Posted in: Dropout, Interview, TV | Tagged: dirty laundry, Grant O'Brien, Lily Du

Dirty Laundry: Lily Du & Grant O'Brien Talk Format, Guests & Much More

Lily Du and Grant O'Brien (Dirty Laundry) spoke with Bleeding Cool about the talk series format, guests, College Humor/Dropout, and more.

Lily Du and Grant O'Brien have embraced the more creative freedom of personalizing their content since CollegeHumor was rebranded to Dropout in 2023. Once a more exclusive platform for sketch comedy, Dropout allows for more experimental opportunities to expand audiences and take their comedy in new directions. Among them is the talk series Dirty Laundry, hosted by Du with O'Brien, operating as the bartender as themed guests appear and share their secrets while the participants try to guess who it belongs to. Season four guests featured include contestants from CBS's Survivor, Disney Channel alum, drag queens, Jet Lag: The Game, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and the comedy troupe Smosh. Du and O'Brien spoke with Bleeding Cool about the series' inspiration, the selection process, if anything was off the table, the most provocative subjects, and how CollegeHumor evolved to be Dropout.

Dirty Laundry Stars Lily Du & Grant O'Brien on Spilling Secrets

BC: What was the inspiration behind 'Dirty Laundry,' and how did the premise come about?

Du [Dropout owner] Sam Reich and Paul Robalino might be the people to ask for that. It was based on a season two 'Game Changer' episode, they spun it off into its own show and brought us on board.

O'Brien: I'll tell you what developed. Sam figured out a great little hack being able to backdoor pilot all sorts of stuff on 'Game Changer' because they've come up with so many good ideas that way. This was one of them, like, "Oh, this is working! Let's do more of this."

What went into selecting the groups for each season?

Du: The first season was us figuring it out and from there, we realized we want four people on the couch who know each other and have fun chemistry. It's hard to guess the secrets of people you don't know well or strangers. This season, we brought in a casting director for the first time, and she did an incredible job. We got ambitious this season and reached out to 'Survivor' contestants and actors from TV shows and did themed couches.

Did you guys have any cast requests?

O'Brien: Both of us got super excited for the drag queen episodes, and the 'Survivor' episode was awesome. Who knew a bunch of professionally charming people would be charming on our show as well? It was great.

Du: It was so fun, and I had been watching the 'Survivor' traitors. It was fun to have Parvati [Shallow] on from 'Survivor' and we had a bunch of the Black Widow brigade, which is from a season of 'Survivor' I had watched. We also have Cerie from 'The Traitors' in 'Survivor.' It was fun.

O'Brien: I'm a big Nebula guy, too. We had the crew from 'Jet Lag' on and the Wendover Productions guys, and it was for me to nerd out on. That was a blast!

Were there any taboo subjects off the table, or was it complete free reign?

Du: Completely free reign [laughs].

O'Brien: Chaos reigns on that show. It's a mess, and occasionally, usually, it's me, someone will say, "Cut that! We can't use that. No! Don't do that," but usually that's because I tank on a joke, not because the subject is no good. I'm not that talented.

What was the most disturbing fact you discovered from one of the participants? Preferably one from a past season to avoid spoilers.

O'Brien: I have one from a past season, which was Lily Du's. An email Lily sent to Marc Maron when Lily was very…

Du: Disturbing, or was it so embarrassing?!

O'Brien: The gist of Lily's email was, "You shouldn't take these little commercial acting parts." Now that Lily and I make our bones doing commercial acting, it was a real bracing look at what people think about commercial actors.

Du: Look, being 12 years old is inherently cringe. Being 12 years old with access to the internet is dangerous. If anything, it shows that you can be absolutely embarrassing as a child, which you should be, and then still become an embarrassing adult who gets to host their own show. Mine was from season one. If we're talking "disturbing," Katie Marovitch told a story about dropping a baby duckling in one of those elementary school lessons where like, "Everybody gets to hatch an egg" and then she immediately killed a small animal. That's disturbing.

O'Brien: That's not even the one I thought you were going to say about Katie. I thought it was going to be the one when Katie and her brothers found a couple having sex in a bathroom stall and started throwing pretzels at them.

Du: Oh, I thought it was going to be the one where Katie Marovitch threw trash into someone's car because they pissed her off.

O'Brien: "Katie is wild" is what we're saying.

I would have picked that up from all those little bits about her drug use and everything.

O'Brien: Yeah. A real madman.

What was the most surprising fact someone revealed in the series?

O'Brien: Surprising. Let's see.

Du At this point, I am surprised when a secret is Grant's because I'm surprised, he has any left. I'm like, "What do you mean there are still Grant secrets?"

O'Brien: I've done so many shows on Dropout. My role on Dropout is to expose parts of my personality for consumption. In every season of 'Dirty Laundry.' I'll sit in email with Paul Robalino, our director and producer, and he'll say, "What do you got?" I'll be like, "I don't have anything," then I'll think for a minute, and I'll email him like five things like, "Well, this happened and then this happened." I'm just disgusting.

Du: You must keep a running list throughout the year. It's hard to think of them on the spot, and you must write them down as they come up.

O'Brien: We both started doing that, like, "Here's a diary of trash I've done."

Creatively, has there been a huge difference between the time when Sam decided to rebrand CollegeHumor to Dropout, or has it been like, "Okay, keep doing what you've been doing, and we're going to under this name now?"

Du: Creatively. I used to have a full-time job [both laugh].

O'Brien: There has been a big creative reorientation. If you think about CollegeHumor. I'd say 80 percent of the stuff we were doing was scripted, proper sketch comedy. Dropout is a lot more and the content is more personal. It's more about the cast and more, and it's certainly more improvisational. A show like 'Dirty Laundry' would probably not have lived on CollegeHumor ten years ago. It's turned into a more expansive brand since it's become Dropout, which is cool.

Du: I would agree. When I was there briefly, it was almost entirely sketch writing, and now it's a lot more unscripted, prompted things with shows like the upcoming 'Gastronauts,' which I can't talk about now.

O'Brien: Shut up! Shut up! Shut Up!

Du: 'Thousandaires' and 'Dirty Laundry,' these are all us, even 'Breaking News.' These are all ostensibly us performing as ourselves under certain rules of a game or restriction.

O'Brien: It's telling both of our titles were "writer" back in the day at CollegeHumor, and that is not our job anymore. It's much more…

Du: Improvisatory.

Season four of Dirty Laundry, which also stars Reich, Ify Nwadiwe, Siobhan Thompson, and Rekha Shankar, premieres August 13th on Dropout.

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