TJ Harris

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: It's a bad idea not to pay your student loans, The Odd Couple, Severance, chicken nugget bowls,
Let Me Run This By You: Google is bullying Gina. What's your email archive strategy? We are all mostly old because the window of youth is shockingly short. Some of your dreams are NOT out of reach.
Interview: We talk to T.J. Harris about coming to acting later in life, having a background in business, having a close-knit cohort, Title IX investigations, being the victim of racial profiling while at school, the paradox of slightly shy kids being told they were shy so often that they become even more withdrawn, Our Lady of Kibeho, Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, Sean Parris, Chris Anthony.
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
3 (10s):
And I'm Gina Pulice.

4 (11s):
We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it.

3 (15s):
20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all.

4 (21s):
We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet?

1 (34s):
Anyway, so I had to like get him out of the house and like men are slow and I just, it's just, it's a really no win situation. So anyway. Hello. Hello Busy. I've been busy. We've all been busy.

2 (51s):
We have been doing the damn thing. Haven't we?

1 (55s):
Yeah.

2 (56s):
Yeah. I have spent the last, what feels like a week. Yeah. I think it's been a week simply reviewing every single dollar 20, 21, like literally and putting it in a spreadsheet, literally like can donuts, can you

1 (1m 18s):
Keep it because you can write off a lot

2 (1m 20s):
Of new machine. Yeah. That's yeah. That's, that's the point of it is to find everything that, that can be written off, but it's, you know, and I'm hunched and my back and my eyes strain, and it's just like, oh my God, Calgon, take me away.

1 (1m 38s):
Yeah. I mean, I think that taxes are one of those things where if you do them right, and legally it's a lot of work, right? It's like,

2 (1m 47s):
You want to skim and

1 (1m 48s):
Be shady, which I don't recommend, because guess what? The IRS is only job is to get your money. Like, that's their only job. They don't have any other purpose on the planet. So like, if you think that's not their job, you're wrong. But anyway, so if you do it right, like you are, it's a lot of freaking work and it also is painstaking.

2 (2m 12s):
And I, and, and it's painstaking. And I think, you know, to, to, to find a silver lining in it, like, I'm so glad I don't have a full-time job because this is the kind of thing that literally, I don't know how people, when it's, when everybody works, how they do it it's

1 (2m 35s):
Well, you can't. I mean, I think it's, that's why people end up in trouble. Like, that's why people end up trying to skin his scam or not doing them and being like, you know what, I'm going to pass on all this. I'm just going to hope for them. And like, that's what I did with my student loans, because I didn't want to, and that's not even as hard as taxes, but I just like, couldn't cope with the ins and outs of doing the work to defer or like make deals, or like get my payments lower. And thus, I had a sheriff show up at my apartment. Like that is where you're headed. You don't know that story. Oh, all right. So I thought, oh, it'd be really cool to not pay my student loans.

1 (3m 15s):
I mean, I didn't really have the money, but I also didn't realize that my student loans were private student loans. Oh boy. So when they're private, you're in big trouble, because guess what? It's a bank that wants their money. It's not the government who has a million other things to do. Right. So the bank is like, no, we want our money. And I did that. Know that the bank hires the Sheriff's department to serve papers when you are being sued for your private loans. So one day I am N in Rogers park at my thinking, you know, nothing of it. Like I, I owed 50 grand and I to like four different banks. Right. It's always, and they sell them to other people and it's a big scam.

1 (3m 56s):
Right. Okay. Fine. But I'm like going about my business thinking, but feeling bad, but like, feeling like, ah, fuck it. Like, who cares? Well, they care. Wait,

2 (4m 7s):
How long were you not paying them

1 (4m 9s):
For a couple of years? Maybe I just said, forget it in 15, 20, 15. I said, no more. And then in 27, 20 17, I'm literally, I kept getting calls. They started calling miles and I was just the guy just pay no attention. Miles, like pay no attention. And of course he's like so trusting. He was like, okay, I'll pay no attention. I'll compartmentalize. And okay. So one day there's a, our buzzer goes off and I'm like, hello. Cause no one ever. He's like, this is the Sheriff's department. Are you Jennifer Bosworth? And I was like, and then I realized, I really quickly, your mind goes, oh, what have I done wrong?

1 (4m 50s):
Right. And it focuses it on the thing. Cause you know what you've done right. Or what I've done wrong. And I'm like, oh, my here is the PA the Piper or the pied Piper or whoever is coming to collect chickens, home to roost all the things. And I was like, and I just said, I have a lawyer go away. And he goes, no, we just, we just want to give you these papers. Like we have to give you these papers. I'm like, no, I have a lawyer go away. Which is the wrong thing to do.

2 (5m 19s):
What also, what was your logic there? I have a lawyer. Okay.

1 (5m 23s):
There was no logic. I would say it was the opposite of logic is what's going on. So I see that they go away because, and so they're paid by the bank. So they just hire the Sheriff's department to serve people. I did not know that it's like, they, they you're there for hire basically the Sheriff's department. So they go and they serve people and they could not serve me. But then what it did was it was really actually a great kick in the pants because I was like, oh, I have a court date now. So no. So what I did was I said, okay, let me find it. So then I was like, I need a lawyer. So, and then on my 43rd birthday or 42nd, 42nd birthday.

1 (6m 10s):
Yeah. 42nd birthday. I went to the lawyer. I found this lawyer fucking brilliant. I can't remember her name right now. She was like legally blonde. She had these long pink nails and her only job was to get people off student loans and, and either file bankruptcy or figure out a way to talk. The loan people doubt. She was a bad-ass and I went there and I was like crying. And I was like, look. And she was like, oh, $50,000. That's nothing. And I was like, oh, she's like, I got people that I was, you know, 600,000 in medical school loans,

2 (6m 43s):
Medical school, that's

1 (6m 45s):
All. But also she goes, yeah, the private loans they ...