down and it's like a landfill.

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Yeah, like driving, Look what
has happened? What? How is

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there an apocalypse in just the back
seat and the front seats fine. Uh

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yeah, it's it's wild. It's
uh yeah. They definitely age cards very

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very quickly. And you know what, I do love going on road trips

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with kids. I do love We're
we're I'm up here in Canada. We're

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driving out to the East Coast in
a couple of weeks, and you know

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it's you know, they have their
eye uh, their their phones and stuff

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like that they can tune into,
but we generally put that stuff away and

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just try to chat and listen to
music and hang out in the car.

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And I love it. Actually,
well good because the show is is somewhat

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semi autobiographical, isn't it It is
it is you know that. I'll tell

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you when I first pitched the show
and we got into development with it,

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I had two kids, and the
show, the first season is about should

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we have a third kid? And
by the time we got the green light,

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I had a third kid, Lee
I had I had. That was

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a discussion that was going into my
house the entire time, And that was

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an argument and a discussion and the
result a third child. I was gonna

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say it was an inspiration. Hey, I better get more kids before absolutely

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show. Kids are so expensive,
I might as well. Mark with them

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now might get some money out of
this, but it can also be touching

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when you when you have kids.
Absolutely. I mean there's so many beautiful,

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beautiful moments, and I think the
show does a good job of trying

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to show that as well. And
we wanted a show, you know.

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I first was inspired to the show. I read an article about, you

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know, how happiness is greater in
people who don't have kids than people who

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do have kids, and it was
like, you know, you have more

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time, more money to yourself,
you're more sleep and I was like,

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oh, that's true. And I
had just become a father. I was

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like, what have I done?
But there was something in that stuff that

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they didn't include, which is all
these beautiful moments you have your kids first

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steps. You know that my youngest
daughter still has it, like her a

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funny voice, she still mispronounces words
and it's so cute. And like I

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said, these road trips where we're
all together, there's these beautiful, wonderful

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moments that you can't get anywhere else, and it almost makes up for it

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all the stuff that they write.
Golden Globe and an Emmy Award winning Kurt's

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Meeting is with us. His newest
creation is Children Ruin Everything on the CW.

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It's also from the same media company
that brought you Modern Family, Arrested

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Development, and How I Met Your
Mother. So the production qualities is pretty

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high. Yeah, we've got a
beautiful looking show, We've got a great

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cast, and we have a lot
of fun making it. You know that

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the cast has really become close over
the years, and they sort of act

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like a little family. You know, they really care, love love each

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other and care about each other.
And I think the fun that they have

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on set really translates to the screen
ly well. In that production company,

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it's a new metric media. They're
very good. Everybody seems to know what

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they're doing, from the cameras guys, to the editors to the writers.

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They all seem to really know what
they're doing. Yeah, these are season

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season veterans, and you know a
lot of parents, a lot of parents

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in that crew and in that company, and so they you know, this

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is a special show for them too. Although it's funny, you know it's

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every year you give out a crew
gift, right, you get like something

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for the whole crew, like maybe
a jacket or a hat or something like

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that, and it's tough because people
don't necessarily want to walk around with a

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sweater that says children ruin everything.
The context of a TV show, isn't

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there. I'm just like, who's
that jerk? So we have to get

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creative with the crew gifts sometimes,
but yeah, we have a good time.

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This may be a sensitive issue.
But how are you working around the

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actor's strike at this point or was
a lot of this produced prior to the

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strike. It was all produced prior
to the strike. Now we're up here

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and I ended up making the show, and so the we're we're with a

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different union in a different Okay,
okay, but there we go. Yeah,

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but I do want to say absolutely
support the the SAG and the w

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GA, and they're fighting the good
fight, and we're all watching up here

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very closely and paying attention to that. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't

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want to go to to I didn't
want to. I was treading lightly,

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as you could tell. But I
was just curious. One of those curiosities

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of mine, Kurt Smeaton is with
us, how much do you get how

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much say do you get in the
writing itself? Oh I'm the final say

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Okay, So it's it's great.
I'm in the I hired the writers who

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we're in the room together. We
we we sort of talk about what are

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the things that we find funny about, you know, raising kids, what

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are the things that kids ruined?
And you know, like we'll say,

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like the confidence, so you know, I'm not as confident as I was

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because you know I And so we'll
try to com up with a story about,

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you know, how children have ruined
your confidence and how maybe sometimes they

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can make you feel more confident.
Or weekends, you know, when one

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episode it's just about you know,
I used to have you know, I'd

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be done work on Friday, I'd
have all that time to myself. And

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now it's just like I finished work
on Friday, and I've got another busier,

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harder job to do on the weekends, and I'm looking forward to Monday

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to get some time off from that. So we just sort of, you

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know, we talk about all those
things that are different now that we have

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kids, and we try to come
up with some some fun stories. And

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then I ultimately, you know,
I'm the big bossman. I get final

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say, I get to crush people's
spirits and destroy their ideas and make them

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mind. Kurt's meeting is with us. The name of the show is children

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Ruin Everything and in your personal life. Are you at the point now where

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sports and piano and dance and other
extra curricular activities are starting to take over?

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Oh, it's taken over. My
kids are now thirteen, ten and

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six, so they're you know,
it's it's almost getting to the point though.

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My oldest, like he's at overnight
camp right now, he's away for

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the week. He you know,
he can get himself to his own activities

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in some instances, like he's kind
of has more autonomy. And the ten

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year olds getting there as well.
But yeah, we've got you know,

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you go through phases when they're really
little. You have all these giant apparatuses

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in your house, you know,
the you have the circle of neglect,

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and you've got like the you know, all these big plastic a big plastic

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easel and all these big plastic things. And I to get older, those

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things go to the curb. Yeah, you give them to some other parents.

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You know, the stroller goes away. All these big sort of like

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items that take up space get moved. And your kids, you know,

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they're drawing and coloring and playing on
the iPad or playing video games or whatever,

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and so that that stuff takes up
much less space. So I feel

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like in the last four or five
years, I've just gotten so much of

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my house back. Well, in
your house, you can watch Kurt Smeaton's

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new c W comedy series Children Ruin
Everything. We thank you for bringing the

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story to us and for joining us
today, Kurt. They thank you so

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much. Early, appreciate your time. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee

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Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live

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weekday afternoons from five to seven.
And iHeartMedia presentation.