You're listening to it's been a minute from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders. I gotta say, all the news this week, it has been a lot. A Supreme Court Justice retired. Russia is knocking on Ukraine's door. In a pretty missing way. The stock market has been all over the place, but mostly down. It's been a week. Sometimes in weeks like these, I think it's helpful to take some time and talk about things that aren't the news at all. And to have conversations that kind of just meander. Like this chat, I taped a bit earlier this week. I'm eating during this because I know there's no way this is gonna be on the podcast. What do you mean? When you say you're rolling is when I'll stop eating. I'm rolling. You're wrong. At Sam Richardson and Ben Schwartz. And that little interlude about a last minute meal. It very quickly turned into a pitch. Oh, by the way, Sam and I want to promote our podcast every single crunch. So Cap'n Crunch has a backstory, of course, right? Yeah. And he didn't just start as a captain. That's exactly correct. And there's different people in the crunch family. He's, of course, the captain, so the same way to say it's a drama as well as a comedy. Well, it's because it's important that you have both sides of it, you know what I mean? So it's a comedy, but it's a comedy that will make you cry. That's silliness. That ability to just meander into fun, that spirit of improv. It is a big part of Sam and Ben's new show on Apple TV plus. The after party, it is a whodunit murder mystery, and it takes place right after a 15 year high school reunion. One of those classmates being a celebrity. His name is Xavier. He comes, makes a big deal. It has an after party at his home, and he's killed there, and everybody is a suspect who shows up. And one of the detectives on the case, none other than Tiffany Haddish. Did anyone here actually witness Xavier's murder? No, ma'am. Officer. The murderer did. Everyone else doesn't know what happened. Because we're all stars of our own movie. And she means almost literally stars of their own movie. Sam Richardson and Ben Schwartz, they play two of those former classmates in the after party. And they are now two suspects. And over the course of the season, each suspect gets their own episode, told from their own perspective, each in the spirit of a specific film genre. I began by asking Sam Richardson about his episode. Sam, your character is telling detective Tiffany Haddish, his telling of the events, but it is told through the, I don't know, through the lens of RomCom. A RomCom. Kind of awesome. Yeah. What was it like to make that episode to make literally a RomCom about a murder? It was really fun. 'cause it's also the first episode of the series, so it sets the ground for the expectations of how the genres are going to play and you know it's not as bold or it's crazy as genre as like an action or you know as a musical. So it kind of lends itself to the sweet romance of it and sort of the expectations and sort of the things that also match the character. So it was like really fun to kind of get to play with those like classic like sort of like Tom Hanks, you know, Hugh Grant and charming woe is me, I shucks kind of guy. A week ago, she sent me an email, asked me to come. And it had a smiley face emoji. What does that mean? A name. What's going on, man? It's been like two years. And then like to have been as my RomCom sidekick or best friend, it was great. And then to play across from Zoe, who was so brilliantly talented like a wonderful person that was just like so much fun. Isn't it so crazy to be here again after all these years? You know what? It's not for me because I'm here every day. Oh wow. Your vice principal? Yep. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't even see that I didn't look at your name tag because just looking at you from the chin up 'cause I'm so respectful. Such a gentleman. You know, to get to do that and I have to be first off and I kind of set the pace of what I think and self point of view is was like an interesting sort of exercise. So band before your episode in the spirit of the musical, were you a musical guy? I am, Sam Sanders. I love musicals. My mom has been a Bronx music teacher for 54 years. So music and musicals are a huge part of our lives, but I was always when I was in high school, I was too nervous. I don't know if Sam you were like this. Same was probably pretty cool. I know it was pretty cool in high school, but it's like, I was afraid to audition for the musical because I was afraid I wouldn't get it, and I would have failed and I would have been embarrassed and felt really bad. So it took to college and auditioning for the improv team for me to finally be okay to fail. But in high school, I didn't audition for anything acting was because I was too afraid it wouldn't work. And look at you now. I mean, how about it? Talking about your musical. On national public right now, I get my own musical..