Jena Friedman wants you to know that she was involved in the joke. And in the new article book, the title meaningfully Not funnySince his days as a field producer in . Daily ShowOscar-nominated articles on Borat Next Moviefilmhis first hour of stand-up female murdererthat she made some murderous abortion pranks while pregnant with her first child.
In his third appearance on The Last Laugh podcast, Friedman holds back nothing, spills tea about his negative experience with James Corden, and explains why he decided to turn the plight of male comedians like Jon Stewart and Jim Gaffigan by asking female comedians offensive questions. she’s constantly asked in interviews and responds to Bill Burr’s tweets about predatory comics, discussing the time she “told herself”.
When Friedman was on episode six of The Last Laugh in April 2019, I saw her as “feminist Sacha Baron Cohen” for the gonzo, confrontational interviews she conducted as part of it. Soft Focus Exclusive deals on Adult Swim. Returning to the podcast in 2021 – this time as an Oscar nominee for writing on Baron Cohen Borat Next Moviefilm— to talk about the series True Crime Story: Vulnerabledescribed herself as “the innovative Nancy Grace”.
Now, during his third appearance to promote the release of his new book, I begin our conversation by asking him if he’d like to help him create a new nickname. Perhaps something that compares him to David Sedaris, the undisputed king of comic essays, I suggest?
“Not Funny David Sedaris?” Friedman drags without missing a beat.
The book opens with the story of a moment when Friedman felt “not particularly funny”. As part of Stephen Colbert’s panel on the special Election Night 2016 edition, it was his big late-night television debut. Late Show on Showtime.
“I always dreamed of being invited to the show one day as a comedian or as a guest promoting a great project,” he writes. “By election night, I was living the dream that slowly turned into a nightmare as the other panelists watched Stephen and Florida turn crimson in horror.”
Instead of trying to be funny, realizing that “an unregistered sex offender is about to become president of the United States,” Friedman uttered his thoughts: “Get your abortion now.”
He’s received more death threats from Trump supporters than ever before in his life, but now “receiving death threats from someone who says he’s pro-life feels like progress,” he jokes.
“I don’t want to criticize men because that doesn’t pay the bills,” she continues. “But women say a lot, ‘Everything will be okay, don’t worry, it’s a democracy.’ My female friends were crying and worrying and communicating and the men were saying, ‘Everything will be fine!’ they said.”
Six and a half years later, Against Roe Wade and every time new abortion restrictions come into effect, things are not good, and Friedman has proven to be forward-thinking. “People think it’s a little bit right, but not at all, it just sucks,” he says.
Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the whole thing here Subscribe to The Last Laugh Open Apple Podcasts, spotify, Google, sewing machine, Amazon Musicor wherever you get your podcasts and be the first to hear about new episodes as they air every Tuesday.
Why did you want to start this book on Election Night 2016?
It’s a definite feeling. It’s weird to look back on your career as you still feel like you’re in it and you’ve always been and will continue to hustle. But I’ve been doing this for 15 years and it felt like my debut party, which is not the right term. But I was behind the scenes for most of my career and had just left. Daily Show when [Stewart] I retired and that was the first thing I did largely as a comedic personality myself after that. So, it felt like a moment when I would no longer be behind the scenes. I was going to be a person in front of the camera! And then I fucked her so hard.
I don’t know whether you screwed it up or the country screwed up and you were there.
The country screwed up but I was there with the cameras on us and all I could think was, “Don’t cry in front of your coworkers,” because it was such an emotional moment.
You didn’t cry in front of your co-workers, but you stepped out of the script and said how you really felt. How did it feel at that moment to do that and it was your late night big break?
The comedian in me stepped in and I’m sorry I didn’t laugh. For example, why don’t people laugh at this exaggerated assessment of the moment? But I also knew back then that it wasn’t hyperbolic.
So it was kind of a turnaround Late Show for you because you wrote for David Letterman a few years ago and in the book you tell a story about how you learned on Letterman’s show that “abortion” is a forbidden word.
There isn’t even a reference to a period. Perhaps it had been suppressed since my time at Letterman; it all poured out of me.
You were there 12 years ago. How much do you feel has changed in late night comedy since it could be a show where you’re not allowed to talk about periods, let alone abortion?
I don’t know and maybe I’m about to spill a tea that I shouldn’t, but… To answer your question, I don’t know if a lot has changed late at night because late at night people mostly haven’t. And I probably shouldn’t say what I’m going to say, but there are two things I want to say. One, I think it’s funny that they reboot @midnightRather than giving a woman a late-night show, it would be tied to a dying platform, Twitter—or perhaps TikTok, a dying platform if edited. This is funny to me.
and two, [James] Corden’s team reached out to see if there was any stand-up I could do based on the book that’s coming out. And since I had a baby yet, I wasn’t in standing mode. And while I was thinking about it, I physically attached my newborn baby to me because my body is the only way he can sleep during the day. So I thought maybe I’d do a set about how hard it is to be a mother when my baby is attached to my body. So we’ve been working on it back and forth for a little over a month. The bookstore would say, “Stop this police joke, we don’t want to upset any police in the audience.” This is how you usually work on a late night set. Conan [O’Brien] it gave me a lot of bandwidth. No other night show has given me the time of day with stand-up. Conanand I am forever grateful because those sets actually led to other work and I was completely uncensored. Conan I’ve never done stand-up on Corden’s show and I don’t really know James Corden at all.
I don’t hearing great things.
Well, I’ll get to that… but it was kind of funny. “Maybe this will work for me to tie my baby up so I can get away with whatever he says,” I said.
It’s a funny concept.
It’s a funny concept and I call it that. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a mother, but I always wanted to be a comedian,” I say. Some of the jokes were: female murderer, my special. Others were newer things I discovered while having a baby. So I landed on a set that I thought was pretty good. And I was just about to record it with the baby on me and then the person who booked said, “You know, the show is ending and it sounds like a big “F-you” to the audience. Those were the words in the email. And it really upset me because it was a funny set, it was working and it pissed me off to think that a new mom who plays pranks that work while her baby is attached to her is going to piss people off so much. Because I think A would be great, B, the show is ending, so what have they got to lose? I don’t think it will piss people off. I think it would be relevant and hopefully funny. And maybe Also baby would help me be SAG for a year, that’s really all I want.
“Being pregnant is debilitating in many ways. However, it felt very empowering when you got on stage with jokes that you knew worked when you weren’t ostensibly pregnant.”
— Jena Friedman
Was it just for Corden? Why couldn’t you do it elsewhere?
Well, I’m trying to throw it somewhere else. But this has to be a L.A. show because I don’t want to take my baby across the country. I’m trying to solve it.
This shows you that maybe not much has changed late at night.
In certain places. I’m talking nonsense about James Corden because he’s going off the air and after working with them for a month they cut a piece of me. But then someone sent me an article about what it was like on a flight to cheer me up.
very famous story.
It’s a very good story – this is where this woman has a screaming baby and James Corden is sitting next to her. She put on her headphones and turned around and praised she for normalizing not raising a screaming baby and ignoring it instead of complaining. And then, the plot was actually his wife and child, which is a very good story.
Too good to be true. It’s like the perfect joke.
It’s a perfect joke. And I didn’t know that about this guy, and of course they won’t mind if I joke about postpartum depression on their show when my baby is on me. Of course, that’s not the mood of their show. And I want to say something positive: I am grateful to the person who wrote the book for even thinking that there is a Venn diagram intersection between my comedy and Corden’s. I guess not.
I like the idea of going on stage with your baby since you are performing your stand-up show. female murderer While pregnant and becoming a trend started by Ali Wong Amy Schumer madeand now you did. And it shouldn’t be that remarkable actually, but you mentioned how having the baby on you can change the way your jokes are perceived. Did you feel that being pregnant had the same effect in your special section, which deals with abortion and these issues so much?
Being pregnant is debilitating in many ways. However, it felt very empowering when you got on stage with jokes that you knew worked when you weren’t ostensibly pregnant. And just to be like, “You should laugh, because if you don’t you’re stressing the baby out.” It was so much fun re-enacting the pregnancy. It was terrible. I like to perform in a space where the audience fears but still know that comedy works. And if they don’t laugh, it’s not your fault, it’s theirs. It’s my favorite type of comedy. What I love about stand-up is having real-time conversations with an audience that you’re in control of because you have the microphone, but they’re with you. I love this. This is my favorite part of doing stand-up. Completely unfiltered. You genuinely communicate with people about relevant topics. I also love being silly and making people laugh, but I love telling miscarriage jokes and making people feel uncomfortable. But they are not as disturbing as the shock value or off. They’re still engaged. I love stand-up.
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