W
hen two people hang out for the first time, there usually aren’t thousands of screaming fans watching. But that’s exactly what happened when singer-songwriter Tucker Pillsbury, who goes by Role Model, crossed paths with María Zardoya, the introspective frontwoman of the Marías and the brains behind the solo project Not for Radio.
The rising stars were performing at Hinterland Music Festival in Iowa this August when Role Model invited Zardoya onstage for “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out.” He’s made it a tradition to bring out different celebrities for the song’s bridge — the list so far includes Charli XCX, Natalie Portman, and his mom, among many others — and he decided Zardoya would make the perfect Sally that afternoon. Even though they didn’t really know each other, Zardoya was game, and she hopped out in a black skirt, twirling around for a delighted crowd.
If Role Model really thinks back, he’s pretty sure he’d met Zardoya at a bar in Los Angeles a year or so before, but she doesn’t really remember. (“You know it’s dark in there,” she offers.) The two have texted a bit after their onstage encounter, but they haven’t had much time to get to know each other. That changes when they sit down to talk at New York’s Electric Lady Studios early one afternoon in October for their Musicians on Musicians digital cover, a day before they perform at a sold-out Musicians on Musicians event at the Beacon Theatre.
In many ways, it feels like the artists have been on parallel paths. They each count 2025 as a whirlwind year, thanks to wildly successful albums and viral songs that have sent them tumbling into the zeitgeist. Zardoya and her band, the Marías, rode a seismic wave after their 2024 album, Submarine; it spun off the dreamy hit “No One Noticed” and this Spring’s aching B side “Back to Me,” leading to major performances at Coachella and on Jimmy Kimmel. This fall, Zardoya stepped out on her own, releasing her solo debut album, Melt, under the moniker Not for Radio. Role Model, meanwhile, has been busy selling out stages worldwide during his global No Place Like Tour, which kicked off last November. Fans have kept flocking to his 2024 album, Kansas Anymore, a deeply melodic journey through heartbreak and growing up. The deluxe edition, which came out in February, includes the now-ubiquitous “Sally,” a bouncy pop-rock anthem that climbed the charts in the U.S. and Canada.
There are smaller, more intimate similarities: As they talk, they realize they’re both nature kids who grew up loving the outdoors; they’re both visual thinkers and former film students; and they both know a thing or two about heartache, having gone through public breakups immortalized on some of their most crushing songs. (Zardoya split from Josh Conway, with whom she founded the Marías, before releasing Submarine, while Role Model and influencer Emma Chamberlain ended a three-year relationship in 2023.) Zardoya and Role Model both understand what it means to spend years laying the groundwork for their careers before enjoying massive breakout moments.
Toward the end of the conversation, Zardoya looks down at her wrist and realizes she forgot a very special bracelet: “I should have worn it!” she says. “There was a fan at the show that I was Sally at that gave me a Sally bracelet.”
“What the hell? You haven’t been wearing it every day?” Role Model jokes.
“It was really cute beads,” Zardoya tells him. “So I’m really grateful for that moment.” The two thank each other — and make plans for a nature walk.
Role Model: I didn’t know you were born in Puerto Rico. How long were you there, until what age?
Zardoya: I was there until I was four. And then my mom wanted the family to move to the States. So my dad brought out a map and told my mom to close her eyes and to point anywhere on the map. She closed her eyes and pointed to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We were there eight months, and my mom was like, “I can’t do this. I need more green, more nature,” because where we’re from in Puerto Rico is basically a rainforest. And my dad’s brother lived in Georgia and said, “Come to Georgia. There’s a lot of green.” So my parents packed up the family and we moved from Albuquerque to a small town in Georgia.
Role Model: That is very romantic. Also, going from a rainforest to New Mexico is insane.
Zardoya: Yeah, jarring. I don’t think they knew what it was going to be like. What about you?
Role Model: I was born and raised in Maine, sort of like a rainforest, but not. It’s just very green, and I grew up outdoors a lot. I can imagine you probably did too.
Zardoya: Yeah, same. What would you do outdoors when you were a kid?
Watch the video interview below
Role Model: Maine is nice because you have beaches. You have the coast, but you also have mountains, and you have fields and farms, and lakes, and everything is very much in walking distance to each other. You know when you’re with your friends and you’re outside and you are just making things up the whole time?
Zardoya: Yeah.
Role Model: You’re like, “These are my superpowers …”
Zardoya: What were your superpowers?
Role Model: I think flying was a consistent one.
Zardoya: Nice.
Role Model: Flying was a big one. I think invisibility was another classic. What would your superpowers be?
Zardoya: Talking to animals.
Role Model: I feel like you can just kind of do that.
Zardoya: I mean, yes, but I think talking to animals and talking to plants — you can have kind of one-sided conversations with them, but I would love to be like, “How are you feeling today?”
Role Model: That would be amazing.
Zardoya: When I was little, my friends and I would just go into the woods. There were the woods behind my house with a creek, and I would play the nature tour guide. So I’d be like, “So this tree has been here hundreds of years.”
Role Model: You’re like a young David Attenborough.
Zardoya: [Laughs.] Yeah.
Role Model: I love that. Did you used to make fairy houses?
Zardoya: No, but I have a fairy house now as an adult, so I’m happy about that. So I’m going to ask you the first question that I asked Finneas [O’Connell]. What’s your favorite thing about your least favorite person?
Role Model: My favorite thing about my least favorite person? Well, let me think about my least favorite person.
Zardoya: It could be somebody that you know or somebody that you don’t know that you see from afar.
Role Model: Oh, man. I feel like I don’t hate anyone enough. Do you have an answer for that? What was Finneas’ answer?
Zardoya: I think it was something about how bald they were, or something about somebody’s hair, if I recall.
Role Model: He brought up Jeff Bezos, and he was like, “I like that he has no hair.” You don’t have to say nothing, but do you have someone that comes to mind?
Zardoya: Let’s see who my least favorite person right now is … I don’t know. Their strong will and tenacity.
Role Model: I love that. But I have a question. I spent my whole flight [here] making questions. Mine is more music-related. Maybe that’s less fun.
Zardoya: No, that’s totally fine.
Role Model: OK. Well, I watched your Variety video for Behind the Song, and you said that the virality of “No One Noticed” made you disconnect from the song a little bit. The videos that people were making, and I’m sure the edit where they put, I don’t know the other song … Blueface over yours.
Zardoya: Yeah. The first few times that I sang that song live, it was really hard for me. I would get teary-eyed because I still had this emotional connection to the song and to the situation that happened that inspired it. But the more that I played it, and then the more that I saw how fans connected to it and the looks on their faces and how they were moving to it, and then seeing the edits … It became more how the fans connected to it and how endearing that was, and less about how I felt about the song. They almost took the pain away.
Role Model: That’s beautiful. I love that.… It’s hard to get emotional singing it when the crowd is like [starts singing].
Zardoya: Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. What about for you? Has there been a song or songs that have been really emotional and difficult for you to play that have gotten easier because of how the fan response has been towards those songs?
Role Model: I don’t think that’s happened to me yet. I’m trying to think.
Zardoya: So you still get emotional when you play those songs?
Role Model: I guess maybe “Some Protector.” When we do that, the bridge of that song is a moment. And I used to get kind of emotional and really belt that part of the song. And I guess I still do, but I think in the same way, there’s less emotion, because now I look down for some reason. It’s a theme now for all of the barricade to be headbanging to the point that they’re snapping their necks. So similar thing, I guess it’s like the emotion is gone, but it’s still just …
Zardoya: How can you cry when you’re hoping that the fans don’t break their necks?
Role Model: I know. It’s insane. It’s violent. So it’s hard for me to get in the place of my head, but it’s fun to watch. I think it’s a good thing.
Zardoya: That’s one of my favorite songs of yours.
Role Model: Thank you.
Zardoya: I think one of my favorite things about being in a relationship is feeling protected. I’m very much a scaredy-cat. And sometimes I’m just scared to be alone at night.… What was the last thing that made you cry?
“The first few times I sang it live, I would get teary-eyed because I still had this emotional connection to what inspired it. Later, it became more about how the fans connected to it.”
María Zardoya on “No One Noticed”
Role Model: I just watched Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor’s movie. I watched it on the plane. And it’s really good. I watched it twice. The first time, it made me cry. It was very much about a woman’s journey through something really dark that happened to her. I think it was really good writing. But it’s an amazing movie, and I haven’t cried from a movie in a while. What’s the last thing that made you cry?
Zardoya: My mom just saw her grandson for the first time in a long time. And my brother sent me a video of their reunion, and it was really, really sweet, and I cried.
Role Model: Got it. So you’re an auntie?
Zardoya: Yeah, I am. I’m a tia, titi.
Role Model: How does it feel to be an auntie? I’m about to be an uncle for the first time.
Zardoya: Oh, congrats. “About to be.” So when’s the baby due?
Role Model: In January. My sister’s having a child, and I’m excited. Do you have any tips on being an uncle or aunt?
Zardoya: Yes. Everywhere that I travel on tour, I’ll get a postcard, and I’ll send it to my nephew, or little gifts. We were just in Latin America, and so in every single country that we went to, I would get the typical candy from all the different countries and chips and things. And then I made him a package when I got home, and was like, “OK, these are from Colombia, these are from Mexico.”
Role Model: That’s so cute. I fully had an aunt that did exactly that. She would travel the world, and then come back and be like, “Here’s this from Denmark.”
Zardoya: That’s what I recommend. When you’re on tour, just write postcards.
Role Model: OK. Well, I have to do that now. This is good. I have other questions. In interviews, you’ve talked about drug use. You’ve talked about doing acid while making music, which I’m fascinated by, and I just want to know what that’s like, because I’m too scared of most drugs to do them. Do you do it to help write? Because your music is very drug-inducing. That’s all I need. I don’t need to go do acid or nothing. I can just put on the Marías or Not for Radio.
Zardoya: Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.
Role Model: It’s amazing to make someone feel like they’re floating. That is incredible. But I’m curious, what is that like to be in the studio making music [on drugs]?
Zardoya: We’ve written songs microdosing on mushrooms, and then we’ve written songs on acid where we had an engineer [helping] us. We didn’t really like anything that we made when we were tripping. I think our favorite thing is making the music and then tripping and listening back, because you can really hear so many layers and the tones and the textures. One of my favorite things to do when I’m tripping is listening to music on headphones. And then I’ll pull out my notebook and make a diagram of all the sounds that I hear. Then when we’re making music, I’m like, “I want to have that same sort of richness and have this diagram of sounds that I’ve heard listening to other songs while tripping.”
Role Model: That seems more achievable for me, if I were ever to experiment. Do it outside of the studio, and then just come in and talk about it.
Zardoya: Or listening back or listening to music while doing it, and then taking those observations that you’ve learned from other music that you’ve listened to while tripping into the studio.
Role Model: Wow. If I ever do it, would you be my guide in the studio?
Zardoya: I would love to.
Role Model: Would you be fanning me while I’m on my phone writing lyrics?
Zardoya: You won’t be on your phone. Trust me. You won’t even want to look at your phone. You’ll look at your phone and be like, “Nah, nah, nah, nah.” But yeah, I’d love to be a guide.
Role Model: Wow. Have you ever done ayahuasca?
Zardoya: No. I would never do that.
Role Model: Really? That scares me.
Zardoya: That scares me as well.
Role Model: Anything where it could completely shift … I like the way my brain works. There’s a lot of fucked-up parts to it and weird flaws and stuff, but I like generally how my brain works. And I’d be so scared that it would just switch one day, and I’d be like, “I think I’m done with music. I think I want to be a rock climber.”
Zardoya: That can happen without tripping. I think one of my favorite things about just being out in nature in general is just how it feels like you’re tripping without needing to trip. I think you can have a profound moment where you’re like, “I want to leave everything and go do something else,” without even having to trip. Just being out and observing a tree, and you’re like, “You know what?”
Role Model: I do feel like the closest things I’ve had to any sort of breakthrough or epiphanies have been from being outdoors. And it’s for sure my happy place.
Zardoya: Where’s your favorite place to be while listening to music? A new album comes out, you want to hear it for the first time, or you want to hear mixes to your own album, where do you like to be?
“I’ll be so attached to a [lyric] that I’m like, ‘This is just a part of making music.’ You might hurt someone’s feelings but it’s your perspective.”
Role Model on writing lyrics about real life
Role Model: My car. I love to be driving. And that’s pretty much the only time I’ll be listening to my music, especially back home. I love that in different environments music can sound different, feel different, or you’ll have new epiphanies that you didn’t have before listening to it. Driving through New Mexico, it might be different.
Zardoya: We call that a car check. You do that too? Car-check the mixes?
Role Model: Who used to talk about that? There used to be a show. I think it was Mac Miller [who] had an MTV show. Every time they’d leave the studio, they’d do a car check and then go listen to everything in the car, and then go back in the studio. Do you do that? Do you step out of the studio and go back in?
Zardoya: Oh, yeah. We’ll do a car check. We’ll go on a drive, listen to the mixes and have so many notes, go back to the studio, apply the notes. Go do another car check, come back in the studio.
Role Model: Is it you with the whole band, or you and Josh?
Zardoya: We did that for the Not for Radio album.
Role Model: I have questions about this. So you started the solo project, Not for Radio. First of all, when did you know you were going to do that?
Zardoya: We were in Mexico, playing some shows with the Marías. I was like, “I think I want to put myself in a really uncomfortable situation and try to make music outside of the band. And I think I want to go somewhere really cold and snowy. Maybe upstate New York.”
Role Model: Wow. Do you feel like being in that new environment helped create …
Zardoya: Definitely. I had made music with the Marías in L.A. for so long. And I’m an island girlie. I’m from Puerto Rico. I love the warmth. And I wanted intentionally to be uncomfortable and see what would happen from that discomfort. So, yeah, I was like, “I want to go somewhere really, really cold.”
Role Model: I love that. Were you uncomfortable?
Zardoya: I was very uncomfortable, but I was very comfortable in the discomfort. What about you? Does your environment dictate the music that you make? And have you made it in different climates and environments?
Role Model: Yeah. I think so. I found that the people matter the most, and then the environment for sure helps. Being in New York helps, just because you’re walking to the studio, you’re walking around all day, you see things. Whereas in L.A., the day I have a studio session, the whole morning leading up to that, there’s no real experiences aside from driving to the studio and walking in. I like getting out of that cycle that I sometimes get stuck in in L.A. I’d love to write in Maine. I haven’t done that yet, so that’s a goal.
Zardoya: Oh, you absolutely should. Where do you want to write your next album?
Role Model: I’ve started it.
Zardoya: Have you?
Role Model: I started it in L.A. And actually, Jack Antonoff has a studio there, a new studio, Tamarind.
Zardoya: It’s the sister studio to Electric Lady.
Role Model: That’s what I’ve heard. I didn’t know if it was a sister or cousin or what it was—
Zardoya: In the family.
Role Model: It’s in the family. And it was incredible. We started it there, and in two weeks made more progress than I made in a year on the last project. So it’s fun. I feel inspired. I’m sure I’ll hit a wall here soon, where I’m going to be like, “All right, let’s go to upstate New York or do something different.”
Zardoya: Go to Maine.
Role Model: Or go to Maine.
Zardoya: You can take your rig and set it up somewhere.
Role Model: Set up a little hut.
Zardoya: Is your family still in Maine?
Role Model: Yeah, my whole family. Which is nice because then I can just see everyone when I go back.
Zardoya: Do you have a concept for your next album? Or do you have something in mind and then you’re like, “I want it to sound a certain way. I want it to have this aesthetic sort of world?”
Role Model: That happened. I wasn’t writing for a while. I was literally just like, “I know what I want it to sound like and I know what I want it to look like.” And so, while I was stuck on what I wanted to talk about, I made a folder on my phone of just mood board stuff, visuals. Then I made a playlist of very precisely what I wanted everything to sound like and take little things from. And then as soon as inspiration hit for writing and what I wanted to talk about, I think that’s why it was quicker. I wasn’t throwing paint at the wall, really, which was nice. Do you do that? I feel like you’re a big mood boarder.
Zardoya: Yeah.
Role Model: I feel like you’re a Pinterest girl.
Zardoya: I am. I’m still a Tumblr girlie, too. There’s some good stuff on there, still. I like to see everything I think before going into the studio. I’ve done it both ways, but I think I prefer what you just mentioned, going in with the visual ideas and how you want it to sound and what textures you want in the music, and going in with an intention. I think it comes together more cohesively, and in a good way, gives you bounds to work within. Because if it was boundless, then you’re just throwing paint to the wall without really knowing. But if you give yourself some sort of parameters to work within, then you’re more focused.
“[The band’s] favorite thing is making music and then tripping and listening back. You can hear so many layers and tones and textures.”
María Zardoya
Role Model: I’m just learning that now. Wait, on the note of Tumblr, Pinterest — maybe this ends in a question, it’s more of a compliment. But you are a branding dream, and it seems intentional. From the music to everything you post, and aesthetically, and everything you wear, and the cover art … You’re at this point where I could see someone on the street wearing an outfit and be like, “That’s very Marías.” You’ve become now an adjective, which I feel like is very hard to achieve.
Zardoya: People experience music in so many different ways that a lot of it is visual and a lot of it is tactile, too, of all of your different senses. So at least that’s how I experience music. When I put on my headphones and go outside, I like to visualize. Even when I close my eyes, I see visuals.
Role Model: It’s because we studied film.
Zardoya: What’s your go-to to shut your brain off, whether it’s a book or a movie or a show?
Role Model: Well, it used to be The Office.
Zardoya: They took it off of Netflix, and I was like, “I need to find a new wind-down show.” Because then you can’t skip the intro, and the intro is so loud. It wakes you back up.
Role Model: For sure. Yeah. Whoever mixed that show somehow got the intro music way up here and dialogue down here. Yeah, The Office is gone. I like Parks and Rec. Things that I’ve seen a million times over is good because I don’t have to be like, “Where’s this going?” It’s just empty up here.
Zardoya: Same. I feel the same way.
Role Model: What’s your other one aside from The Office?
Zardoya: The Great British Baking Show.
Role Model: I had a phase of that.
Zardoya: Yeah. I watch it every night. What’s something that’s happened in your career that you’d want to relive, maybe while you were writing a song that you had a gut reaction to that came out of nowhere, or a show or a fan response?
Role Model: I think anytime you figure out a bridge is the greatest release of dopamine ever for me. Because usually that’s always the last thing, and sometimes weeks go by where you’re like, “Whatever.” So anytime I’ve ever written a bridge that I’m proud of …
Zardoya: What’s your favorite bridge that you’ve written?
Role Model: That’s a good question. It’s probably “Some Protector,” to be honest. What about you?
Zardoya: Probably the “No One Noticed” bridge. [Sings] “Come on, don’t leave me.”
Role Model: [Sings] “It can’t be that easy, babe.”
Zardoya: I had to pee. I went to the bathroom. And then I was in the bathroom, and then I just started singing that, and the lyrics came out, too. I walked out and I was like [to producer Luca Buccellati], “Luca, I don’t know. I’m singing this thing.” He’s like, “Let’s try it. Let’s see where it works in a song.”
Role Model: It puts me on an island every time I hear that part of the song. You said that sometimes you write a hundred melodies over the same chords, which I very much identify with.… For me, it just comes from not knowing many chords, because what I’ll do is I’ll play the stupid little chords that I know, and I’ll write a song. And then I’ll bring the song to someone like [collaborators] Mason Stoops or Noah Conrad and be like, “Can you find cooler chords for this?” Do you do that?
Zardoya: I’m the same way. Especially in guitar, there’s these same four or five chords: The “No One Noticed” chords, the “Sienna” chords, the “Nobody New” chords. They just inspire something in me. And then I’ll take it to Josh, or whoever I’m working with. Josh is so great with coming up with different chords and weird chords. He’s like the chord master.… And then that usually inspires another melody and other parts of the song. Do you usually start on guitar?
Role Model: Yeah. And it’s just the dumbest chords. I’m always like, “Someone can do this better.”
Zardoya: But you need just four basic chords to write anything. So I need to know everything about Sally. Who is Sally, first? Well, okay. Sorry. Okay, is Sally —
Role Model: There’s nobody named Sally.
Zardoya: Alright. Let’s talk about “Sally.” I want to know everything. How did the song come to be? And how and when did you decide, “I’m going to bring out a Sally with me at all these shows?”
Role Model: That’s kind of how we first met.
Zardoya: That is.
Role Model: The song came about because I was in deluxe [album] mode and writing the songs. And I brought in this girl, Annika Bennett, who’s an amazing artist, but also a songwriter. I wanted her to do backing vocals on another song of mine and thinking that was going to take hours. It took 10 minutes. And so, we were just sitting there, and we were like, “Should we make a song just for fun and mess around?” And then as far as bringing Sallys out …
Zardoya: Who was the first?
Role Model: So we put out the deluxe, and then a week later, I started my U.S. tour. The first two shows, I just performed the song normally. And then we got to Dallas, and there was some weird joke online that “Sally” was about Jake Shane. Do you know who Jake Shane is?
Zardoya: No.
Role Model: He’s a podcaster and an internet guy. He’s going to kill me for saying that. But there was a weird joke online that the song was about him, and he happened to be in Dallas. And I was like, “Do you want to come out for the song and just play into this and just dance around?” And he did, and people loved it. And then it just sparked a thing where I was like, “This would be fun to do with someone from the crowd every night.” The first one was this little kid named Finn in Austin, and it was the best thing ever.
Zardoya: Who’s been your favorite Sally?
Role Model: [Points to Zardoya.]
Zardoya: Thank you. Good answer.
Role Model: Miss Maria. It’s always cool to just meet someone for the first time in front of a crowd of people, but I was really happy you did it. And I didn’t think you actually would.
Zardoya: I’m very happy as well. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me to do that.
Role Model: And I met the band boys after [at Hinterland], and they’re so nice. They’re very sweet. It feels like you have a lot of just brothers around you that are very protective.
Zardoya: They are. They take really, really good care of me on tour. They’re the sweetest, sweetest. Josh, Eddie, and Jessie are just the sweetest. They are like my brothers.… We do these band-bonding experiences. We’ve done acid together as band bonding. We’ve done mushrooms together as a band bonding, and we went skydiving together as a band-bonding experience.
Role Model: Hold on, back up. Where did you go skydiving?
Zardoya: Somewhere outside of L.A. It was Josh’s idea, because Josh is the adrenaline junkie of the band. Eddie and I are the anxious ones of the band. So I think we stayed up all night just like, “Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh. What are we doing? What are we doing?” But we all loved it.
“We started it and in two weeks we made more progress than I made in a year on the last project. I feel inspired.”
Role Model on his next album
Role Model: Wait,I have question about that. I don’t know if I… It’s public that you dated Josh?
Zardoya: Yeah.
Role Model: If you go through a breakup, or when you went through a breakup, how quickly are you … your pen starts going. Is it immediate or are you like …?
Zardoya: It’s not immediate, because in the immediacy I just go into fight-or-flight. I go into survival mode of, “OK, I need to get over this breakup. I need to figure out who I am outside of this breakup.” So it just goes into, quote-unquote, self-work and self-exploration. At least that’s how it was before writing Submarine. I needed time to process. Once I took the time to process everything and process my emotions and talking to my therapist and doing all these things, then I was able to better hone in on how I was feeling. Then I put what I learned and how I processed it into the music.
Role Model: You have to organize your thoughts first.
Zardoya: How’s your process?
Role Model: I agree. Kind of the same thing. I remember trying to make it immediate, just as something to do with my days. It was like, “Let me go do this.” And it just wasn’t clear. So I stepped back for a couple of months, recovered, explored everything, and found some freedom. It was a cool experience… “cool experience” is crazy. But it was a new experience for me that was super harsh, ground-shattering. And then there’s this period where there’s a silver lining. I made friends for the first time in L.A. because of it. And got to go home.
It was a new kind of freedom. Not like, “Oh, I’m single now,” but a freedom of just getting to breathe. Sometimes when you’re in a relationship, no matter how great it is or not, it can be kind of like a haze, and then it ends and that haze lifts. All of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, I haven’t been texting these friends back. I haven’t been talking to my mom as much. I haven’t gone home in two months.” There’s good things that come from it. Once I started to find those, I wanted to grab the pen.
Zardoya: Do you ever ask yourself… or censor what you’re writing because you know that they might hear the songs?
Role Model: I don’t. I feel like I’m the type of person that would do that, but in the moment, I do not think about that.
Zardoya: Or after the fact. You’ve written the song and then you’re like, “Oh, this person might hear this song. I might change a thing or two.”
Role Model: No, I think at that point, I’ll be so attached to a song or something that I’m like, “This is just what happens. This is a part of making music.” You might hurt someone’s feelings but it’s your perspective. And it’s unique, I guess. Do you censor yourself?
Zardoya: No. I think there are times that I’m like, “I probably should.” But, yeah, to your point, I get attached to what was written in that moment, and it’s something that I felt like I needed to say.
Role Model: But being in the room, making music with the person that you’re in a relationship, I can’t imagine what that’s like.
Zardoya: That’s interesting. But Josh, he’s such a great collaborator because he’s never asked me, “Is this song about me? Is this song about someone else? Is this a song about your past?” He’s always given me the freedom to write whoever I want to write about and however I want to write, without questioning too much. Because I think if he questioned me too much, then I would censor myself in order to not hurt him. He’s very strong. He’s a really good guy. And I think both of us do put music as number one in our lives. And I think he knows “I can’t question what she’s talking about, because I don’t want her to censor it, because at the end of the day …” It’s about the music. Josh is an amazing collaborator for that.
Role Model: Makes me want to hug him. He’s a good guy.
Zardoya: He’s a good guy. Yeah. All the guys are really good guys. But there have been moments, don’t get me wrong, that we’ll be done with a song, and then we’ll look at each other and just kind of be like …
Role Model: Really? There’s a little tension.
Zardoya: There’s a little tension.
Role Model: I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be from time to time.
Zardoya: That’s as far as it goes. It doesn’t go anywhere past the sort of like, “Uh-oh. What did you just say?”
Role Model: That’s great. That’s the best-case scenario.… Ms. María, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Zardoya: Thank you for sitting with me.
Role Model: I’m a massive fan. And you’re incredible and you’re having an amazing year.
Zardoya: You are too. Thank you.
Role Model: Let’s do a nature walk. I would love to do that. And if I ever do acid, you’re going to …
Zardoya: I’ll be your guide.
Role Model: You’ll be my guide. You’ll cradle me while I’m in a fetal position.
Zardoya: You’ll be just fine.
Production Credits
Produced by LEAH MARA at LEAH MARA PRODUCTIONS.
Motion Portrait Director of Photography: OLIVIA PETERS
ZARDOYA Styling by COURTNEY TROP and VALERIA SEMUSHINA. Hair by BLAKE ERIK for FORWARD ARTISTS using ROZ HAIR. Makeup by TYRON MACHHAUSSEN for THE WALL GROUP. Makeup assistance: NARUMI BABA.
ROLE MODEL Styling by JAKE SAMMIS at A-FRAME AGENCY. Grooming by LUCA TULLIO.
Lighting Director: CHRIS JOHNSON. Digital Technician: ROY BEESON . Photographic Assistance: MUHAMMET GENCOGLU.
Video Director of Photography: WILL CHILTON. Camera Operators: HALEY SNYDER, STEVE FRANCHEK, ALEX CANTANORE.
Photographed at ELECTRIC LADY STUDIOS.
