Saturday, June 25, 2011

Ken Baumann Dishes On-Set Relationships and Celeb Crushes - Exclusive!


Are you in desperate need of some dating advice? Check out what The Secret Life of the American Teenager’s resident Sausage Prince has to say about playing the field! Ken Baumann chats with Wetpaint about his on-and-off set romances, his celebrity crush and how you (yes, you!) can get in touch with him!



P.S. In case you’re wondering, this boy is a charmer. Watch out, ladies!
Are you dating anyone?

I’ve got to be a gentleman! This is something that I have taken, or want to take, out of George Clooney’s playbook in that he doesn’t have to talk about his romantic life. And you know, people may find out one way or the other, but that’s certainly not the topic of conversation that he wants to delve into. So, I plead the fifth!
Have you ever had an on-set romance?

Oh boy, giving you an answer would break my gentlemanly “I have to keep quiet” thing, wouldn’t it?

Do you hang out with cast mates outside of work?

Yes, absolutely. I would say I hang out with the boys more often, but just not long ago we went to Cabo together. Yeah definitely, definitely I hang out with them.

What dating advice to you have for Secret Life fans?

Let’s see ... well, eating salad is not a good date food. And I would say don’t feel pressured to keep things moving on. If you go out with someone once, and it’s not great and you don’t feel thrilled and excited, don’t feel like you just have to keep giving it a shot.  Don’t feel like dating and meeting people is like work at all, especially when you’re younger. It should just feel like a big playground.

What’s on your iPod?

It’s tough, I would say a couple things have occurred to me in the last couple years. Once I really started listening to rap, I just can’t listen to other music all that often. It’s weird it’s like I’ve been brainwashed by rap. Primarily, what I’ve been listening to is Tyler the Creator’s new album, Goblin, which is great. He’s kind of the creator, the main guy from Odd Future, that band that played on Jimmy Fallon. They’re kind of blowing up, so this is his new album Goblin and it’s really, really good. It’s dark, it’s pretty dark but it’s kind of beautiful. He’s an artist, definitely.

Who’s your celeb crush?

Christina Hendricks, I think. I love her, she’s awesome.

Do you have any new projects? We loved you on Castle!

Yeah, I just did three episodes of that and now I’m just auditioning. Going out looking for other stuff to do, maybe a film or something. But Secret Life is an eight-month-at-a-time gig so that’s keeping me pretty busy.
Congrats about your book being published! Tell us what it’s about!

Yeah, thank you. The book is called Solip and it’s out next year. It is a weird, weird novel.  I’ve been talking to my publisher and I have told them that I was thinking that I would decline trying to describe the contents of the book, but I will certainly say that the book speaks for itself. If anything, I would say that authors like Samuel Beckett or Clarice Lispector, those are authors I love dearly and they probably worked their way into my brain and then wormed their way into this book somehow or the other. So, it’s a weird one.

Sator Press just published a new book. Why should Secret Life fans buy it?

Yeah, that book is really beautiful. It’s a collection of aphorisms and it is such a poetic, beautiful, romantic book. I think any Secret Life fan that can read romantic poetry and enjoy it, or feel all kinds of flutters in their stomach when they think about that kind of stuff will relate to this book. It really does have something for everyone. It’s just a shining example of this author Mark Leidner’s wonderful mind. His mind is really working hard to find stuff that he thinks is true and beautiful and really meaningful. So I couldn’t be more proud of the book. I think that everybody could pick it up and find a couple of aphorisms in there that really mean something to them and make them think and feel pretty hard.

Why did you decide to start an indie press?

I had been publishing this literary journal called No Colony with a buddy of mine, Blake Butler, for a little while and I was involved with this online community of writers and quite of few of them I have since met in person, and they’re some of my closest friends. I saw other indie presses publishing great content but they weren’t necessarily making pretty books and I just thought that I’d really enjoy design. And I thought, man, I should just do this and really do it officially and take on debuts. And then I got passed the manuscript by Blake—he sent me Chris Higg’s manuscript for The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney and I read it in like two sittings and as soon as I finished reading it I went, oh man, I have to do this now. I have to get this book. So I just started the paperwork and started building a website and everything else simultaneously, and now I’m here and I love doing it. Actually on Saturday, I threw a big party and had both Mark and Chris. I flew them out and we had a little launch party in L.A. for Mark’s book and it was great. It was like a little house party. 

How can fans get in touch with you?

I have kenbaumann.com as my homepage and there I list the things that I’m doing or interested in. And then I have a public email address there which is ken@kenbauman.com.  And then I also read all of my @ replies on Twitter  so you can also just hit me up on Twitter and I will hopefully respond!

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