behind the genius: tavis gray
Meet Tavis. If you haven't already. The mysterious writer-host-monster behind so much of everything that's good here at The Fluf. He also has his own blog, which I've wrongfully been keeping on the DL because it's so charmingly witty that you might all read it and completely forget about ME!
Tavis and I met on the set of a web series that he wrote, produced, and acted in - you guessed it, it's News To Me. (If I make another joke about how my only friends are somehow connected to that particular life experience, I think you'd all really start to pity me, or just stop reading. So I won't!!!) Besides being a comedic genius, pop culture expert, and most well-read person you've met, he's also one of my best friends. Read on, fools!
TELL US ABOUT WHAT YOU DO!
For money, I’m a coordinator at a boutique commercial production company in Culver City, California. For joy, I am a dancer at Anywhere You Want, Babe.
WHAT ARE YOUR CAREER GOALS / DREAMS FOR THE FUTURE?
I’m working hard (some days) and medium (most days) to be a writer. I write regularly already, but I want to be paid for it. Sue me!
More specifically, I want to work in TV. If I may copy/paste the dreams of most TV-writer wannabes: I want to write, produce, and star in a show that I create. Because I’m a monster and because I’m cute. I’d also be fine with, like, a permanent portrait at The Met.
WHAT ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT LATELY? (WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO / WATCHING / WORKING ON / DAYDREAMING ABOUT?!)
I’m excited about lots of things. I’m easily excited. Have you seen the sky? So blue. Grass? Totally green!
I’ve been listening to Banks’s new album, as well as Solange’s A Seat At The Table, nonstop. I like to play things to exhaustion. My pop-culture-aware friend Brittany supplies all of my music taste. So maybe just ask her?
I’m watching everything. Even you! Things I can’t stay away from right now: Full Frontal With Samantha Bee (she is our satirical savior) and cult favorite Gilmore Girls, in anticipation of the revival sans tent. I also re-watch 30 Rock when I’m down because it brings me back sideways.
I’m working on writing anything I can. Scripts, longer things, my nice blog and my secret not nice blog. Trying to be diligent about it. The problem is—as Dorothy Parker aptly put it—I hate writing, I love having written.
All of my daydreams are about Trader Joe’s cinnamon-dusted Toscano cheese.
WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR ROLE MODELS?
This is an excellent question. I don’t have as many role models, in the typical sense, as I have people whose life force I’d like to absorb into my own body, you know, once we have the technology or whatever.
However, I have a lot of people I look to as inspiration for work. I surround myself with friends that make me feel like doing good things, both creative and human. Also, much like a king, I’m on a quest for continuous confirmation. So if you happen to hold my exact set of beliefs and contain a willingness to compliment me through infinity—get on this train, please.
WHAT DOES STYLE MEAN TO YOU?
Style, or rather good style, is whatever makes me go “ah, dammit.” In writing, in clothing, in art. It’s a little bit of envy, a little bit of praise, a little bit of “I wish I had thought of this first.” I also have a very specific aesthetic code and anything witnessed outside of that code results in an “ah, gross.”
As I’ve gotten older, wiser, more wrinkled—I’ve leaned into liking things that demonstrate a point on the spectrum between surprising and classic. I think my taste starts with beachy-literate, flattens out at trashy elegance, and ends, inevitably, with ass-less jeans.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE GO-TO LOOK LATELY?
Very, very, very, very dry skin.
Photos by Emily Owart