Interview with Leo Veiga
Leo Veiga is a producer and entertainment manager.
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Contents
Max Raskin: You said that you’ve always been writing on social media and online, is that right?
Leo Veiga: Yes. I am 33, so I think I'm at a unique age where we were the last generation to play outside but also have an internet presence.
Facebook started with college kids when I was in middle school, so it was forming one step ahead of me. I always had social media available to me, if that makes sense. Back then it was Tumblr.
MR: Did you have a MySpace?
LV: I had a MySpace in middle school and then that evolved into Tumblr. Not everyone had a Tumblr, but it was the Wild West of the internet. At the time, you could literally just post anything. It was a blog, basically. You could embed videos, photos. I used mine as a personal diary, and at one point I had 50,000 subscribers, and I was 16 years old in my bedroom.
MR: And what were you writing about?
LV: Well, at the time I was living in Georgia, and I was openly gay in high school, so I was writing a lot about that. I was writing a lot of observational stuff about being a teenager and having this teenage angst.
MR: What kind of music were you into when you were that age?
LV: Dashboard Confessional, but also then really gay poppy stuff. I was obsessed with Lady Gaga when she came out.
MR: Were you into the emo?
LV: Yeah — Death Cab for Cutie and Jack's Mannequin.
MR: What's the first song that comes to mind when I say “high school”?
LV: Honestly, “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. And that wasn't just me, that was school-wide. My whole school was into that shit.
MR: Of all the social medias that you've ever existed on, which has been your favorite?
LV: Tumblr. I really miss Tumblr. I regret deleting it. It became an obsessive compulsion type of thing for me where it wasn't healthy anymore. I was taking pictures of everything and documenting everything, so I could literally go back to any day and tell you what I was doing.
MR: Can you find it on archive.org?
LV: I think it's been scrubbed.
MR: You scrubbed it, or no?
LV: I think I scrubbed it.
MR: But it must have been scraped on archive.org.
LV: Never tried to do that.
MR: Do you want me to try to find it for you?
LV: Let's leave that in whichever abyss of the internet it’s in.
MR: What's your screen time every week?
LV: Oh, horrendous. Horrible, horrible.
MR: Can you admit it? Can you tell me?
LV: I think yesterday my screen time was six hours.
MR: Is there an app on your phone you use that most people might not have heard of?
LV: I am a user of the Four Seasons app.
MR: But anything more fun than that?
LV: It is fun — I have stories on the road of me using that for Modi.
I also have Spruce, which I use to communicate with my doctor.
MR: That’s fun.
LV: Sending pictures of rashes and stuff. But everything is travel apps.
MR: Do you play any games?
LV: No.
MR: Were you ever a gamer? Were you ever an athlete?
LV: I swam in middle school and then I was on the team for two years in high school, but no, I was never really an athlete.
The Queen of Everything
MR: How do you balance your phone time — is there no-phone time for you?
LV: No. My phone is surgically attached to my hand. It's hard because it's so entwined with what I'm working on with Modi every day by the nature of managing him and the team. I'm always on email; I'm always refreshing my email. Between my socials and his socials, I'm constantly on there.
MR: If you could pick any client in the world to run their social media, who would it be?
LV: The first thing that came to my head before you finished that sentence was Martha Stewart.
I think she's the queen of everything. She just knows how to do marketing, PR, talk to people while remaining aloof, but also relatable. She's really brilliant to me. I think it'd be fun to do social media for a senator or someone who's trying to woo a potential voting base because it's a lot of storytelling and you have to get into the nuts and bolts of the issues, but you also have to be like, "I have a family." You tell the whole story, which is something I try to do with Modi.
MR: Do you wish that you weren't online as much, or do you actually enjoy it?
LV: No. I wish I could throw my phone into the ocean most of the time.
MR: Why can't you? Because of work?
LV: Yeah, work. Just to use Modi's social media as an example, I feel a responsibility to be really on top of what's happening on there.
MR: Where's your favorite place to order in from in New York City?
LV: Immediately — Kotobuki Sushi. That's our go-to.
MR: And what do you get?
LV: Huge party platters, but we do it kosher style, no shellfish. I can't cook. Modi doesn't cook.
That or 12 Chairs.
MR: Do you wear a uniform every day?
LV: Yes and no. I wear a lot of black t-shirts. That's something I absorbed from Modi, though.
MR: Where do you get them from?
LV: This is from Carhartt. I usually wear a lot of UNIQLO because I just refresh them all the time, and I have some nice Prada ones.
MR: What kind of shoes do you wear?
LV: Mostly Nike sneakers because I know my size perfectly and I order on the app all the time.
Andy Cohen’s Trainer and Hans Zimmer
MR: What’s your exercise routine?
LV: When we're in town, we usually work out with our trainer, Stan. He's also Andy Cohen's trainer. He is amazing. He's Ukrainian. Huge guy. We do a lot of weightlifting, bench presses, leg stuff.
MR: So you do weight training primarily?
LV: Yeah. And then today I don't have Stan scheduled, so after this I'll probably go to Equinox, and I'll try to get a cardio session in.
MR: And what do you listen to when you're doing cardio?
LV: That really depends. Lately, it's the new Rosalía album. She's a Spanish artist. I don't know if you know her. I think it's beautiful. But a lot of pop fun stuff.
MR: Do you have any weird taste in music, like Eastern European folk death metal?
LV: No. Sometimes I like to listen to music scores at the gym that are not necessarily hypey. A lot of Hans Zimmer.
MR: Do you have any hobbies?
LV: I consider the gym a hobby at this point.
I read.
MR: What are you reading right now?
LV: This is something I normally would never read, but right now I'm reading this book called The Faithful by Rachel Reuben. She sent this to us because she's a fan, and it chronicles these three young kids in Brooklyn who are religious. One is a ba'al teshuva whose dad finds Judaism later in life. One is from a proper Brooklyn family, and then one character is supposed to be in this fictional world, the grandson of the Rebbe, and it follows them around and intertwines their stories. I would never read it, but it's actually pretty good so far, and I'm going to reach out to her afterwards to have her on the podcast.
MR: Do you collect anything?
LV: No, I hate clutter.
Modi would tell you I collect a lot of skincare products.
MR: What’s your favorite skincare product?
LV: I use a lot of stuff from this line called EltaMD, which is made by a dermatologist. That's not interesting though.
MR: That's interesting. That's the whole point.
Netflix and Floss
MR: Do you floss every day?
LV: Yes. Oh my God, I'll show you another thing that’s my secret weapon for how I have not had a cavity in so long and every time I go to the dentist, they're so happy with me.
This is a beautiful little decorative box, and it sits on our coffee table [shows box]. Every night when Modi and I are sitting there watching Netflix, you grab one of these floss picks and you just go to town.
MR: Which one do you have?
LV: These are the Oral-B ones. You floss and you can get all the way in there. I zone out and I just do it, and then I go brush my teeth.
MR: What's the last thing you binge-watched?
LV: Heated Rivalry on HBO, but only two episodes were available of that, so I don't think that counts. We were watching All's Fair starring Kim Kardashian.
MR: Do you have a show that you've come back to? Are you a Sopranos guy? Are you a Breaking Bad guy or anything like that?
LV: No. Actually, I've never seen The Sopranos, and Modi's in one of the episodes.
MR: What!
LV: I know, I know. I think I just missed the train. I wasn't allowed to watch a lot of stuff growing up. I grew up in a very Catholic household, and I was shielded from a lot of pop culture media stuff.
MR: When you're online so much, is it weird to meet people in real life?
LV: No. I'll tell you right now, two of my best friends that I speak to every day I met on Tumblr.
MR: From what, 20 years ago?
LV: From when we were in high school. We were pen pals on Tumblr, and we just always kept in touch, and now I just had dinner with him last night.
What's weird is when people now recognize me from Modi's social media out in the world, and I don't know who they are, and they feel like they know me.
MR: One of my guests called that a parasocial relationship.
LV: Yes, it's very that. That's been happening more and more recently.
MR: What is that like for you?
LV: It depends on my mood. I'm always very appreciative because these are the people who literally pay our bills and help us do what we do. So I appreciate it and I love everyone who is supportive of the podcast or loves Modi.
MR: But on a personal level, are you a shy person?
LV: Sometimes I'm shy, and sometimes I feel like I'm having to do a Princess Diana wave and smile. But I'm appreciative, and they're all very sweet.
MR: Who are the people you want to meet that you have not met, and who have you met that you wanted to meet?
LV: I've met a lot of people at this point, weirdly. I've met Martha Stewart.
MR: What was that like for you?
LV: Brief. Elegant. Short. All I needed. Perfect. We have mutual friends.
MR: But you don't want to become best friends with her?
LV: If she wanted to be best friends with me, I would be over at her farm in Bedford in a heartbeat. Modi and I recently had lunch with Diane von Furstenberg, which I concocted. I engineered that situation because she didn't know us, but her assistant was a fan of Modi, and she has a house near us in Connecticut, so we met up. That was fun. But who do I want to meet that I haven't met? It's all the pop girlies. It's like Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift.
MR: You haven't met any of those people?
LV: No. No. I'm surprised that you think that I would have. I'm not in the room with these people.
MR: But you guys are becoming pretty famous, no?
LV: That's sweet for you to think. I think maybe in Max Raskin world, yes, but comparatively, no.
I've met a lot of A-list comedians.
Funny People
MR: Who is your favorite comedian other than Modi? Are you going to say Modi?
LV: No.
MR: Who makes you laugh the most?
LV: The one that comes most quickly to mind is Jessica Kirson. I just think she's brilliant.
MR: And what about from the past? Were you into comedy before you met Modi?
LV: No, so I don’t know.
MR: Would you describe yourself as a comedy fan?
LV: Now? It's weird because I don't actively seek out comedy now, but just by osmosis, I have seen and heard way more comedy than the average consumer.
MR: Do people try to tell you jokes?
LV: No. They try to tell Modi jokes. I am thankfully spared that.
MR: What's the first bit that comes to your mind right now of any comedian ever?
LV: Probably something from George Carlin. George Carlin has a bit that Modi and I repeat to each other where he jokes about how when he was a kid, they were swimming in the Hudson River and they didn't get sick because we were tempered in raw shit. Whenever something gross happens, we'll just be like, "We were tempered in raw shit."
Sarah Silverman has a joke that's so funny to me. I don't know if she's done it in her special, I think she's only ever done it at the Cellar, but she goes, "This is my impression of someone wearing something from Zara. Hey, I like your shirt. It's Zara." End scene. That's it. It always gets a huge laugh. I do that a lot, “It's Zara.”
MR: Do you consider yourself funny?
LV: Yes.