After she had her first kid, Katie Lowes — who played Quinn on “Scandal” during its run on ABC from 2012-2018 — began hosting the parenting podcast “Katie’s Crib” in 2017, which was Shondaland Audio’s first foray into the medium. Years into doing it, Lowes began noticing the popularity of “rewatch podcasts,” in which cast members dissect past episodes of their shows, exemplified by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey’s popular journey through “The Office” on “The Offices Ladies,” along with many others.
“Scandal” — the Shonda Rhimes-created show that revolved around D.C. fixer Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), which featured some of the most WTF twists television has ever seen — was ripe for such a format, Lowes thought. “I knew someone was gonna do it,” she says during a recent Zoom interview, “so why the heck shouldn’t it be me and my best friend Guillermo Díaz?”
Díaz played fan-favorite Huck, one of Olivia’s most loyal employees, who also happened to be a master of the torturing arts —skills he later introduced to Quinn, who became his apprentice. (“Scandal” viewers nicknamed their perverse on-screen partnership Huckleberry Quinn.)
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“He said, ‘Yes!’ before I even finished,” Lowes recalls.
And so “Unpacking the Toolbox,” a reference to Huck’s torture kit, made its debut in February 2023. Before the SAG-AFTRA strike began last July, the podcast had recorded episodes for the first two seasons of the show, charming listeners with its recurring features like reading the episode descriptions in lightning-fast “‘Scandal’-pace,” a “tweets of the time” segment and an ongoing count of the show’s many deaths. During the strike, the podcast produced several “Unpack the Industry” bonus episodes, which rolled out over the course of the fall.
As Variety broke exclusively last week, “Unpacking the Toolbox” returns with new episodes on April 11, beginning with “Scandal’s” Season 3 premiere, “It’s Handled.” Tom Verica, who directed the episode, is Lowes’ and Díaz’s guest star. In upcoming episodes, they will be joined by fellow cast members Washington, Tony Goldwyn, Scott Foley, Bellamy Young, Kate Burton, Dan Bucatinsky, Jeff Perry and Paul Adelstein. This season, they’ve also added interviews with celebrity guest stars who happen to love “Scandal.”
As they’ve watched the show again for this project, both Lowes and Díaz have been pleased to see how well it holds up. During “Scandal,” Rhimes and the cast would live-tweet the episodes on Thursday nights, relishing every batsh*t surprise, and successfully turning the ABC drama into a must-see event.
For Díaz, it was all a blur back then. “There was all the whirlwind going on around us about the show, and the hype of the show, and we were so caught up in just filming it that we weren’t really paying attention,” he says. “A lot of times when it was airing, we were just looking down at our phones, and trying to interact with the fans. Now watching it back, we’re just like, ‘This is such a good show!’”
When Lowes pictured how it would feel to rewatch “Scandal,” she worried about feeling “awkward” about seeing herself as Quinn, and feared it might taint her memories, since the experience was “so special in my heart.”
“What I didn’t see coming was how much I’ve enjoyed watching the episodes back,” Lowes says. “I’m a fan of the show.”
(The show’s third season is deep into the madness of the Huck-Quinn arc, and there are shocking moments even to them. Watching it now, Lowes says, “I’m like, ‘We did that?!’” she says. “There’s a lot of licking going on, and I can’t keep it straight, or remember why or for what.”)
One thing they’ve both noticed as they’ve taken such a close look at “Scandal” is that sometimes they just have absolutely no idea what’s happening with the show’s famously intricate narrative. “We have a hard time keeping storylines straight, I can tell you that,” Lowes says, citing as an example the obscure Thorngate subplot from Season 2. “Sometimes I’m like, oh my God, we have to skip plot in this episode, because I don’t understand what the hell is going on. I’m not sure if the writers did either. But we should just get to, like, who wore what!”
When asked their dream guest stars for “Unpacking the Toolbox,” Lowes says Michelle Obama, while Díaz’s immediate answer is Beyoncé. And there’s time, after all: Both hosts say they’re in it for the long haul, and “Scandal” did run for seven seasons.
“I just can’t believe what Shonda wrote,” Lowes says. “I feel so lucky to call everyone in the cast our dear, dear friends. We’re on a WhatsApp chain with all of us and our significant others, and we’re still so present in each other’s lives, and the first to congratulate anyone on successes, and be there for each other.
“And it’s just really fun to watch the show!”
