Name: Caleb Hearon
Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri
Current role: Palmer in Sweethearts, now on HBO Max
Teen Vogue: If you could be the main character in any TV show or movie that’s not your own, who would you be and why?
Caleb Hearon: “Yeah, I'm going to tell you it would be Girls. I would love to play a character in Girls. Hannah. Obviously. And also Tony Soprano, how fun would that be?’
The most straightforward, obvious thing you could say about comedian, actor, and podcast host Caleb Hearon is this: people just like him. With tortoiseshell glasses and a generous laugh, he possesses a warm aura and some essential quality of goodness — the kind that makes you immediately understand that he will tell you the truth, but make you cackle and feel heard while doing it. He’s the kind of guy that you meet and automatically vibe with, no matter who you are.
You can hear it on his podcast So True With Caleb Hearon, where he banters easily with friends like Trixie Mattel, Drew Afualo, and Jaboukie — roasting and being roasted in a way that’s somehow almost wholesome, but never toothless. You can feel it in a character like Palmer in the new Max movie Sweethearts, who Hearon brings to life with such light-touch humor and earnest gay energy that he deserves his own spinoff. Servers at restaurants are not immune. At Cafe Chelsea in the Chelsea Hotel, Hearon rattles off our order of oysters, shrimp cocktail, and a basket of fries with a dimpled grin; our server smiles back and flirts, “I’m going to pull up a chair, that sounds good.”
Hearon also has many good opinions. On coffee places that won’t do flavors: “It's like we've lost our sense of whimsy.” On if podcasters lost Democrats the election: “Come on now. Good God, how convenient would that be for them to lose an election because you just didn't have a big enough podcaster on your side?” On whether Gracie Abrams’ recent hit “That’s So True” is advertising his podcast: “Yes, I do. I really f*ck with it … I don't care who her dad is, she's singing. That girl's singing.”
What’s less obvious is how Hearon came to be this way. In an early episode of So True, Hearon describes himself as being “an inch away” from a youth pastor or a high school football coach. Those energies fuel his comedy: honest without unnecessary meanness; kind but sharp; principled and hopeful with clear views and analysis on everything from politics to why “Okay, thanks for letting me know” is the most devastating sentence in the world. And his comedy success has paved his way into acting, with small roles in Jurassic World Dominion and the Rachel Sennott-led I Used to Be Funny.
Hearon says he’s currently working on a book of essays, so far written mostly in three-sentence installments. One is about what he would do if he met God, like as an actual person. Another is a missive for the NFL to hire him as a coach for a year. (“I would bring drama back to the league.”) A Missouri native, Hearon is a longtime Kansas City Chiefs fan. He has clear affection for the city, where he lives a good portion of the year when not in New York or traveling, this place where he takes long walks in Loose Park and hangs out with friends like Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and organizer Tara Raghuveer of the KC Tenants Union, which Hearon is active in. (Both are also podcast guests.)
“We just passed abortion rights. We just raised the minimum wage. We legalized weed two years ago,” Hearon says. “We did elect Donald Trump, but it's a complicated place. But we're making waves in Missouri. Things are shaking.”
Hearing Hearon talk about Kansas City, I think of the Edith Wharton quote: “Believe me, all of you, the best way to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.” I read him a tweet that says, “caleb hearon's podcast makes kansas city feel like the amalfi coast.” He throws his head back and laughs. “That really cracks me up. It's kind of true, too. I do think it's so lovely.”
It’s a secondary theme in his new Max movie, Sweethearts, this idea of not hating where you’re from, of growing out of a place and then growing back into it in a new way.
Sweethearts centers around best friends Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga, college freshman who plot to break up with their high school romances during Thanksgiving and realize their codependence in the process. Hearon plays their childhood friend Palmer, back in the small town they grew up in for the holidays after a stint in Paris. Palmer, newly out, has never fit in and always wanted to leave for a big city — that gay rite of passage, as football coach-turned-gay-mentor Tramell Tillman (Severance) and his partner, played by Joel Kim Booster (Fire Island), say in the film. Unfortunately, Paris has made him miserable, and all the “petite soirées” in the world can’t fix it. The B-plot of Sweethearts feels at times like the real heart of the movie: you don’t have to leave home in order to be a version of yourself that you like. Good community can be found anywhere.
“I grew up in very rural Missouri … you realize that you're not like everyone where you're from. So then you go, ‘Oh, I must be worse than them.’ Then you stop hating yourself and you go, ‘Well, I must be better than them.’ Then you experiment with elitism for a little bit,” Hearon says. “You have to pass through the valley of the shadow of elitism and hopefully you come out on the other side, a normal person who's nice. Palmer's going through that, he's deciding how he's going to feel about where he's from.”
On his podcast, Hearon talks often about Kansas City, and also his upbringing in Missouri more largely; he grew up poor, and his mom moved their family around a lot during his childhood to various small towns. Simultaneously, he was growing up in a relatively conservative Christian environment while figuring out his sexuality.
“If I had three wishes from a genie when I was 13, they would be, ‘Please make me not fat, not gay, and not from Missouri,’” Hearon says. “It's funny because those are the most special things to me about myself.”
That’s part of why Palmer feels so close to his heart. “It matters that he's fat. There's a scene of him trying on clothes and there's a scene of him interacting with a love interest. And it's like, all those things are shaded by the fact that he's in a fat body. So am I, obviously.”
We talk about how the idea of representation can sometimes feel hollow, when there’s not a connection between seeing diversity on screen and improving the material realities of actual marginalized people. Hearon says it can also feel like a distraction technique when exploited by right-wing politicians.
“What most trans people need is lower rent and cheaper groceries and more affordable gas,” he says as an example. “Those issues, which politicians are mostly failing us on, those are the actual issues that matter to marginalized people, but they spin us into these cultural conversations about, ‘Oh, they want your lingerie models to be fat. Isn't that disgusting?’ And it's like, I'm not even doing that with you people.”
But it does still matter, and as a fat person, it does still feel good to see Palmer out there being hot and confident and fat and attracting other hot, confident people.
“I think what actually spurs a lot of that phobia in the world is that so many people, in order to have access to desirability … they've denied themselves any waking hour where they don't think negatively about their own appearance, and they did all of that so that they could be promised admission into this elite exclusive club,” Hearon says. “So what bothers them about fat people who are confident and don't hate themselves is it's a ‘how dare you’ situation. ‘How dare you think that you get access to the club of desirability when I only got here through depriving and hating myself?’ A fat person who doesn't hate themselves inherently challenges their own f*cked-up way of living in the world.”
It also feels good to see Palmer portrayed as three-dimensional, a character who could have been relegated to “gay best friend” or “fat funny friend,” but through writers Dan Brier and Jordan Weiss is given a fully complex character arc. Hearon, for his part, feels lucky to be part of a rich lineage of GBFs.
“Every time I get to play a gay best friend, even in a f*cking improv scene, it feels like I am contributing to the canon of iconic actors, amazing talented gay men who played gay best friend,” Hearon says, mentioning Nathan Lane and Leslie Jordan as some of the greats. “That's part of our culture.”
I suggest a sort of “We Are the World” moment, but it’s all the gay best friends in one room.
Hearon ribs back immediately, “That should be the Senate, that should be the f*cking U.N. Every actor who's ever played a gay best friend should be in charge of policy.” So true.
Sweethearts is now streaming on Max.
