You Might Also Like: Earsay: The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club

**Cal Penn** (0:02)
Welcome to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. I'm Cal Penn. Each episode, I dive into a different audiobook with a special guest. This week, we're returning to a deranged kingdom of fantasy and farce. We're talking about the Audible original series, Heads Will Roll, Heir Apparent, from sisters Kate McKinnon and Emily Lynne.
This is the second installment of Heads Will Roll. You don't need to have listened to the first one to get through this one though. All you need to know is this. The night realm is ruled by the deliciously evil Queen Morchuauna aka Mo, played by Kate McKinnon. She brings a real off with their heads energy to the monarchy. Her best friend and assistant is Jojo, a princess who was cursed to live in the form of a raven. She's voiced by Emily Lynne. There was a rebellion which ended with Mo and Jojo leaving the public eye to become reclusive candle makers. But it does not last.
Here's Mo, back and better than ever, at the beginning of the new installment, Heir Apparent.

**Kate McKinnon** (1:18)
I finally made peace with Who I Am, which is a single childless evil bitch.

**Cal Penn** (1:23)
In Heir Apparent, Mo is back on the throne facing a new challenge. Mo is 39 By prophecy, she has to produce an heir by the time she turns 40 or be killed by a demon. She's never wanted to be a parent, but now she has to. So she and Jojo concoct a series of schemes to create an heir before the clock runs out.
Meanwhile, Jojo has become a bird body positivity influencer, singer and actor until a cosmetic surgery ends with her transformed yet again from a raven to a toad. This season's incredible voice cast includes Megan Mullally, Patti LuPone, Richard Kind, Sam Richardson, Carrie Coon, Laurie Metcalf and more. Joining me today is the co-creator and co-writer of Heads Will Roll and The Voice of Jojo, Emily Lynne.
Emily, thank you for being here.

**Emily Lynne** (2:22)
Thank you for having me. I'm very honored.

**Cal Penn** (2:25)
Okay. So the challenge for Mo in Heir Apparent, produce an heir by 40 or be killed by a swamp demon. Also, Jojo gets some notes on her bird body when she books an on-camera roll. She gets a wing augmentation surgery, which goes wrong and ends with Jojo turned from a raven into a toad. Between this and The Baby Deadline, this season feels like a very pointed critique of the way our society talks about women's bodies. Did I get that right as a dumb man?

**Emily Lynne** (2:53)
It actually, the bird body thing was not intended to work in tandem with the feeling like useless as a woman after a certain age, but they did go together apparently. So that's great.

**Cal Penn** (3:11)
Once you all decided on the main idea, like are you saying that the rest of it sort of the season flowed naturally or was there?

**Emily Lynne** (3:18)
Yeah, yeah. We just knew we were like, what's gonna be JoJo's deal? And I guess we were thinking about plastic surgery as you do.

**Cal Penn** (3:30)
Yeah.

**Emily Lynne** (3:31)
Our whole thing right now is like, we always say, it's just this. It's just this.
Like, maybe one day we'll get tandem lifts.

**Cal Penn** (3:46)
I have a cousin who's a very talented, very fancy dermatologist in New York. And there are times when I, if this goes back to like when I've shot movies in New York and he's come to set, because he's a real film buff. And he'll just look at, I mean, if I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks, I'll just look at him and he'll just go, oh, and see like the zit that I was the most self-conscious about.
And then that progressed to, there was something I was working on where I had a, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a zit. It was a wart on my face. And I was like, okay, that's, he goes, no, no, just come. I'll freeze that all for you. And now this was like 15 years ago. And now when I talk about like my skin's getting a little stretchier, there's some lines. Like, I mean, you can come if you want the little...
So it's just a, anyway, sorry, this is such a tangent, but okay. This is a fantasy comedy. So there are in-world ads and castles and spells. So obviously there are things that you can't do in audio that you could on TV, for example, but there are things that you can do or can kind of get away with in an audio only format, I would assume. What are those?