A version of this was originally posted on cpluscomedy.com in 2019.
I’m really trying not to ask you all these questions about crazy ex-girlfriend because that is one of my favorite shows of all time.
Rachel just won the Emmy.
And she’s pregnant too. It’s wonderful to have her such a talented person bring in hopefully another talented being into this world.
I know no pressure on that kid though, right?
[Both laugh]
“Yeah, your mother’s very musical and, if you’re not musical then you might as well not try!” How did how did you end up getting that role?
Okay, so this I actually really liked on the story. I think it was like two and a half years ago at this point. I had been doing this morning radio show. I was going in and co-hosting that. I just signed a contract to it for another year. I also had [this talking head thing]. I was in Oregon doing a show and I remember staying in a really rough motel. I got the call the host of the morning had been fired. All the co-hosts weren’t going in. Then I got cut from this talking head thing. And I didn’t know that. I found out through Instagram.
So I was really bummed. I went out with a friend of mine -- she was my agent at the time -- but her name’s Toma and she was like “you need to just like focus on the things that you can control. Focus on your acting auditions. You’re always putting comedy first.”
I was like “FINE!” Then I get this audition like a day later. And if I had morning radio I wouldn’t have been able to do it because I had to show and Halifax that night. I’m working on it. Then I’m all [perked] up because I got cut from something and this just happened. So I spent, like, so much time was on the audition with an acting coach. Where I was in Halifax, I couldn’t get Wi-Fi.
I told my acting agent I’m not going to be able to send it in; I’m just going to practice because I’ll just really work on it. And he was like “you have to send it. Go out of the hotel; find some wifi.” I found wifi. I sent it in. I get a call back two days later and I got that worked with an acting coach a bunch then. I had other callbacks. These were all over Skype. It wasn’t in person. So when I get the final callback I had everything off the walls in my apartment. I couldn’t find a good angle to be at. The angle that looks best was me on my couch with my computer propped up on a table.
I like to tell the story because it’s kind of like,... one door closes another one opens. I don’t always react to things so proactively but if you do, it can really be good.
That really turned out to be a really beneficial role for you because it was on a show that was the least watched show on network television at the time. It probably still is but critics loved it.
And you got a great storyline out of it like you weren’t you weren’t used for one or two episodes. You had an entire arc. You have a new life after this with Valencia.
It’s so interesting... I won’t use it as a credit necessarily because a lot of people haven’t heard of the show. And then the people that like the show are like “WHAT?! Everybody likes the show!” I think it was good but it’s a diehard group of people [that like it].
I get nervous using it as a credit because if someone says “seen on my Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and if they see me, I look kind of gay then they’re going to think that I’m with their crazy ex-girlfriend because everybody’s got a crazy ex-girlfriend. It’s a confusing intro for me.
I could definitely see that. I want to ask you about your latest podcast. You already have two that are ongoing but Diary from the Road is such as simple premise that literally any comic could do. But you’re the only one who you’re one of the few that’s actually doing it. Where did that why did you decide to start up yet another venture like this?
I really love podcasting. I was on the road a ton over the summer and the way I do my two podcasts -- I co-host both of them -- we record a couple times a month. We’ll bulk do episodes. There were certain things that would happen. I’m really active on Facebook. So I’ll message people that listen on the [...]message boards. But there was something would happen and I would just say “I’m going to save it for when I’m recording. But then I would forget. [I said] I’m going to do like a real, kind of, diary while I’m traveling. That’s why I said doing it because I want to like update stuff in real time and then have it be something that they just me directly connecting with everybody.
I also like the premise of Inside the Closet. I think that there’s 750,000 podcasts out in the world right now. Everybody knows Conan’s, podcast is amazing and great. Then everybody knows Comedy Bang Bang. In terms of queer podcasts that are high-profile, Inside the Closet is definitely up there along with Cameron Esposito’s podcasts. It’s great to have Inside the Closet be there for people who need it. I don’t think as much as there are queer hosts like in Throwing Shade, there’s not as many shows as there should be following along the lines of your show or any of the other ones I mentioned.
I really appreciate that. I’d like to talk about relationships but I was like I don’t want to talk about gay stuff too much specifically. I think it was internalized homophobia. I think it was at the time I was like even if people are like super accepting the majority of people aren’t gay. I don’t want to do things that they’re not going to understand. For me, there is something important about being, like, that’s not the main thing that I talked about necessarily. I’ve been thinking about it. I actually identified being with a super neurotic or more than anything. With Inside the Closet, let’s just pretend that we don’t have to care about any of that and be as gay as we wanna be. It’s been very like therapeutic too. There’s another gay podcast. I just was a guest on called Everybody’s Gay. I haven’t really listened to the podcast. But one of the hosts on Instagram is like different person to follow now -- @fatcarriebradshaw. [...] Did you ever see The L Word?
Yes, it’s coming back.
That was like life-changing just even see that on camera, you know. Yeah, but representation is… it’s so important. When you’re in a city like New York, you can forget that it’s not everywhere.
I also wanted to ask you about The Comedy Lineup. I remember when I show first came out it. The first season came out when Netflix was doing a comedy thing every Tuesday for a year. They have this this thing that were they’re putting people that are basically your category -- you, Max Silvestri, Nicole Byer -- a bunch of people doing 15 minutes sets in Atlanta. I thought that was a really interesting way to to shoot something, especially with comics that are pretty much known in the comedy world. Did you have to modify your act or try anything new because I felt like that was all jokes that I hadn’t heard before -- even if the setup for one of them was similar. Did you treat it as a full special?
It was a few short. With 15 minutes, I had to kind of like modified the arc of it. This is something that I’ll get tripped up doing it in stand up because I’ve done two late night sets and a 15 minute. I just did a Just For Laughs five minute.
I always try to arc in a short set as though it could be the skeleton for much longer set. I was going to treat it like something that could have been much longer. But it was still fun to do 15 minutes because 15 minutes is a really fun amount of time. There’s a lot of people that listen to the podcast in Atlanta. I didn’t know that. There as a lot of people that came out from the podcast so that was fun.
What was the process like? It looked like everything was shot in the night. Were they rushing people on onstage?
6 AM! No, I’m just kidding. They shot over a couple of nights. They would have a warm-up comic that was going to be on. I think of the night that I shot, the warm up comic was someone who shot another season of it. It was not too many comics the night I recorded. We did two shows -- a seven and a nine. It was a smooth process. They weren’t whipping us all out in one night.