Byron Lane

My guest this week is Byron Lane, an actor, writer, Emmy-award-winning journalist and creator of Tilda Swinton Answers An Ad On Craigslist - one of the funniest plays I’ve ever seen. In the play, Tilda Swinton, played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Tom Lenk, is a modern-day Mary Poppins who finds a depressed gay man, Walt, played by Byron, on Craigslist and dissects his life for a character study for her next movie role. A few days after our interview, Graham Norton would describe the show as “fabulously funny” and Tom Lenk’s portrayal of Tilda as “pure genius”. We discussed the process of writing a hit play, how journalism connects to surrealist comedy, what people don’t tell you about making movies until you begin, what it’s like being the personal assistant to Carrie Fisher, and why all we really have are stories.