If you’re a fan of Grace Helbig or Mamrie Hart and you haven’t seen their new show, you’re missing out! Luckily, the two YouTube-born comedians only launched their Kathie Lee & Hoda-inspired talk show, This Might Get…, about a month ago. While it’s a little more professional in production, you’ll still finish each episode with tears streaming down your face from laughing so much. Grace and Mamrie have you covered if you’re having a bad day at school or the office because a new episode premieres every weekday. With a plethora of special guest interviews, memes, pop culture, DIY, How-To’s and challenges, you’ll realize quickly that no two episodes are the same!
Her Campus recently spoke with Grace and Mamrie about their love for Kathie Lee and Hoda, their favorite This Might Get… episode (so far), and their hopes for the future of the show.
Her Campus: What was the inspiration for This Might Get…? Have the first few weeks of the show turned out like you thought they would?
Grace Helbig: It’s almost been like low-hanging fruit for us to try and create a show where we just hang out with each other. We got to that a lot in “HeyUSA,” this travel series we did on YouTube, and we have been talking about the idea of doing a podcast. We regularly shoot videos together, and so we finally found the right kind of team to back this idea of building out what is our version of the Kathie Lee & Hoda talk show for a younger audience. It’s been going great. The great thing about it is that we haven’t set up any unrealistic expectations. We really want this to grow into the project that it is, rather than trying to come in and say exactly what it is from the start. We give ourselves the freedom to experiment with different episode ideas and slightly different formats and slightly different editing, and bringing in guests until we can kind of get in our groove. So far, it’s been really, really wonderful.
Mamrie Hart: Yes! Actually the first few weeks have exceeded expectations. I think with This Might Get… Grace and I have such good times going on tour and making videos, but also just sitting around shooting the breeze about what’s going on in pop culture or just what’s on our minds. We thought how can we film this, but also how can we get it filmed while we’re not in charge of all the minor details. This is the first time we’ve ever done something together like this with a real crew. That whole aspect of the show has totally exceeded expectations. It already feels kind of like a family right out of the gate.
HC: Who are the talk show hosts and/or comedians you look up to?
GH: I love Chris Hardwick very, very much. I think Andy Cohen is a fantastic host, and I think comedian-wise I’ve always looked up to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, but I also love Chris Lilley. I just have a great respect for people that are constantly trying to get their voice into projects that are slightly different than what they’re normally doing.
MH: I think for this show we’re kind of emulating Kathie Lee & Hoda from The Today Show. They’re just so loose and have the best time, and really just crack each other up every morning, which I just can’t imagine laughing that early in the morning. We kind of wanted to make, dare I say, a younger Kathie Lee & Hoda for the YouTube platform. I say that’s who we look up to the most. There’s also elements of this show I feel like that mix in a little of “Revolving Doors,” Pee-wee’s Playhouse or At Home with Amy Sedaris with DIY.
HC: What’s it like working with one of your best friends? Do you guys ever disagree about the show material?
GH: I think the great formula for this project is that Mamrie and I really respect each other as much as we admire each other. We’ve worked with each other enough in the past that we’re comfortable in the way we communicate—[and] it always comes from a place of care if there’s any conversation about things. There’s no ego because we collectively want the best product for what we work on together, and so our communication is almost kind of the way that identical twins communicate where they just look at each other and get a raised eye and know exactly what the other person is thinking. It’s a little bit more comfortable rather than combative, which has been super helpful. Also, we’re working with a lot of people. Our executive producer, Michael Goldfine, produced Camp Takota and Dirty 30 with us, so it’s a real family-friendly environment where everything is well-intentioned. In that regard, it’s been really easygoing.
MH: The awesome thing about Grace is that we are very simpatico when it comes to sense of humor to the point where—I know it sounds ridiculous—but if something absurd happens in a bar, we can both look at each other and know what the other one is thinking. This is really the first time each of us has had a real structure of a show up to work job since we’ve been doing comedy or for the last several years. I would never jump into an endeavor like this unless I knew that we were totally in sync.
HC: What’s your favorite episode that you’ve taped so far?
GH: Oh man, our favorite episode that we’ve taped so far. The crazy thing is that we shoot more than we’re used to—five or six episodes in any given day. It’s hard to remember exactly what moments have happened. I mean, I obviously love the Dorito drone episode, but we also shot an episode that’s out soon where we compete in cooking against each other, which I think is really a more active and fun episode. We get some of our crew involved in judging and taste testing, and that was a really fun episode that we want to make more of a serial returning episode month-to-month.
MH: There’s been some good ones! Our second episode we had a drone expert on and my whole goal was not to really learn about drones or any of their amazing features, but it was simply for the drone to pick up a Dorito and deliver it to my mouth, so that one’s really cool. And then yesterday we had an episode go up that was about springtime and animals mating. We listened to animal mating calls and tried to decipher what animal it was. I’m really into nature and I’m a perv, so it kind of combines my two favorite interests.
HC: How does This Might Get… compare to your individual channel? Do you think you’ve carried over your own style into the new show?
GH: I definitely think that This Might Get… is influenced by our own personal styles, but we really want it to feel like its own thing because obviously—spoiler alert—neither one of us has an executive producer, cameraman, or sound guy in our own home taping our content. This Might Get… is way more professionally packaged, which is what we want. It allows us to explore topics with each other that we couldn’t normally do on our channels and still gives us the freedom to maintain what we do. We might endeavor into the world of cocktails or fashion reviews or things like that, but it still keeps it specific enough to the show so that our personal channels can exist cohesively.
MH: Yeah, I think definitely our own selves are on it, and that’s just simply because when you’re on YouTube you’re yourself, and so the personality doesn’t change. The feeling of the show changes when you’re not just talking by yourself. Also, we’re trying to make this show more evergreen. Grace uploads twice a week now and has always done reviews and pop culture. If something’s happening one day, she talks about the next. Mine have always been about pop culture as well, so we’re really trying to make this more broad subjects and topics of various interest as opposed to what’s in the headlines that day.
HC: How have you been able to balance the show with your other individual projects?
GH: That is a constant work in progress. We have been able to do it, which is really fun. Mamrie and I are definitely workaholics, and so she’s just coming off from her book tour. We definitely thrive on having stuff to do and feeling slightly stressed. Stress is kind of a great gasoline for us in our human cars, so it’s been really good to be excited about something new, and then the trickle-down effect of that is just feeling inspired to work back on your own stuff. I think we’ve both been given a nice kick in the butt creatively.
MH: So far, so good. We’re only three weeks in, but I feel like we found a sweet spot where I just came off a book tour for my second book and Grace is in between some projects. We’re hoping we figure out the show, and it becomes this well-oiled machine that we can really just go to two days a week and have a great time and not feel like it’s taking away from other stuff we want to do. Obviously, we’re not retiring from the other stuff just for this, but we think it will be a nice addition for everyone who already enjoys our stuff.
HC: Do you have any upcoming shows you can give us a sneak peek about? Any cool guests or topics?
GH: We’re going to have a lot of our good friends in the YouTube community make some guest appearances. We also had a Chinese practitioner who came in and read our faces, which was very enlightening. We have a lot of ideas in the works in regard to environmental solar energy kind of things. We really want to run the gamut and the topics that we talk to and incorporate not only our friends that are known people in the YouTube space, but also incorporate experts that try to educate us in ways that we hope inspires the audience to get to know some things that they might’ve not thought to look into before.
MH: People always ask where the other Hart is—aka our friend, Hannah. We’re filming with her next week, and we’re branching out. We’re trying to find a balance of having guests on that are familiar faces on the internet, but then also we just want experts in. We have an episode coming up where Grace and I learn about Bitcoin. It’s super interesting, so we don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves into making it an interview show with our peers. We really just want to do whatever is the most exciting and interesting at that time.
HC: What are you hoping the audience takes away from This Might Get…?
GH: I hope the audience takes away that this is a really fun and dumb and possibly surprisingly educational show—that we never say that we’re experts, but we’re just two friends trying to explore some ideas and thoughts and trends and topics that maybe people haven’t thought of or haven’t looked at before. Everything is well-intentioned and everything is curious and everything is hopefully at the end of the day, entertaining. We hope the people take away a sense of “We have no idea what the next episode will be, but we can’t wait for it to upload.”
MH: I hope they take away the notification from YouTube after they’ve subscribed to it.