The Person Who Believed In Me with David Begnaud

Sarah Chalke and Jen Monroe met in kindergarten in North Vancouver and started making things together almost immediately — skits at birthday parties, plays recorded on their dads’ rented camcorders, a show they called “Saturday Afternoon Pre-Taped” because it was neither live nor at night like SNL. At sixteen Sarah was cast as Becky on Roseanne, and the first thing she asked her agent was whether the hiatus weeks would let her fly home, because she wasn’t taking the job if she couldn’t graduate with her friends. Years later, after a stretch in Los Angeles that had chewed her up — seven parts she fell in love with and didn’t get — she moved home to Vancouver. It was Jen who said let’s go back together. Six months, a friend’s sublet, a truck packed with things neither of them needed including a guitar Sarah still can’t play. They stayed seventeen and nineteen years respectively. Two months into that move Sarah got the Scrubs script at midnight with an audition at nine, because she’d gone to a concert with Jen rather than cancel. Jen told her she’s better when she doesn’t prepare, and ran the lines with her at one in the morning. In this conversation with David Begnaud, Sarah talks about her son Charlie at fifteen months, sent home from doctor after doctor and finally an emergency room, and the stack of iPhone photos she built on an iPad that got a specialist to stop on the second image and say he had it. She talks about going to Shonda Rhimes and asking for an episode, and the letter that came back months later from a mother who’d been watching. About the one fight she and Jen have had in forty-five years, which was about granola. And about what it means that nothing in her life feels real until she’s told Jen. Sarah Chalke stars in the Scrubs revival, now airing on ABC. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ Chapters 00:00:00 Intro: The iPad That Saved Her Son's Life 00:00:46 The Kindergarten Friend Who Changed Everything 00:01:43 Saturday Afternoon Pre-Taped: Making Sketches as Kids 00:03:59 The Roseanne Audition: Kissing Glenn Quinn at 16 00:09:37 The Move to LA: Jen's Push That Changed Everything 00:11:05 The Midnight Audition: Reading Scrubs at 1 AM 00:23:30 The Sister Who Wouldn't Take the Lead Without Her 00:28:11 Ten Days of Terror: Fighting for Charlie's Diagnosis 00:31:57 The Grey's Anatomy Episode That Saved Lives 00:39:54 The Scrubs Revival: Shooting an Hour From Home 00:43:46 Fostering 43 Dogs: Teaching Kids to Help 00:48:12 Frankie's Notes at Video Village 00:50:29 The Jens Set Her Up: Finding Love Again 00:55:59 The One Thing: Kids and the Question That Lingers 00:57:06 Rapid Fire: Race Walking, Drama Queen, and Texting Back Never 01:01:31 Thanks for Believing in Me Before I Did ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Sarah Chalke Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Supervising Editor: Joey Izzo Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Allison Childers, Arun Sebastian Theme Music: Slipstream CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

Ezra Frech was eleven, sitting on the couch watching the Rio Paralympics, when he decided what he was going to do with his life. He went and found his mother and asked whether she thought he could make the Tokyo 2020 team. He was unranked. The odds were close to nothing. She said yes. He started getting up at six to jump in the backyard, watching technique videos after school, building a team around himself. Five years later — the pandemic added one — he made it. The athlete he’d been watching on television that day was Roderick Townsend, the greatest Paralympic high jumper who has ever competed, who went a decade without losing. Years later Townsend became his coach. In practice he ran something called continuous makes: Ezra would drive ninety minutes to Orange County, warm up for an hour, and if he missed the first bar, practice was over and he drove home. Before competition the instruction was to not look at his parents in the stands, because seeing them would drop his shoulders. You can hug later. Three months after that, Ezra won his first world title and broke the world record. A year after that, two Paralympic golds in the same week. In this conversation with David Begnaud, Ezra talks about losing that world title three months before Paris, and the coach who flew from Arizona to Los Angeles every week until the Games to make sure it didn’t happen again. About the four-year-old on a preschool playground who kept apologizing to him for his leg. About dancing on a running blade he balances on by a couple of centimeters, because the safer prosthetic would have meant playing it safe. And about the pressure he puts on himself to look fine — which is the one thing in the hour he hesitates before answering. Ezra Frech is a two time Paralympic gold medalist and currently competing on ABC's Dancing with the Stars. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ Chapters 00:00:00 Intro: The Paralympic Athlete & DWTS Star Who Saw a Boatload of Potential 00:02:43 The Living Room Epiphany: I Can Do That 00:06:27 The Four-Year-Old on the Playground: You Don't Got to Be Sorry 00:20:55 The Script: Are You Curious About Ezra's Leg? 00:23:41 Everybody Stares at Everybody: Choosing Curiosity Over Judgment 00:25:36 The Zoo Animal Years: Feeling Like an Outsider 00:37:34 Dancing With the Stars "Team Footloose": Why He Shows His Prosthetic 00:40:08 Angel City Sports: Why LA Didn't Have What Oklahoma Did 00:45:46 Continuous Makes: You Miss, Practice Is Over 00:50:54 The World Title Lost Three Months Before Paris 01:07:28 Lean Into the Extreme: A Man of Extremes 01:15:32 Wisdom Comes From Hardship: The Nine-Year-Old on Ellen ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Ezra Frech Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Supervising Editor: Joey Izzo Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Allison Childers, Arun Sebastian Theme Music: Slipstream CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

Joe Manganiello was 25, newly sober, broke, and showing up to AA meetings as they started so he could leave the second they ended. A 78-year-old man in a tweed coat took him by the arm one day and said he'd like to take him to lunch. They went to an English tea house in Santa Monica. John Edward Robinson III ordered everything — the full afternoon tea, every dessert on the menu — then explained he was diabetic and would be watching Joe eat them. He knew Tennessee Williams. He knew Elizabeth Taylor. Joe went back to the next meeting so he could take John to lunch. Months later Joe picked him up at his house and found a collection of mug shots on the wall. They were John's: a San Francisco shooting-gallery heroin addict, two DUIs in a single day. Joe says that without the hand on his arm he doesn't stay in the rooms, and without the rooms he has none of the life that followed. John lived long enough to watch him go from working off the back of a construction truck to True Blood, and had people bring him Joe's magazines when he was bedridden. In this conversation with David Begnaud, Joe talks about the seven years his body tried to kill him — the rashes, the bleeding, the misdiagnosis, the month on his side, and the night Sofía Vergara had to authorize surgeons to remove his entire large intestine while he was unconscious. He talks about the avatar he built and then resented people for believing. About giving away his gun. About Finding Your Roots discovering that his father's father wasn't his father, and that he descends from a man named Plato Turner who fought in the American Revolution. About a Santeria ceremony in Ecuador and a week-long ritual in Cuba, and realizing only later whose gods those were. And about a sick chihuahua nobody would keep, who made him a caretaker again at the exact moment he'd stopped being one. Joe Manganiello's memoir Bloodlines is available now wherever books are sold. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ Chapters 00:00:00 Intro: The Sweet Little Old Man Who Grabbed His Arm 00:02:40 The Mug Shots and the Power of Change 00:04:15 Twenty-Five and Angry: Early Sobriety Struggles 00:10:07 Mount Lebanon and the FBI Dream 00:11:53 Misunderstood: The Avatar He Built 00:20:28 Upstream Swimming: Lessons From Dad 00:23:46 Finding Your Roots: The DNA Revelation 00:30:33 Thirteen Years of Silence 00:40:17 The Wedding and the Bleeding 00:44:15 Shutting Down Production: The Ambulance Call 00:46:09 The Night He Thought He'd Die By Sofía Vergara's Side 00:57:11 Deathstroke and the Will to Fight 00:59:09 Ecuador and the Cuban Shaman 01:09:20 Baited and Switched: Sofía Vergara Marriage Unravels 01:11:25 The Gun and the Dog Who Saved Him 01:15:18 Big Man, Little Dog: Defending Bubbles 01:17:18 Meeting Caitlin: The Pittsburgh Connection 01:19:46 The Storm Is Over ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Joe Manganiello Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Supervising Editor: Joey Izzo Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Allison Childers Theme Music: Slipstream YouTube Strategy & Packaging: David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

Heather McMahan used to stalk Joan Rivers' shows. She bartended across the street from a basement comedy club in Hell's Kitchen, so she knew where the unmarked back entrance was, and one Fat Tuesday she got off early and waited outside it. When Joan came out, the first thing she said was: oh my God, you're gorgeous. Then she handed her a string of Mardi Gras beads and gave her ten minutes she didn't owe her. Over the next few years, in book-signing lines and outside theaters, Joan kept telling her the same thing — keep going, you have a commercial look, go to LA. So she went. Within her first 24 hours in Los Angeles she'd been in a car accident and had an allergic reaction to a bad spray tan, which she read as the universe telling her to go home. Two weeks in, a bartender friend called to say Joan had just walked into a restaurant in Beverly Hills. Heather drove over, went to the table, said she'd taken the advice and moved, and declined the photo the assistant offered. On her way out, Joan came looking for her across the room: you've got chutzpah, you listened, you're going to make it. Heather got to the valet, called her father, and dry-heaved into the phone. In this conversation with David Begnaud, she talks about the father who mailed her sorority a list of ten reasons she should quit theater and join the Air Force, and who died of pancreatic cancer seven days after his diagnosis at 57. About writing him a million-dollar check she couldn't cover, and cashing it two years later. About self-financing all three of her specials rather than wait for permission, and getting the Netflix call from a wine cellar in Florence. About the Ryder Cup, and the death threats, and what Joan would have told her to do about it. And about the bee that keeps turning up — her father's sign, and, she discovered years later, Joan's emblem too. Heather McMahan's new special By a Thread premieres on Hulu on October 16, 2026. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ Chapters 00:00:00 Intro: The Woman Who Said You're Going to Make It 00:06:45 The Restaurant in Beverly Hills: Joan's Blessing 00:09:25 You Did the Work: Dropping Business Cards and Hustling 00:12:46 Wasted Potential: The Biggest Pet Peeve 00:15:12 Bouncing Back: Joan's Book and Life Lessons 00:17:47 Seven Days: When Dad Got His Diagnosis 00:21:44 The Son I Never Had: Turning Grief Into Comedy 00:28:12 Self-Financing Dreams: The Risk That Paid Off 00:31:28 Change Your Attitude: Dad's Life Lesson 00:46:28 The Ryder Cup Controversy: Growing Balls 00:53:39 Boston Robin: The Mom Who Reads Lines 00:56:50 IVF Journey: What Nobody Tells You 01:04:37 Madison Square Garden Dreams: What's Next 01:06:54 The Bee Connection: Dad and Joan's Shared Symbol 01:07:45 Get Up and Get Moving: The Joan Rivers Takeaway ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Heather McMahan Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Allison Childers, Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

James Brown was in fourth grade when a teacher saw him reading a book called So You Want to Be a Doctor and told him he should consider another career. “Kids like you, she said, do not do well in math and science.” He never told his mother. He carried it alone, and it held him back for years. Then two middle school teachers in Washington, D.C., pulled him aside with a different message: honey, you can do this. Simple as that. Deep Southern care wrapped in belief he hadn't heard before. He started to think maybe he could. At 14 he was cut from one basketball team and kept by another coach who saw him miss an undefended layup in front of the whole school. The students laughed. The coach, Don Fugle, kept him anyway because he paid attention. A year later Morgan Wooten recruited him to DeMatha, handed him three sheets of fundamentals, and told him to pick one: all county, all state, or all America. James took the third sheet and worked it religiously. He became one of the best high school players in the country. He was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in 1973 and cut at the end of training camp. He went home and didn't leave his bedroom for two weeks. In this conversation with David Begnaud, he talks about the lie he told Morgan Wooten at basketball camp that spiraled into a Friday afternoon confrontation about integrity. About his mother calling the gym to say practice ran too late and if it happened again, JB couldn't play. About Senator Ted Kennedy flying him to Capitol Hill to pitch Harvard. And about leaving Fox for CBS on a handshake, turning down a counter offer because his mother taught him your word is your bond. James Brown is a three time Emmy Award winner, Pro Football Hall of Famer, and host of CBS's The NFL Today. He has hosted more Super Bowls than anyone in television history. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ Chapters 00:00:00 Intro: The Coach Who Called Out the Lies 00:05:04 The Ray Rice Commentary and Speaking Truth 00:08:43 The Fourth Grade Teacher Who Said Kids Like You Don't Succeed 00:14:37 The Two Teachers Who Said You Can Do This 00:15:55 The White Shadow: The Coach Who Kept the Kid Who Couldn't Play 00:20:49 Morgan Wooten and the Three Sheets: The Roadmap to Excellence 00:37:40 Cut Twice: The NBA Dreams That Didn't Come True 00:47:49 The Lime Green Suit and the IBM Interview 00:52:10 The Answer Can Be Found in Love 00:53:49 Katrina, Alfreda, and Unconditional Love 01:00:22 The Bank Is Closed: Leaving Fox for CBS 01:17:52 We Got Them Right Where We Want Them: Down Six with 30 Seconds Left 01:20:53 Come Back in 10 Years: How Morgan Wooten Measured Success ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: James Brown Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Allison Childers, Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

Howie Mandel got expelled from high school in Toronto for calling a contractor out of the Yellow Pages and asking for a 25-foot addition to the school library. He scheduled the appointment during math, because that classroom's window looked out on the field, and then — this is the part he finds most revealing about himself — he didn't tell a single other person. He sat alone watching a man with a clipboard and a tape measure, waiting for a joke nobody else knew was happening. He was thrown out of a different school for retrieving a bent Snickers bar from the swimming pool with his mouth. He has no diploma. By the early eighties he was a working comedian in Los Angeles, and the Tonight Show booker had told him flatly he'd never be on: not Johnny's cup of tea. So when he heard Joan Rivers — then guest-hosting for Carson and out-rating him — would be working out her monologue at the Comedy Store, he called Mitzi Shore and asked for the 9:55 spot, the five minutes directly before her. He woke up that day with a high fever. He went anyway, and the adrenaline carried him, and she passed him on the stairs and said he was so funny. Then she talked to Mitzi for forty-five minutes while he slid down the wall outside and lay on the steps waiting. When she finally came out, she gave him a phone number. He did the Tonight Show that week. McCauley called the next morning. He went on twenty-two more times with Johnny. In this conversation with David Begnaud, he talks about being diagnosed with OCD in his forties only because his wife gave him an ultimatum, and about accidentally disclosing it live on Howard Stern's show — convinced in the elevator down that his career was finished, until a stranger on the street whispered me too. He talks about the half hour he spent punching a locked doorknob in Malibu. About why he believes no one should ever apologize for a joke, and why he made an apology video anyway. And about what Joan gave him beyond the booking, which was permission not to care what the room thought. Howie Mandel is the longest running judge on America’s Got Talent, available to watch on NBC and Peacock now. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ Chapters 00:00:00 "The majority of the world does not have a sense of humor" 00:03:18 The Johnny Carson litmus test 00:04:40 Toronto, 1977: stand-up on a dare 00:06:42 The contractor and the school library 00:12:02 The Snickers bar in the pool 00:13:26 "I just wanted to have a group laugh" 00:17:02 Kelly Ripa and the apology video 00:20:38 Addicted to social media 00:26:30 The 9:55 PM spot and the fever 00:31:57 Lying on the stairs, waiting for Joan 00:33:00 The Tonight Show, twice in two weeks 00:36:30 Joan's last show and Chris Rock's 62 seconds 00:43:00 Nothing is too soon: laughing at his father's funeral 00:58:28 The Howard Stern disclosure, and a stranger who says "me too" ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Howie Mandel Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

Marlee Matlin was twelve, performing at a children's theater for the deaf in Chicago, when Henry Winkler accepted an invitation to stop by on his day off. She performed the whole show at him. Afterward she walked up and asked whether she could be an actor in Hollywood, like he was. Before he could answer, her mother pulled him aside and asked him to dampen his enthusiasm — tell her to go to college, get an education, dream other dreams, because Hollywood was not going to be kind to a deaf girl. Winkler looked at her and said she was talking to the wrong man. Marlee didn't learn about that exchange for years. When she did, she says it broke her heart for her mother, who wanted what most mothers want. She also says Winkler rescued her from not believing in herself. They became pen pals, and every letter she sent, he answered — which is how she knew the friendship was real, and, she says, how she came to know she was worthy. A few years after that first meeting she won the Academy Award for Children of a Lesser God, at 21, the youngest woman ever to win Best Actress and the first deaf performer to win at all. She had learned about the nomination from a phone at a rehab center, where her counselor congratulated her and then told her to go clean her room. When the relationship that followed the Oscar collapsed, she turned up at Winkler's door with the statuette in her hand and told him she had this, but no boyfriend and nowhere to live. He and his wife Stacey said stay the weekend. She stayed two years. In this conversation with David Begnaud, Marlee talks about the year she presented the next Best Actor award and chose to speak the nominees' names aloud — a decision she made alone, to show producers she could, and one the deaf community read as a betrayal. She shut them out for fifteen years and says she still carries something like PTSD from it. She talks about what her parents never knew, and what she never told them. And about the tough love from Winkler that she resented at the time and now says was right, including the morning he told her that no, she could not skip an hour of work for her son's first day of kindergarten. Marlee Matlin is executive producer of the feature documentary, Siren: The Voices of Shelley Beattie, available now on HBO. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Marlee Matlin Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

Chris Olsen has more than 14 million followers on TikTok. At 19 he spent close to a year in a rehab in Boca Raton — six months inpatient with three group sessions a day, then nine months of treatment while bussing tables at a restaurant next to the mall. The first assignment every new arrival got was to write down their ten most shameful secrets. He read his aloud, and the therapist turned to the room and asked whether anyone thought he'd been honest. He had to keep reading them, day after day, until he cried. Her name isn't Lizzie, and she didn't want her photo shown. She was the person he was most afraid of in the building, and he later named his memoir I Think My Therapist Hates Me after what he assumed she thought of him. What she told him years later was that she can usually tell from the start how a patient will do, that she didn't see it for him, and that she was harder on him than on others because she believed he could start over. He's still her patient. He only recently learned she was 26 at the time, following a philosophy her own elders insisted was the only thing standing between her patients and death. She's since left that center and opened a private practice, and the two of them now spend a good deal of time undoing what she taught him. It got him sober. It also locked in the idea that he owed the world a lifetime of making other people feel better — a complicated foundation for a career built on strangers' approval. In this conversation with David Begnaud, he talks about being 14 at a family weekend at his mother's rehab, told by a therapist to make her feel better while she cried in front of the room, and deciding in that chair to stop feeling. About scrolling past a thousand kind comments to find the cruel one, because that's the one that matches the story he was told about himself. And he arrives, mid-conversation, at something he hadn't put together before: that he and his mother each had a harder time with the other sober than drunk. Chris Olson's memoir, I Think My Therapist Hates Me, is available now. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Chris Olson Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

Thomasin McKenzie grew up in a house in Wellington where everyone acted — her parents coached it, and her grandmother is one of New Zealand's most beloved actors. She'd watched her parents leave for work overseas often enough to know what the job cost, and when she graduated high school her grandmother was relieved she hadn't gone to drama school. Then at 13 she overheard her mother coaching other girls through an audition for a film called Consent, about a New Zealand woman who was raped by police officers as a teenager and not believed in court. Thomasin asked if she could try out. She got the role, and it changed what she thought acting was for. She chose her father, Stuart, as the person who believed in her — not for a piece of advice but for showing up. He was on set with her from the time she was six. What he said before auditions and exams alike was the same thing: enjoy the process. No pressure to win. He was living with her in Prague during Jojo Rabbit when a role she'd already seen herself in went to someone else, and he was there through years of anxiety severe enough that at 21 she couldn't attend her own film's premiere. He never made her feel bad about it. In this conversation with David Begnaud, she talks about what a panic attack actually feels like from the inside, and why it's nearly impossible to describe once it passes — like trying to define a temperature. She' also talks about walking away from Top Gun: Maverick for a smaller film about an unsolved murder case that has since been solved… about being told by a director to stop finding the hardship in every character and find the joy instead… and about moving to London at 22 specifically to stop leaning on her father so hard — which is how she came to see him as a person rather than someone who's supposed to have the answers. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Thomasin McKenzie Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Kylee Anderson, Maxim Trofimenko, Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

Chelsea Handler was nine when her oldest brother Chet died — July 10th, in a hiking accident — and she came back to school in the fall to a town full of people asking if she was okay. She hated it. So she told everyone she'd been cast in a movie with Goldie Hawn. Kids started asking for autographs. She doubled down. She wrote to Goldie Hawn asking for a signed photo, and Goldie Hawn sent one. The lie eventually collapsed on its own, because there was no movie, and she says the humiliation of being found out was worse than the pity she'd been trying to escape. Her third-grade teacher, Carol Schectman, watched all of it happen. She could see that a family that had lost its firstborn had scattered into its own separate corners of grief, and that nobody was checking on the youngest of six. She'd drop by the house on a Tuesday night for no clear reason — Chelsea understood decades later that she was taking the temperature of the household. And she'd pull her aside and tell her she was special, without specifying what for. In this conversation with David Begnaud, Chelsea talks about the brother who carried her up the driveway pretending not to know she was faking sleep, and opened her bedroom window in winter because she liked the cold. About her father, who responded to the death by suing the friends Chet was hiking with, and who in her nine-year-old accounting disappeared along with him. About going to therapy at 40 and learning that what she'd felt at nine wasn't grief so much as betrayal because he'd said he was coming back. Thirty years passed and she assumed she'd never get to say thank you. Then a brief mention on Chelsea’s Netflix show led them to reconnect, giving them eight more years together. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Chelsea Handler Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Kylee Anderson, Maxim Trofimenko, Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast