Claudia and Jackie Oshry aren’t shy about naming their favorite — and least favorite — podcasts guests. ET spoke to the sisters, who co-host The Toast podcast, and they were quick to name their best interviewee and reveal the person they’d never welcome back on their show.
“Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank,” Claudia told ET of her favorite guest. “He brought us so many gifts. He wore the craziest outfits. He’s actually a really smart person, but also a really nice person and not a diva.”
Jackie agreed, noting, “He was so impressed with our business, which meant so much to us, because we are obsessed with Shark Tank and everything we think we know about business we learned from Shark Tank. That was a very cool guest for us… We’ve had a couple of Sharks on and each one is honestly better than the next.”
As for the least favorite award, that goes to Scott Rogowsky, the comedian who hosted HQ, the once-popular app-based game show.
“That guy thought he was such hot s**t when he was famous for five minutes on HQ. Remember that app where we all did trivia at 3 o’clock and 9 o’ clock? He came on the show at the peak,” Claudia said. “It’s so interesting how people act right when they get a little bit of fame and success. He could not have been ruder to us.”
“I think he thought we were stupid and short and he was like, ‘Are you guys really nervous to be meeting me?’ [We were like,] ‘Ugh, no. Who the f**k are you?'” she continued. “Hate [him]. He’s my nemesis and I don’t even think he knows it. I will die on the hill of who you become when you get a little bit of success is really so telling of the type of person you are and he was exactly who you would not want to meet. He was so rude and egotistical.”
Jackie was quick to point out, however, that “more often than not everyone that comes through here is so nice and down for whatever.”
Though the sisters have welcomed many celebs onto their podcast, they “aren’t really a guest-based show,” Claudia said.
“There’s so many interview podcasts out there and honestly it’s a lot of the same people asking the same questions. It gets a little bit redundant,” Claudia said, with Jackie adding, “That can make or break an episode if there’s a guest that you’re not interested in, then people may not listen today, but with Claudia and I, it’s consistent. It’s always gonna be the two of us. There’s not one episode that you’re more interested in than another.”
Rather than a guest-based show, Jackie, who recently penned a children’s book titled The Camper and the Counselor, described her and Claudia’s podcast as “the millennial morning show.”
“We do a daily podcast. It’s about an hour or more every single day. We talk about entertainment news, we talk about our personal lives, we pretty much talk about everything under the sun,” she said. “We do the fast five stories that you may or may not need to know and then we just go on and on. We just have fun with it. We’re here to entertain people, we like to keep it light and just say some crazy things.”
As for what it’s like working with her sister, Claudia, who plans to head back on the road soon to perform standup comedy, said she “cannot think of anyone else I could possibly work this closely with.”
“People are like, ‘Well, when do you fight?’ We’ve probably fought three times about work stuff. I think Jackie knows when to defer to me and I certainly know when to defer to Jackie,” she said. “She has strengths, I have strengths. We’re extremely complimentary. I can’t imagine running a business and spending as much time with another human being that I’m not related to, because there’s accountability.”
“We have other sisters. We can’t fight. We can’t break up the family,” Claudia continued. “There’s a lot of accountability there. I think, actually, [us being] sisters is what makes the show so fun and great — people feel like they’re joining our family — but also I think it’s what keeps our business moving forward, and stable, and steady on two feet.”
Their sister connection also allows them to be spontaneous while recording their shows, rather than relying on a script.
“I think people might expect that it’s more produced or written than it actually is. But we do the show just as if we’re sitting on my couch talking,” Jackie said, before Claudia noted that most of the show is “a live take” with “little editing.”
If editing does take place, it’s Jackie and Claudia who handle that aspect of things too.
“We edit our episodes. We upload our episodes. We put all of the content out on our social media. It’s us doing it all,” Claudia said. “That’s just very much our energy, self-starter energy. We like to have an entrepreneurial spirit here at Toast News Network, however, we also just don’t trust anyone to do it as good as we do it.”
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