Jordan Firstman wants to make sure you understand his new comedy album, Secrets, is a concept album.
The 33-year-old writer-director-comedian, who earned a loyal social following for pandemic-era Instagram impressions, makes the premise for his 17-track musical comedy album clear within its first 15 seconds. The album’s first track, “Six minute interlude,” lays out that each track is based on a real secret someone submitted to him on Instagram.
Firstman, who’s set to star in Rachel Sennott’s upcoming Max comedy series and direct his first feature, says the album has been a passion project, channeling creative energy he found himself having in the wake of a breakup.
Below, Firstman discusses with The Hollywood Reporter why he wanted to make Secrets, how he’s feeling about the variety of acting roles he’s booking, how people on TikTok have been acting lately and more.
Secrets has been, from what I understand, a passion project for you. Why did you want to do this? How long has it been in the works?
I’ve been doing the series on Instagram [for] forever, and then I kind of added music to it maybe a year or a year and a half ago. Then me and one of my collaborators, Brad, were just having so much fun doing it. This summer, I went through a breakup and had all this creative energy. I was like just trying to lay some of these tracks down. I kind of just fell in love with it really quickly and was having so much fun and it kind of just all spiraled from there. I got really addicted to making music, and I was just kind forcing my talented friends to help me make it, and we have a lot of tracks, almost too many, some would say. Many of my collaborators would say, I have too many tracks.
It’s good to be ambitious. “Six minute interlude” is really interesting and such a fun way to set the scene. Why did you want to break that fourth wall to start the album?
I think with an album, there are so many layers that go into just understanding the concept. It’s just going to be easier if I tell the audience. It is a simple premise, but if you don’t know what the premise is, it could be very confusing. It’s like all real secrets. Every song is a different genre. The real secrets are how the titles were made. That’s what you need to know, and if you don’t know that, you’re going to be like, “Why are these tracks called these things?” It was a lot about logistics.
In terms of acting, the last time you spoke with THR, you said you wanted to play a wider variety of roles. Do you feel that you’re still trying to find that mix or do you feel you’ve narrowed it down a bit?
This project has been really liberating for me because it’s fully my voice. I guess I didn’t realize at the time how much of that I was missing from my work and how much that means to me. I love acting, and I do think I’ve noticed about myself that I am the kind of actor that brings a lot of myself to the work that I do. For better or for worse, the writers around me usually end up tailoring [the writing to me] to some degree, which I like that my artistry kind of weaves in and out of everything I do. I’ve loved doing something that is supremely mine, and of course I could not have done it without a million other people, but I do feel like the voice of this is coming from within. I’m making my first feature also this year, god willing. I’m really happy with where I’m at in the acting. I’m getting to work with my friends. Both of the TV shows that I’m doing this year, they’re good friends. I’ll all be good. I don’t feel like there’s anything I’m super missing. It’ll be fun to play something that’s different from myself at a certain point but when it comes, it comes.
Do you find doom-scrolling as a way to disconnect for you, or do you also enjoy just truly logging off?
Like everyone else, I really don’t like it, but I do it. I don’t have a new take on this, but there was that moment where TikTok left for five minutes, that was like, “Oh my god, we’re free.” I thought it was really weird the way the people on TikTok were [saying] this is the worst thing that could ever happen. There’s no part of these people’s brains that are like, “We know this is bad, but we still love it,” or “We find good in it, but we know ultimately it’s not the thing.” They really think it is the thing, and I find myself getting really infuriated by TikTok and TikTok comments recently. The real world is the space that the internet should be in your world, and the internet is the place that the real world should be. I don’t know if it’s an age thing, but even I see middle-aged women on there posting about other TikTok drama. They’re like people making five-minute videos about Ash Trevino, and I’m like, you have five kids. What’s happening? These 60-year-old men selling creatine powder. I’m like, wait, did everyone just turn crazy really quickly? Or has it always been like this, and they were just used car salesmen before?
On TikTok, people are given access to one another in an odd way that even other social media platforms didn’t. As someone who has creative endeavors outside of the internet, it’s not your bread and butter, so that’s a really interesting perspective on it too.
You see the people on the internet more than you see anyone in real life now, so you just assume that’s everyone in real life. Also my life isn’t real anyway. I live in L.A. and I’m in show business, so I’m only seeing people that are in this strange fake reality. I have the internet and other crazy people. I went to Vietnam last year, and it felt good. I did this motorcycle tour and my guide, I was asking him if he knew these [celebrity] names. I’d be like, “Beyoncé,” and he’s like, “No,” “Billie Eilish,” “No.” [He was] so far removed that it made me feel better. The only two people he knew that [we had] in common were Barack Obama and Cristiano Ronaldo, and I barely even know who Cristiano Ronaldo is. I couldn’t pick his face out of a crowd, so that made me feel better that even the most famous, they’re in the bubble too.
When you’re not working, how are you able to actually disconnect? With creative people, it’s often hard to step away. How do you actually take time away?
I think travel mostly. I’m pretty good at getting immersed in a scene or wherever I am. I’m pretty good at getting wrapped up into the story of wherever I am, so I think that keeps me good. It’s taken me a while to get to a place where my work and my life are enmeshed. In my 20s, I wanted to be way harder worker than I was. Then I’d feel really guilty that I wasn’t working hard enough. Now, when I can rest, I really feel like it’s earned. I feel decent right now in my early 30s. This is the time to be really putting out a lot and working really hard. I feel like this is the right timing for me and it doesn’t feel like too much. I feel ready for it.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
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