SmartLess · Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett

"Jeremy Allen White"

December 22, 2025·1 hr 7 min·5 clips

Jeremy Allen White describes pulling over with numb arms after his 11-year show ended.

The clean clip starts after the ad fog. Once the conversation settles in, the guest is taking praise for a Springsteen role built around singing and guitar. Nobody lets him duck it. One host tries to spare him the embarrassment, then keeps praising the work anyway because the room cannot quite stop itself. The affection is loud. Jason's raving gets pulled in, while another host admits the film is still sitting on his list. The guest stays modest. He explains that singing was never really part of the earlier path, even though dance and performing arts school were. That is what makes the turn funny. The hosts hear singing, dancing, and guitar, then immediately start trying to cast some future Broadway or film musical for him. He does not really bite. The guest says he enjoys musical theater from the seats, but straight plays were more his lane in school. Still, they keep nudging. La La Land comes up more than once, Hamilton gets used as bait, and the whole thing turns into a friendly pressure test. The rhythm is pure SmartLess. A sincere career question keeps getting bumped by jokes, callbacks, and affectionate disbelief at the size of the challenge. The ads crowd the edges. AutoTrader, LinkedIn, Skinny Pop, Cigna Healthcare, and Allstate frame the excerpt, so the strongest usable material sits in the middle. That middle has life. It catches a guest who already did the unlikely work, with the hosts happily imagining the next unlikely thing for him.

As heard by us

Jeremy Allen White talks Springsteen craft while SmartLess lets the praise drift into La La Land nonsense.

The best pocket of Jeremy Allen White's SmartLess visit lands on a funny contradiction: he came up through dance and straight plays, learned to sing and look credible on guitar for the Springsteen role, yet still talks about musical theater like something he admires from the…

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Why you'd press play

He learned to sing in someone else's voice and play enough guitar to take on the Springsteen role.

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