Paul Giamatti has been racking up rave reviews and award nominations for his performance in The Holdovers, but what he’s most excited about is everyone tuning into his podcast where he talks about UFOs, Bigfoot, and even time travel thanks to Tom Hanks. Over the past few months, Giamatti’s audience has increased “threefold,” and he’s itching to get back to making new episodes.
Launched last year at SXSW, the Chinwag podcast came about thanks to Giamatti and philosophy professor Stephen Asma connecting over Zoom during the pandemic. As the two started to have more lengthy conversations about paranormal activity and extraterrestrials, they realized they might have something here. More importantly, it gave Giamatti a chance to talk about anything but himself or acting.
“I know from being interviewed over the years that I often get most excited when the conversation goes off topic and I get to talk about something other than me,” Giamatti told The Hollywood Reporter. “I get bored talking about myself, or a particular project, I gotta be honest.”
Thanks to Giamatti’s Hollywood connections, he was able to book celebrity guests who were also interested in discussing eclectic topics like monsters and haunted subway tunnels:
Giamatti and Asma have covered time travel with Tom Hanks, swapped ghost stories with Billy Bob Thornton, talked cults with Kathryn Hahn, investigated the Mandela effect with Patton Oswalt, listened to Amy Sedaris gush about Japanese subways, heard Don Cheadle share how religion helps tame the ego, covered Jungian archetypes with Stephen Colbert, and listened to Natasha Lyonne double down on her belief in extraterrestrials, ghosts and bigfoot.
Unfortunately, Giamatti has been tied up with the Oscar campaign for The Holdovers, but he’s ready to get back to talking weirdo topics for his much larger audience.
“I’ll be able to fully concentrate on it again soon, because for the past three months, my attention got completely taken away,” Giamatti said. “Hopefully all these things will come to fruition in different ways.”
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)