You probably already know this, but Ben Shapiro is Mara Wilson's cousin. Shapiro tried getting his uncle (Wilson's father) to give him a nepo job as a writer. His uncle gave him a bottom of the barrel spot on some stuff, but Shapiro scrubbed out and his family wouldn't vouch for him to do anything else.

Ben has been mad about it ever since. He tried writing some novels (chapo did a reading of True Allegiance that's fucking hilarious). They all flopped because he's trash.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 4 points 1 month ago

I knew he wrote some scripts that were all rejected, but I didn't realize that even that was a nepo connection and even that wasn't enough.

True Allegiance is an all-time classic, from "bear of a man" to the cartoonish defense of racial profiling, and the Chapo Reading Series episode on it does it justice. As an aside, I really appreciate them dedicating multiple episodes to Unfettered recently, I think their reading series is the best part of the podcast by far.