Rhett & Link: Battling YouTube sensations, keeping the team together
Like so many, reporter Geoff Edgers has been grounded by the coronavirus. So he decided to launch an Instagram Live interview show.
Every Friday afternoon, Edgers hosts “Stuck With Geoff.” So far, that has included Graham Nash, Jamie Lee Curtis and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels.
Recently, Edgers chatted with comedians and “Good Mythical Morning” hosts Rhett & Link (aka Rhett McLaughlin and Charles Neal III).
Q: I just want to explain what these two guys do. They are YouTube sensations. They’re intelligent and funny. They can play music. They talk about serious things. They entertain my 10-year-old and entertain me. They have a podcast and they eat a lot of weird combinations of food. Is that is a fair assessment?
Rhett: Yeah, I do appreciate that when you say YouTube sensations, a lot of times it needs to come with a disclaimer. And I’m glad the first thing you said after that was intelligent because ...
Link: ... we split that intelligence between the two of us. So it’s kind of like a handoff.
Q: Let’s go back to these 10-year-olds. They watch YouTube endlessly and see those guys playing the video games and they’re just screaming. I don’t want to slam any of those fellows, but why is this such a sensation?
Link: We’ve done it a little bit like, you know, when our show’s over, the camera keeps rolling and that’s another show called “Good Mythical MORE” where it’s even looser. And we can try things that we’re horrible at, like playing video games, but our fans just watch us because we’re so horrible at it.
Q: You started your show in 2012 and it’s hugely popular. How do you feel when you see people come along on the medium you’ve built in many ways, doing something not great, and yet they’re very successful?
Link: Honestly, I just try to stay grateful that somehow we’re still relevant. We’ve met enough people who we judge based on their content. And then realized, “Oh, this is actually a nice person who’s really dedicating themselves to this.” I can be critical of it, but what do I have to gain?
Q: I have a long list of people who have been partners in this world. Real brothers like the Smothers Brothers and the Louvin Brothers. And then creative partners like Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Then at a certain point the team breaks up. Do you guys argue? Is there ever a point where one of you says, “You know what, screw it. I’m going solo.”
Link: We’ll have creative arguments and disagreements, and when it gets heated, we can start to tell who cares about this particular issue more and know the person. Just kind of defer if it means that much to you. Navigating the emotions associated with being in a creative partnership as long as we have and the pressures we put on ourselves ... emotions can run high. We just have to talk about it, and it comes back to having those friendship conversations.
Rhett: It’s most relatable to a marriage, honestly. And we’ve both been married to our wives — you just celebrated 20 years, I’m about to celebrate 20 years. Of course, we’ve known each other way longer than that. But I think in the way you interact with a spouse, the most healthy relationships have high frequency but low amplitude conflict. I think that is how we operate. It goes back, much like a marriage, to an oath. We did a blood oath when we were 14. We were in a cow pasture. We had these two rocks — one was a little rock and one was a big rock. And you could only speak if you were on the little rock, and then you could speak freely if you were on the big rock.
Link: A very sterile environment for bloodletting.
Rhett: So we’re talking about what we’re going to do with our lives. And then we found the sharpest rock we could find. It was not safe or sterile. We’re in a cow pasture next to this cesspool where they bathe. Then we cut our palms but actually didn’t end up putting them together. I think we just put them on a sheet of paper a little bit.
Link: It was a blood signature.
Rhett: It was in his wallet and then he lost his wallet. It’s a sore subject. But anyway, we operate on this unspoken thing in the same way you get in a fight with your wife. But we know we’re committed to this marriage and we’re going to get through this. There’s this unspoken commitment to each other and to the things we want to do.