Jake Shane started out posting viral skits on TikTok, and went on to his hit podcast, Therapuss, where he interviews superstars from Charli XCX to Selena Gomez. Now, he’s on his way to superstardom himself — after making his Broadway debut, he acted alongside Maya Hawke and Louis Pullman in the new film Wishful Thinking (which just debuted at SXSW), and is developing a semi-autobiographical comedy series at Hulu.
“Doing this feels natural,” Jake Shane says of his burgeoning acting career. He’s seen here at The Rolling Stone Studio, live at SXSW.
Pooneh Ghana for Rolling Stone
In a new episode of the Rolling Stone Studio, live at South by Southwest, Shane talks about making his movie debut, what he learned on the Hacks set, his fears of everything “going away,” and much more. To watch the whole interview, press play below. Some highlights from the discussion follow.
Shane was nervous on his first day of shooting Wishful Thinking — and says the film’s lead actress, Maya Hawke, walked him through the basics of being on a film set. “I was super, super, super nervous,” Shane says. “My first scene was just me and Maya alone, and I was so scared … She was so welcoming and so kind. If I didn’t know something she would tell me. Just film stuff … Like, you really don’t stop until they yell ‘cut.’ It’s just very little things like that that I really wasn’t aware of.”
Shane says the biggest difference between Wishful Thinking and his guest spot on Hacks was that on a movie, everyone’s new together — which leveled the playing field. “On Hacks, everyone had known each other for years and years and years,” he says. “So you’re stepping into a family, whereas when you’re shooting a movie, you’re kind of maybe creating this new family … In Hacks, I felt a little more, maybe a little more intimidated … On [Wishful Thinking] I felt like, okay, everyone here is new to this set, kind of.”
Acting was what he always wanted — but he got in his own way for years. “I was so obsessed with image and being cool and wanting to be perceived a certain way,” he says. “I was unmedicated, honestly, which sounds silly, but … getting on medication really changed my life. I got on medication, I think, in 2020 and that’s, I think, when I felt a shift. And then I took a theater class my senior year of college and I was like, fuck, I really miss doing this … I have my most fun when I do this. Why don’t I do this? … I was trying to be something that didn’t come to me naturally. Doing this feels natural.”
There was a lot of improv on Wishful Thinking, and Shane says director Graham Parkes tailored scenes to him as the shoot went on. “What’s so beautiful about the way Graham directed it was that he got to know me as we shot,” Shane says. “If the script was already written, right before we would shoot a scene, he’d be like, ‘How would you say this? Would you wanna say this differently?’ … So we weren’t super married to that. And I think that’s what makes it so, so great.”
The hardest part of transitioning to TV: learning to live without instant gratification, while battling a constant feeling that everything is about to disappear. “I have really bad OCD of everything going away,” Shane says. “So I like everything to move very fast. And TV takes forever, as people say. Even when I film a good podcast episode … I’m like, ‘can we put it out next week?’ Even though we have four scheduled ahead of it. I’m so scared that something bad is gonna happen … I have this impending doom of everything going away … This past year especially, I’ve been learning to live with patience.”
Shane traces that fear back to a specific moment in eighth grade, in a Claire’s on the Upper West Side. “It’s where you get your ears pierced if you want an infection,” he says. “I was in a Claire’s and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I feel happy right now. I feel happy.’ And then … I just had such a horrible summer … And I, in that moment, was like, ‘I am never, ever saying that I’m happy again.’ So that is why I love the song ‘Happy and Sad’ by Kacey Musgraves. It’s one of my favorite songs of all time.”
Shane says his fear of abandonment extends to his followers, whom he thinks of as friends — friends who could leave. “I’m so scared of people leaving me,” he says. “Because I feel like the people that follow me, I feel like they’re my friends. I’ve had friends leave me. So I feel like I’m so scared of my friends leaving me. That’s what I sit with all the time.”
He insists that what he does on his podcast isn’t journalism — and says he doesn’t care if celebrities use his show to avoid tougher interviews. “I think it is insulting to journalists to say what I do is journalism,” Shane says. “I’m not a journalist. There are real journalists out there asking real thoughtful, hard questions. What I am having with people is a conversation … I want to create a comfortable, friendly environment for my guests.” Do some guests come on his show specifically to avoid journalists? “Probably! … I don’t care … I’m just happy to have them.”
Shane always lets guests cut anything they want from his show. “There’ll always be another one,” he says. “And I think it’s really selfish to not honor someone’s discomfort with something that they’ve said.”
Shane hasn’t noticed condescension from Hollywood due to his Internet fame — so most of the doubt comes from himself. “I think I feel that way about myself,” he says. “So I don’t know if other people feel that about me. I’m sure they do, but I feel that way about myself.” He added that the Wishful Thinking set helped: “They did not treat me like a kid from the internet. They were like, ‘You are here as an actor. We hired you because we think you are funny.’”
His picks for the five funniest people of all time: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, Meg Stalter, and Joan Rivers. “I used to watch Fashion Police with my mom, and it was my favorite time,” Shane says. “I was like, ‘I can’t believe [Rivers] just said that, but fuck.’ It was so funny. She was so quick. She was so smart … She says comedians are the most insecure people on the planet because you’re getting up on stage and you’re like, I don’t care if you’re laughing at me or with me. Just laugh at me.”
