{"id":296192,"date":"2026-01-21T18:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T18:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/296192\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T18:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T18:02:13","slug":"what-timothy-simons-watches-and-listens-to-with-his-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/296192\/","title":{"rendered":"What Timothy Simons Watches (and Listens To) With His Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Everett Collection (Netflix\/Channel 4\/Love Prod., Dana Edelson\/NBC, Philippe Bosse\/Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox), Getty Images (Paramount, Earl Gibson III\/Deadline), Josh Brasted\/FilmMagic, Paul Bergen\/Redferns\n <\/p>\n

A little over a decade ago, America got to know Timothy Simons through his not-so-lovable turn as Veep\u2019s Jonah, a punching bag of a character so hatable that he was called \u201cJolly Green Jizzface,\u201d \u201cFrankenstein\u2019s Monster, if the monster was made out of dead dicks,\u201d and about a million other put-down pearls. But while Simons has appeared in a whole bunch of other very grown-up material since then, including Netflix\u2019s Nobody Wants This and the upcoming Scream 7, he\u2019s also been in a surprising amount of family-friendly material. He voiced a biker in Ralph Breaks the Internet and Tommy\u2019s dad, Drew Pickles, in the Paramount+ Rugrats relaunch. And more recently, in the new season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Simons has given Camp Half-Blood\u2019s vaguely evil new head, King Tantalus, a bit of bloodthirsty swagger, as well as Robert Smith\u2013style hair and a touch of pathos.<\/p>\n

Some of Simons\u2019s drive to do family-friendly projects could come from the decade-plus he\u2019s spent parenting his twins, Marty and Hopper<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s always fun to do something my kids can not only see, but also something that they might actually like or know about,\u201d Simons says, noting that part of the impetus for taking on the Tantalus role was the week his kids spent at a day camp in L.A. themed around the Percy Jackson books<\/a>. (Simons even tried to bring his kids to Canada to see the filming of Percy Jackson\u2019s season-two chariot races, though he couldn\u2019t make the timing work with the pair\u2019s school schedule.)<\/p>\n

But maybe one day it will all work out, especially if Simons\u2019s kids keep expressing interest in getting into the arts. \u201cThere\u2019s always a dream that I have of doing something like [Percy] that films in the summertime, so we can all do our little traveling-circus thing for a couple weeks on location,\u201d he says. \u201cIf anything, it should just really drill home how boring it is to be on set. Like, Oh, really? You want to be an actor? How big of a fan are you of waiting around for a long time?\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what Simons watches and listens to with his kids when he\u2019s not off somewhere waiting around alone.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Netflix\/Channel 4\/Love Prod.\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

The most popular thing with my kids right now is Taskmaster. I think it speaks to their desire for funny chaos. They love seeing people try to solve a puzzle in the weirdest or most creative way, so that\u2019s been huge in our house.<\/p>\n

Actually, when we started watching Taskmaster, my kids felt an immediate kinship with it because they\u2019re also into The Great British Baking Show and Noel Fielding is or was on both, so they got to have that feeling of being like, Ah, yes, I\u2019m familiar with his work. I know what he\u2019s about.<\/p>\n

My wife and I have always really liked Baking Show too, so we had a really lovely family routine going on Friday nights when this past season was on. And while my kids liked everyone who was in the final three, they were really disappointed when Iain Ross<\/a>, the short Irish king, was eliminated. I mean, that was a hard night in our household. Both of them were like, \u201cI don\u2019t know if I can continue watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo: Dana Edelson\/NBC\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

My kids are also becoming little comedy nerds, so we\u2019ll record Saturday Night Live and watch it on Sunday nights as a family. It\u2019s been really great, although there are a lot of jokes that we have to pause and explain to them, especially during \u201cWeekend Update\u201d when they\u2019re dealing with high-level political stuff. I feel like I always end up being like, \u201cI don\u2019t even know how to tell you what the Department of the Interior is.\u201d<\/p>\n

I played in the American Century golf tournament up in Lake Tahoe this year. It\u2019s a really fun thing, and there are lots of athletes and actors that play in it, and one of them was Colin Jost. My daughter asked me no fewer than 75 times if she could meet him, and on the very last day, she finally did. He was very gracious about it, and now we have a picture of her and Colin Jost.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had a tradition for a while of doing what we call \u201cPapa movie nights,\u201d where, if my wife is working or if she\u2019s out of the house, I will choose a movie. And, of course, this is always met with groans, and the kids think they\u2019re not going to like whatever I pick. When they were younger, I\u2019d pick stuff like Pee-wee\u2019s Big Adventure, but now that my kids are a little older, we can watch almost anything together. Recently, I showed them 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, and we just watched Mad Max: Fury Road together.<\/p>\n

Being able to introduce them to movies is really exciting for me as a movie fan, and specifically as somebody who grew up being pretty fanatical about movie-watching in general. It\u2019s been really fun to introduce them to things that have a history to them or that have stuck around for a reason.<\/p>\n

I collect Blu-rays and 4Ks, so some of \u201cPapa movie night\u201d is specifically about what I\u2019ve been waiting to show them, but other times, I\u2019ll just go to the library and think, What\u2019s the mood tonight? It\u2019s fun to try to figure out the best thing to watch for a particular vibe. I\u2019m never so locked in on an idea for a movie that I won\u2019t budge. Like, I had to wait for the right time to show 2001. There are definitely nights where it needs to be light and fun and not too taxing. It\u2019s exciting to flip through, find something, and think, This will be the absolute perfect movie for tonight.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Paramount\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

My wife is a big fan of some of the classic Hitchcock movies, and her favorite is Rear Window, so we watched that with the kids. And even though editing from the 1950s or \u201960s moves a lot slower than stuff made for this generation, they were so into it, and that made me happy. Even when something isn\u2019t designed for today\u2019s kids, the story and the performances were still so riveting that it couldn\u2019t help but keep their attention.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Philippe Bosse\/Paramount Pictures Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

I\u2019m in Scream 7<\/a>, which comes out in February, and I\u2019m a huge fan of that franchise. Always have been. I rewatch all of them once every couple years, and now they\u2019ve expressed interest in seeing them too. While my son is more into horror movies than my daughter, who I think would self-describe as a little bit of a scaredy-cat, over the course of the next few months, I think we\u2019re going to try to watch them all.<\/p>\n

We already started with the original and it was great, though we did have to make an agreement that we were going to watch it during the day so that they wouldn\u2019t have to try to go to sleep once it was done. And my daughter, in an act of self-preservation, had to plug her ears the entire movie so she couldn\u2019t hear anything, meaning we had to watch it with subtitles on.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Buena Vista Pictures\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

It\u2019s been interesting to have conversations with my kids about archetypes when we watch older movies, like, \u201cThese are the horror-movie tropes that this movie is playing off,\u201d or \u201cThis director actually invented a lot of these horror tropes and then reinvented them with this movie.\u201d It was the same thing when we watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, too; that made me really happy because it was a great way to introduce film-noir tropes to them in a way that wasn\u2019t like, \u201cHey, guys, we\u2019re gonna watch Kiss Me Deadly tonight.\u201d It\u2019s like, \u201cWe\u2019re going to introduce this to you now and then later, you\u2019re going to recognize these things again when you end up watching film-noir movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo: 20th Century Fox\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

My son also loves a sequel. We were able to show them Die Hard last year, which they both loved, but whenever he watches a movie, he\u2019ll be like, \u201cIs there a sequel?\u201d I think it\u2019s because, like a lot of kids, he loves rewatching things. There\u2019s verifiable comfort there. They found it watching Curious George episodes over and over when they were younger, then Bluey, and now rewatching Die Hard and its sequels.<\/p>\n

Related to that, I was able to have a conversation with my son about how, even if a movie doesn\u2019t have a sequel, a director might return to the same theme or they might return to the same world or worldview. And so even if it\u2019s not a direct sequel, you might find the same feeling that you\u2019re looking for by asking, \u201cIs there a sequel to this?\u201d in some of that person\u2019s other work.<\/p>\n

We went to see The Running Man when it was in theaters, and afterward, when he asked if there was going to be a sequel, I said, \u201cI don\u2019t know, but if you liked that, Edgar Wright has made a lot of other movies that I think you would really enjoy.\u201d It\u2019s fun to be able to have that kind of conversation with them now, rather than when they were younger and you\u2019d have to say, \u201cNo, there isn\u2019t a sequel. I can\u2019t give you the thing that you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo: Josh Brasted\/FilmMagic\n <\/p>\n

My wife is a public-school teacher, so I handle most of the dropping the kids off at school in the mornings because she has to be in school at the same time that the bell is ringing for our kids. And in our car, whoever is in the front seat gets to play the music, and that alternates day-to-day.<\/p>\n

So we have gone through Taylor Swift phases with both kids, during which I learned a lot about Taylor because I had never really heard any of her songs before. More recently, Eminem had a huge comeback with middle-schoolers for some reason. There was a really long Green Day kick with my son, too, and a really long Benson Boone kick with my daughter. Right now, they are both into a guy called BoyWithUke<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When my kids were in elementary school, somebody introduced them to a cappella and that\u2019s all we could listen to, and that was rough. I ended up telling another parent that I would have rather someone introduced my kids to fentanyl because that would have been a more preferable outcome.<\/p>\n

There are definitely days when I\u2019ll do the impatient-parenting thing where I\u2019ll say, \u201cI know one of you is sitting in the front, but we\u2019re just going to have some quiet.\u201d Like, I know they find comfort in repetition, but when they repeat the same Benson Boone song four times in an 11-minute car ride, it\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m going to drive this car into the reservoir and there\u2019s not a jury in this country that would convict me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Getting middle-schoolers who just want to text their friends to read books can be challenging, but on road trips, we started listening to the audiobooks of Little House on the Prairie and Little House in the Big Woods, and our daughter loves relistening to those. They are narrated by Cherry Jones, and they\u2019re incredible.<\/p>\n

Actually, that relates to another Papa movie night:\u00a0There was a period of time where I was like, \u201cI\u2019m going to introduce these guys to caper movies with The Sting.\u201d After that, we went on to Ocean\u2019s movies. In Ocean\u2019s Twelve when Cherry Jones shows up as Matt Damon\u2019s mother, I paused the scene and was like, \u201cGuys, I just want you to listen to this woman\u2019s voice and let me know if anything comes up.\u201d Four seconds in, my daughter\u2019s jaw dropped to the floor, and she was so excited. It\u2019s like she had just become a lifelong fan of the work of Cherry Jones.<\/p>\n


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