Interview: Ilana Levine Dishes Little Known Facts About Her New Podcast

By: May. 26, 2016
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Little Known Facts is a new podcast hosted by stage and film actress, Ilana Levine, best known for her role of Lucy in YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN. With her unique style of hosting, best described as "Podcast Verite," actress Ilana Levine gives her listeners access to conversations with today's most fascinating celebrities -- with her raw, honest and hilarious interviews.

BroadwayWorld had a chance to talk to Ilana about her new podcast, where she discusses how it came to be and who she would love to converse with in the future. Check out the interview, below!

What made you want to do a podcast in the first place?

I love listening to podcasts. I've become a really big fan in recent years of the podcast. I think that my first introduction to them was "The Moth." It started out as a live theatre event where people just told stories, and then they started broadcasting them, and from there it just grew. I love listening to them. I think it's a really intimate interview form, so I'm a fan, a pure fangirl of podcasts.

And then, coincidentally, as I was talking to a friend about how much I love them, he said to me, "Well this is crazy. I just absorbed into my company a podcast business. I feel like you would be great at this, just from time spent with you and your true interests in people and their stories. Do you have any desire to do something like this?" And that cocktail party chatter turned into this very wonderful and real thing that moved very quickly and resonated with people. I feel really fortunate that it was of those serendipitous moments. It's really something I love to do. And I used to do a lot of voice overs when I started acting, so I always loved being in the room with the microphone. I always loved being in a room where I don't have to worry about what I look like. Also of the pleasure of it really being vocal and not visual is a lovely thing for a girl.

The title of the show is "Little Known Facts." When and how did you come up with the name?

There were a few different names along the way until I was introduced into the world of domains and copyrights and trademarks. So, I played Lucy in YOU'RE A GOOD MAN CHARLIE BROWN on Broadway and Lucy has this song called "Little Known Facts" that she does with Linus and Charlie. And, as I started thinking about what was happening to me in a room with all of these people that I was interviewing, some of whom I had known for a lifetime, I'm just learning these things about them. Like, "I've known you for twenty years and I've never known that!" I started thinking about how all these facts about all these people that I love have become unearthed during this process. I was making lists and lists of different names and a friend decides: "Once you start doing the podcast, it will come clear to you what it should be called," and that is exactly what happened. And then of course, the Broadway fanbase is very in on the joke immediately. But if you aren't a Broadway fan, it's a good title for a podcast when you get to interview people, anyway. So, it works on every level!

How do you pick your guests? Are they friends of yours? Is it someone you're just dying to talk to?

I have a long list of people that I look forward to talking with in the future, but I very much have started. I think I've done about 20-25 interviews so far. Some of them aren't even edited yet, but I'm trying to get a lot of them banked before summer. And almost everyone so far is someone that I've known. I've been doing this a really long time and it's been a real pleasure watching my friends' careers grow. Everyone on the show is someone that I either worked with or have known socially for a really long time. That's why it's amazing during these interviews with them. You think you know everything and then suddenly you're like, "What? I had no idea!"

It's those little known facts!

Exactly! And I have to say... the most selfish part of all of this is that all of our lives are so busy that if I tried to schedule a dinner or even a coffee, we each would have cancelled 12 times, because that's how life is. I'm seeing all my friends and it's the best! And then I'm sharing them with the world and that's an even greater pleasure.

Are there any dream guests that you would love to have?

I would say Amy Schumer, who I think is just a remarkable talent, role model, and incredibly funny. And also I think she's a great actor, writer, comedian and advocate, so I think that she'd be someone remarkable to talk to and see up close how her brain works. I mean there are a lot of people like that. In terms of, Broadway specifically, all of the people that I love so much are all doing crazy Tony press junkets right now, so I'll have to wait for them to calm down. I think Laura Benanti is not only remarkable performer, but I love her voice so much. And, obviously, Lin-Manuel Miranda... I mean it would be a dream to have anyone from HAMILTON would be maybe too much, I'd have some kind of aneurism. [Laughs] It would be hard to see the people I listen to in my car and in my home 24 hours a day in the room with me, in the room where it happens! I would just want to say thank you to him. As much as I would want to hear his process, I would want to say thank you for changing the course of musical theatre forever.

Is there any future guests that you know of that you can tease?

Yeah, there's so many! I just finished one with Anthony Rapp. I think he is not just a remarkable performer, but one of the kindest humans. And as someone who grew up when RENT first arrived on the scene, it was just like HAMILTON with the daring new way of telling it's story that was so accessible.

I also did a particularly amazing interview with Mary Stuart Masterson, who had been a huge movie star in the 90s and the 2000s and then was nominated for a Tony, and she's just someone who has grown the way from movie stardom to normal life in such an elegant kind of way, and has really been able to use her star power to shine a light on a lot of organizations she really cares about.

And then I also have Noah Emmerich, who has been on the show THE AMERICANS, but Noah has been a theatre actor for years as well. He did THE TRUMAN SHOW a few years ago, but he keeps coming back to the theatre and he's a really talented person.

And lastly, we got Ben Platt coming in from DEAR EVAN HANSEN. And I love Ben so much and I love PITCH PERFECT so much, so I'm kind of like part fan, part interviewer. So there are a lot of people, maybe too many to plug at once. It's like asking me to pick my favorite child. Everyone has so much to offer and share, and I have found them to be so inspiringly honest. It's so remarkable.

Has there been a favorite moment so far? Like a "I'm so glad I'm recording this right now," type of moment?

I got to sing with BD [Wong]. We played brother and sister in YOU'RE A GOOD MAN CHARLIE BROWN. And the end of the interview we sing a harmony we sang together in the show. That was a long time ago and was very moving. You do a show and you fall in love and think that this is your family forever and the show closes and some times there are some keepers in your life and some don't work out and you grow apart. And the fact that all these years laters, BD Wong still feels like my little brother like he did in that play... we haven't sung since that show closed. So that was amazing for me, personally. It was so meaningful and sentimental.

Is there anything new that you're learning through this process?

What I'm learning is that I'm not a business person, but a lover and performer of the arts, and that when you begin a podcast, it's sort of like an independent film. And what I'm learning about podcasts is that every subscriber determines you being on iTunes for five minutes or five years. And I really want people to have the pleasure to continue to listen to people that inspire them weekly. The way that's gonna happen is people taking the extra moment, or 20 seconds really, to subscribe. And I know, because I get asked to subscribe to everything I listen to, and sometimes I do and sometimes and I don't. But from now on, I will, because I understand how meaningful it is and I didn't before.

That's something I learned, and now I get it from the perspective of the one who wants to continue to do the work. So as much as people enjoy the show, I hope they feel how much I love doing it and how much the guests are so happy to be doing it for the listeners, but also just take 20 seconds to subscribe and review, because it will allow me to keep doing it for them!

Levine's warmth, intelligence and sense of humor create an environment where her guests open up and discuss things they have never divulged in previous interviews. Listen and feel like a fly on the wall as Levine's guests share their secrets and fears, inspirations and challenges and along the way expose . . . Little Known Facts.

CLICK HERE to listen to the first episodes!

For more information about the show, check out their website here.



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