Famous actor Ed Helms has a podcast called SNAFU with Ed Helms about history’s greatest screw-ups. He came on The Bobby Bones Show to talk about the podcast and share stories from his acting career.
Bobby Bones and Helms geeked out over prohibition and history because both of them are clearly big history buffs. Helms says his podcast may be about things that have happened in history, but they’re lessons that are very relevant today. Season 1 of his podcast was about a NATO military exercise gone wrong. Season 2 was about the FBI getting out of line and some rogue individuals broke into the FBI and leaked a bunch of documents to The Washington Post which led to the congressional oversight into all intelligence institutes we have today. Season 3 (the current season) is about Formula 6 and how prohibition’s war on alcohol went so far off the rails the government poisoned its own people. Helms started this podcast because he doesn’t think we can learn these history lessons enough, he believes we are always needing to back to take a look and see what happened.
Talking about his professional career, Helms shared he knows how to play the bluegrass guitar and the banjo. His mom is from Nashville so he grew up coming to the city and seeing places like Station Inn. Nashville is one of his favorite cities that he fantasizes about living in all the time. When he was a kid, he was into bluegrass music and he had a teacher named Sam who had a bunch of banjos around his studio. Helms told him one day that he wanted to play the banjo, but he couldn’t afford to buy one. So the teacher gave Helms one of the banjos and taught him how to play.
As for many of his major acting roles, Bones asked Helms which characters he gets most recognized by fans for. He said it’s probably “Nard Dog” which is a nickname for his character Andy Bernard in The Office. A woman once came up to him at the airport saying “Nard Dog” and asked if he minded she gave him a hug, to which he responded yes. However, she took it as a yes that he was ok with the hug and gave him a huge bear hug. He added he doesn’t need hugs from strangers, but her energy was really great and funny. In connection to The Office, Jake Lacy who had a role on the show also has a role in the currently popular The White Lotus. Helms has been watching Lacy’s character and when Bones asked if he thinks Lacy is bringing echoes of Helm’s Andy Bernard character into The White Lotus, Helms said he can for sure see that. Lastly, in reference to infamous tooth scene in The Hangover, Helms was actually born without that adult tooth so when he was 17, he got a permanent implant put it. However, when the director Todd told Helms about the scene where he looses a tooth, Helms went to his distance and asked him to take off the implant. His dentist was able to install a flipper so he could easily pull the tooth on and off for any of the scenes.
