Once We Were Spacemen

Mekia Cox doesn’t do anything halfway. Eight months after having a baby, she joined The Rookie and spent her first week sprinting after a stunt double and (literally) getting thrown by Nathan.

She’s been going all out since age seven, when she started performing professionally. During one audition, she gave so much that the only note she received was to calm down. That commitment extends to a specific sound she makes on set. Nathan enjoys watching new guest stars hear it for the first time.

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In this episode, we learn just how close Alan came to spending time in a military prison. Spoiler, it was close. It was very close.

Meanwhile, Nathan’s home seems to be conspiring against him. From critters (living and dead) to rogue appliances, it’s one battle after another. Sit back, relax, and get ready to learn absolutely nothing.

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Bruce Campbell got his start hauling cable and holding cue cards in Detroit, back when the likes of Frank Sinatra were shooting car commercials as a favor to a friend. Decades later, he can tell you which lens is best suited for handsome actors, how voices get ruined in the mix, and why he no longer touches his watch on set. He's also one of the few actors who can talk back to Sam Raimi.

His new film, Ernie & Emma, is what Bruce calls "a return to truly independent filmmaking." He's bringing it to Alamo Drafthouse theaters nationwide through November 14. Tickets at Drafthouse.com.

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Alan Tudyk has been cemented as a Disney Legend, complete with a letter from a former Disney CEO… no, the other one. He wrote three acceptance speeches for the ceremony. The two that were cut for reasons of self-preservation get performed here instead.

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Before Nathan and Alan ever set foot on a spaceship, Loni Peristere had to build the thing… that thing being Serenity. As Firefly's visual effects supervisor and co-founder of Zoic Studios, Loni has spent years chasing the gap between a shot that looked cool and a shot audiences would actually believe. That instinct carried him into an Emmy-winning career that now has him serving as a director and executive producer on House of the Dragon.

Loni sits back down with the guys he first got to know on the set of Firefly, and even owns up to the joke he once played on Joss Whedon.

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Once We Were Spacemen was only ever supposed to run sixteen episodes. Forty-something episodes later, Nathan and Alan finally cash in that long-threatened break with a highlight reel pulled from the archives. In this episode, they run back all the bits and segments that have gotten them to Episode 43.

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For twenty years, Nathan, Alan, and Colton Dunn have been gaming buddies. So much so that Nathan kept a sticky note handy during this recording so he wouldn't slip and call Colton by his gamer tag.

Even after two decades of friendship, there's apparently more to learn, like why Colton once learned to juggle, or how he spent a full year of his childhood reigning as actual royalty.

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Being interesting isn't enough – it's better to be interested, especially in things like overheard phone conversations and restaurant ordering systems. Nathan and Alan were once waiters who had to memorize the same brutal numeric code to input food orders. Recalling the digits for sour cream makes us want to say... all that for that?

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Early in her run playing Officer Celina Juarez on The Rookie, Lisseth Chavez accidentally introduced herself as a famous pop star. Nobody has let her forget that.

By then she'd already spent years working steadily across television, though none of it stopped her from taking meticulous notes on set. Long before that, an agent called to ask how she'd feel about a drastic change to her look. She said yes without needing to think about it, and the offers that came afterward were worth the new ‘do.

Follow Once We Were Spacemen wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to extended episodes a whole week early by joining our Patreon. Once We Were Spacemen is a Collision33 production. Stay spacey!

Once, Alan set off on a camping trip he called The Quest for Freedom, chasing wide-open spaces and total independence from anything resembling a girlfriend. What he found instead involved a borrowed truck and a night that took kaleidoscopic turns.

Nathan spent seasons of his childhood wishing for freedom from the Canadian winters, an impulse that turns out to run in the family. Long before him, his father made his own early bids for independence in Edmonton, including a very public verdict on a neighbor's Sunday turkey and a nickel dispute with his own aunt that ended badly for a wagon full of groceries.

Follow Once We Were Spacemen wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to extended episodes a whole week early by joining our Patreon. Once We Were Spacemen is a Collision33 production.