Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. My guest Rachel Bloom loves musical theater and not just

the good stuff. I can't choose that like I love musical theater even when like I know

the lyrics could be better or even when like the emotion for this isn't earned or even when

it feels kind of paint by numbers like a big orchestral swell or like a bunch of people

tap dancing. It makes me smile. Fair enough. It's Bullseye.

Coming up I'll talk to Rachel Bloom when a golden globe earlier this year for her show

Crazy X Girlfriend. She'll tell me why she relates to Rebecca Bunch the character she plays

on the show. As someone who let love throughout my life made me feel powerless, disenfranchised,

crazy, obsessed, the opposite of empowered. I really connected with the premise and I didn't

care like if it was PC or not. To me it felt truthful. I don't care if like oh but that's

not like a likable character like I don't it's true. She and I will talk about what the musical

elements bring to her show. What she's done to gain confidence in the television industry

and what it takes to get an enormous pretzel off the ground with her sitting in it. It's

so funny because you write in a script. She sits in a giant pretzel and it hoists her to

the sky like she's Betty Boop sitting on the moon and it's like okay so we're going

to need $40,000 to lift the pretzel in the air. We're going to need stuntmen to strap you

into the pretzel. Like it's so easy to just like bit by bit, like write it down and then

all of these things have to happen. Plus Esperanza's spawning will tell us about a piece of music

that helped her realize the joy in facing challenges and I'll tell you about a dumb movie

that I love. That's all coming up on Bullseye. Let's go.

It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn and Rachel Bloom won a Golden Globe. She seemed legitimately

...