Kerri Kenney-Silver

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is a Bose moment. Your 10 boring blocks from home, until the beat drops in Bose Clarity.

**Chris Hardwick** (0:07)
And the baseline transforms boring into maybe the best part of your day.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:12)
Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose.

**Chris Hardwick** (0:15)
Find your perfect product at bose.com.
We were talking before a little bit about when we first met, because we started it at MTV. Like, yeah, we were babies.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (0:54)
Yeah.

**Chris Hardwick** (0:54)
We were little MTV babies.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (0:56)
They were so cute and so punk rock.

**Chris Hardwick** (0:59)
But I think The State predated by just a minute before I came on, because I remember watching The State on MTV.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (1:07)
The State or You Wrote It, You Watch It?

**Chris Hardwick** (1:09)
Well, okay, so the You Wrote It, You Watch It, the Jon Stewart Show was pretty epic.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (1:14)
It was Jon Stewart's first show and our first show. We were still in college. So it was Jon Stewart that predated the Jon Stewart Show and it predated The State, but it was our first show together.

**Chris Hardwick** (1:28)
And basically the concept was like people, wouldn't they like write in sketch ideas and then that you guys would act them out?

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (1:36)
Here's the real scoop.

**Chris Hardwick** (1:37)
Oh no.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (1:38)
Oh, she's gonna blow it.

**Chris Hardwick** (1:40)
Oh no, I know where this is going.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (1:42)
My lawyer is gonna call me later.

**Chris Hardwick** (1:44)
Okay.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (1:45)
The real deal was yes, people would write in letters and it would say, you know, the funny thing happened with my boyfriend and I and this, and then we would act out the funny thing that happened with the boyfriend. But then it got to a certain point where we were like, this letter isn't that funny. So we would just make them up. Oh my god.
That's okay, we got canceled. It's fine.

**Chris Hardwick** (2:06)
Oh my gosh. We deserved it. How many seasons did that show get?

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (2:09)
70

**Chris Hardwick** (2:11)
70 seasons, that's amazing. It's still under contract. I think it's still on. Yeah.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:14)
It's still on.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (2:15)
I am going there from here.

**Chris Hardwick** (2:17)
That is, gotta be like one of the longest running shows of all time.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:20)
Nobody is watching. It's so weird.

**Chris Hardwick** (2:23)
You wrote it, but you're not watching it.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (2:24)
Yeah, you wrote it and nobody can watch it.

**Chris Hardwick** (2:27)
Actually, you didn't write it.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (2:28)
We didn't write it and no one's watching.

**Chris Hardwick** (2:31)
That's where the state came from. Yeah.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (2:33)
Well, we started NYU in 1988 as a sketch group doing shows around New York and around NYU and in closets and in basements. And then while we were at NYU, William Morris found us and William Morris signed us as a group, which was like not a thing at the time. And then we sent in tapes.
David Wayne's sister's ex-boyfriend was working at MTV on this new show, You Wrote It, You Watch It. And David's like, I have a sketch group.
Bring them these tapes and we could be the group. And they were like, yeah, no, thank you. So we just started making them. And so we just kind of dropped them on their laps and they were like, okay. So they paid us.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:16)
Our office was a closet.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (3:18)
There were 11 of us, 11, in a closet that they had emptied out and we had a lamp sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. And we would sit criss-cross applesauce in a circle and do our work. We were so excited. And then from that, we got the show, The State.

**Chris Hardwick** (3:33)
I mean, MTV in those days was like a pretty big deal.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (3:39)
It was the only deal. If you think about it, I mean, now we joke about it, but the truth is it was the only deal in music and it was the only counterculture channel. And that was a big deal. I mean, you know, a new video drop was TuneIn Television.
Thriller is gonna be debuting on MTV at 6 p.m. on Friday. You raced home.

**Chris Hardwick** (4:03)
George Michael has a new video. Oh my God, we gotta get, we'll see it a thousand times, but we gotta go see it, you know, air at a specific time.

**Kerri Kenney-Silver** (4:10)
But we joke about like, oh, you know, but it really was, it was so punk rock to be on MTV. That was the only place that it was happening. It was so counterculture that there were ads, there were campaign ads of people saying, basically it was like satanic panic days, and they were saying like, you know, this MTV is gonna ruin this generation. I mean, it was like people were afraid of it, which we loved.