Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

This week's guest, comedian Lauren Lapkus is known to most people from her roles in 'Orange is the New Black' and 'Jurassic World', but she made her name as an outstanding impressionist and improviser, gaining attention on 'Comedy Bang Bang' and her own podcast, 'With Special Guest, Lauren Lapkus'. She's most recently featured in Netflix's sketch comedy series, 'Characters'...

Think of any great comedy project in the last decade and Ben Schwartz probably had something to do with it. Jean-Ralphio on Parks and Recreation, Clyde on House of Lies, Rutabaga Rabitowitz on BoJack Horseman. He was even a voice consultant for BB-8 in the new Star Wars film. On the show Ben talks to Sam about his roots in the Bronx, the enduring genius of the late Gene Wilder and Harris Wittels, being a hustler in Hollywood, and the best advice his father ever gave him...

On this week's show, Sam is joined by the great and talented actress Melanie Lynskey. Hailing from New Zealand, Lynskey got her start at 15 in Peter Jackson's 'Heavenly Creatures', co-starring a young Kate Winslet. She has since gone on to play roles on everything from 'Two and a Half Men' and 'Shattered Glass' to 'Up in the Air' and 'Happy Christmas'...

Charlene deGuzman made waves on the internet three years when her short film, "I Forgot My Phone," which she wrote and starred in, went viral. Now she's back with a new, much bigger project, trying to fund her first feature film "Unlovable," on Kickstarter. The film—which was conceived by herself and Mark Duplass, and has the backing of Patton Oswalt—is about a young woman coping with sex and love addiction...

Ira Sachs is the acclaimed director of films like 'Love is Strange' and 'Keep the Lights On'. Now he's back with the beautiful film, 'Little Men', inspired in part by his own youth. Ira sat down with Sam to talk about 'Little Men', his own upbringing in the South, coming out to his parents as a teenager, navigating a career on the indie film scene, and the difficulty of crossing different social streams. Music for the show by Vanilla @vanilla...

You probably know Kate Micucci from somewhere, whether it was her role in 'Scrubs,' or 'How I Met Your Mother,' or 'The Big Bang Theory,' or 'When in Rome,' or 'Rules of Engagement,' or countless other TV series and indie films she's appeared in. Of course, Micucci is even better known as one half of the comedy music duo "Garfunkel and Oates," which spawned a series of YouTube videos, albums, and even a TV series for IFC...

Alan Arkin has been acting in movies since the 1960s, delivering decades worth of great and memorable performances, including indelible turns in 'The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming', 'Glengarry Glen Ross', 'The In-Laws', and 'Little Miss Sunshine'. Arkin sat down with Sam for a conversation about his career, being called to the House Un-American Activities Committee, the problems with modern American filmmaking, and his fears of a Trump presidency, and his friendship with J.D...

Nico Segal, aka @DonnieTrumpet, is a musician out of Chicago whose work with Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa has gained him notoriety in the worlds of hip-hop and jazz. His most recent album, 2015's 'Surf'—an album made in collaboration with a collective of artists he calls The Social Experiment, which includes Chance and others, plus contributions from artists like Erykah Badu and more—is a masterful work of musical composition and optimistic sound...

Eric André is the host of the bizarre, surreal, insane 'The Eric André Show' on Adult Swim. His style of comedy can be described as erratic, insane, surreal, and, of course, utterly hilarious. André also stars in the series, 'Man Seeking Woman,' and was featured in the now-canceled 'Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.' André stopped by Talk Easy at the end of a long day of press and gave what even he deemed, "the weirdest interview I've ever done in my life...

Alex Gibney is one of the most successful and prolific documentary filmmakers in the business. His films have covered controversial figures like Elliott Spitzer and Lance Armstrong, and topics as intense as corporate malfeasance, the Church of Scientology, and the world of hacking in his latest doc, Zero Day...