Mike and Molly's Gardell and Wilson love/hate tech
- Mike and Molly%27s Billy Gardell and Reno Wilson argue about tech all the time
- Reno Wilson uses his iPhone to test new voices
- Billy Gardell likes to send letters via snail mail
BURBANK, Calif. — Billy Gardell and Reno Wilson play working buddies on CBS' hit comedy Mike and Molly. Off-screen, the longtime friends love to argue about tech. Gardell hates it; Wilson loves it. We met at the set of the sitcom here to help mediate.
Tech: Nay.
Gardell: "It's taken the soul out of everything. … Books are evaporating into the air. Music is in your ears, it's not out in the open anymore. … Movies are headed the same way, there's nothing you can touch, feel, hold, keep. I think all this communication is actually making us more silent."
Tech: Yay.
Wilson: "It's happening; it's where we're going. You don't want to be a relic. You don't want technology to leave you behind. You want to be able to monitor your kids, because this is their world. The digital world. You can't stop it."
Paper and pen
Gardell: "Every now and then I write somebody a letter, and it just throws them off. They'll call you immediately. You wrote me a letter! As if they've rediscovered electricity."
Using the iPhone for voice work
Wilson does voices for video games and movies like the Transformers. When he was offering voices for director Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon, "I went into Voice Memo (on the iPhone) and started working with different voices and recording them. When I got to meet Michael Bay, I said, here are some voices, what do you think? He said, 'I like that one, let's do that.' It's very handy. In the old days, you would go down and go into a booth and be recorded. Now you record at home and send it."
Societal downfalls
Gardell: "People don't do one thing because of technology — they're doing nine things at once. We wonder why there is ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). It's because everything is beeping and blinking and vibrating."
Gardell and Wilson debate social networking
Wilson (to Gardell): "You know what frustrates me about you? You're not on social media. The thing that's frustrating is, all the people who follow me get on me about you, asking me stuff about you. I'm like, 'Ask him.' "
Gardell: "I have a fan who put together my Facebook page. … I don't do Twitter because I don't trust myself. One stupid inflammatory remark and you're causing a whole storm that you don't need in your life."
