Made destange, Oh pays sunny sund on ihdurasione nice so nat Hey, everybody,
welcome to for crying out loud, A little different voice starting the show
for us today. Hi Wana, Hi Stephanie. We're super excited because we
have a special guest that I forced to come on the show. And she's
a friend of mine. She's a comedian. She's an Emmy nominated WGA Award
winning writer for Conan. Yeah, she's wow. Yeah. She's also written
for The White House Correspondence, Dinner. Oh, we'll have to ask you
about that, The Late Late Show, and Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn.
She's performed stand up on Conan, The Late Late Show. You know,
there's so many things in her in her bio, I don't have to read
you everything. She's also written two books, Dead People Suck and the New
York Times bestseller Shitty Mom. You guys probably read that. She's got a
podcast called The Jackie and Laurie Show. And right now she has a new
comedy special and it's called Cis Woke Grief Slut and it drops. It already
dropped. It's on Apple TV and I've watched it. It's super funny.
Her name is Laurie Kilmartin. Hi Laurie. Thanks you guys. This is
so exciting. What a beautiful studio you have too, Thank you. Thanks.
It's not ours, it is for the next hour, so I'm confidence.
Yes, it's our friend Patrick's house. He has a podcast called bad
TV. Oh cool. Yes. And when we left our previous studio,
we didn't we were studio lists, which is so sad. Ye don't have
studios, and our friend Patrick offered us his studio. Cool. Yeah,
worked out. So you're also a mom, correct, Yes, for a
like about six more months, and then he turns eighteen, right, and
I wash my hands of it. Yeah, it is, but he's only
a junior. We were talking before the show, and he's only a junior.
So you have another you have the rest of the school year, yeah,
and then you have next year. Yeah. You're lucky. Yeah,
because I'm thinking about it, and I know my kids graduate on June sixth
and turn eighteen on June seven Oh my god. Yeah, all in one
week. It's so huge because it end plus with twins. I mean,
the whole thing took over your life for eighteen years. Yeah, and now
what now? What? I mean some of it. I don't know if
that they're gonna leave home necessarily, housing prices, like like the whole world
that is offered to them is kind of, you know, a little terrifying.
I think I see my son staying at home for a couple of years
for sure. Yeah, I don't know. It's weird how when you have
a kid, especially I was when you're like a comedian, right then you
have a kid, and your whole life does change, even if you think
it's not going to and it's like your identity and I'm sure you were saying
like writing your act and writing jokes, and I've written all these books about
parenting. It just like it's so all consuming, right, and you got
especially when they're babies, and then their little kids, and then their you
know, grade school kids, and they're and then all of a sudden,
like they're grown, and you're like, oh shit, yeah what yeah,
I mean you just am I The responsibility takes over your whole brain, yes,
right, and then you you do the things you're supposed to do,
which is twenty you know, constantly checking, triple checking, all that kind
of stuff. And then at some point, you know they can they can
function without you, and you start, you can pull back a little bit,
and then it's just more and more pulling back. But I think you
get so because the first couple of years are so dangerous, you know,
like anything bake and walk any place and run into anything and step on anything
that you're your brain just grows this extra you know, sort of sense that
now what do I do with it? No one needs me to save their
life or make sure they don't run out into traffic or put that thing in
their mouth or whatever. And that thing never goes away, No, it
doesn't. Like for me, I still have my kids on life through sixty
and even like my older ones. So my older daughter is at community college
just for this year and then she's going to be going to going away,
but it's so hard to because she still lives at home. Yeah, so
I still feel like I need to know where she is all the time.
That's kind of time ahead. My thing will be too. Yeah, I
mean yeah, like at night, Like if it's late at night and I'm
like, well, I know she got off work a couple hours ago.
Where is she? Yeah, Like I'll just check because it's like it's not
an invasion of her privacy. In my mind, it's more like, well,
I just want to make sure she's fine. Yeah, you know what
I mean. It's she doesn't have a curfew. Yah, But it's like,
well, she is coming home. But I wonder or if she lived
at home, or if she went to school and then came back and was
living I wonder if I'd be the same way. Probably would she let you
track her if she went out of state to school? I get, I
don't know. I have a friend whose son who went away to school,
our friend Robin, and her son was like, no, you have to
take me off Life through sixty now you can't track me. And I'm devastated,
and she was like, okay, but yeah, yeah it's it would
It's I don't know, I'm gonna be It's gonna be hard for me because
I'm so used to just checking on them and making you know, I just
want to know like they're okay. Yeah, And I know I'm like looking
she had her she in her class right now, or she had her dorm
right now, Like it tells you specifically, I don't have Life through sixty
because my son usually forgets his phone. That's our separate issue, which is
where. I don't know where he is age or forget his phone. I
know now I have the what do you call it? To find my people?
Okay, right, my friends? Yeah, find my friends. Yeah,
that's what I have. Yeah, but maybe they'll take me off.
Yeah. My kid also doesn't drive yet, so I'm sure when he starts
driving, I will be tracking. Yeah, you know, so why doesn't
he drive? One of my kids is working hard at getting her license,
and the other one is not care. My son does not care. My
son goes I can walk to Popeyes, that's all he feels like he needs
to drive to. That's what my son he said. I can walk where
I'm saying places that I need to go, I can walk there. Yeah.
My son has a car and doesn't he rarely drives it. Wow,
walks everywhere he likes to walk. How How in LA are we raising nice
New York City kids? I don't get it. It's weird. I know
they are weird. But my daughter will not walk anywhere like she needs her
car. Right. Yeah, maybe it's a boy thing. Yeah, maybe
it might be because he is of my twins. My daughter is like hell
bent on getting her license and we're going Okay, slow down, you're not
quite ready yet, like we've been. But she wants to practice all the
time. Every day She's like, let me drive. I mean she has
her permit. She wanted to get her permit the second she was old enough
to get her permit. Yeah, and my son is not done. He's
signed up for to get his permit on the drivers direct and then he still
hasn't done even the online portion of it. I'm trying to push now.
You know. It's interesting. I wonder if the girls. You both of
your girls seem like they want to be independent as quickly as possible. And
I mentioned to my son lesson, I'm like, you, I want you
to eat your driver's license before you're at so you can practice driving around here,
so that when you start driving to community college, you're more comfortable and
you're more and I use like and you're more independent. And his eyes didn't
light up. You just want to like independent? Are you trying to kick
me out? Like maybe they want to be mothered Yeah, for a couple
extra years. R know. Wow, there's like that's saying that the Italian
sons usually stay with their moms until they're like married. I didn't realize I
was Italian. But yeah, but maybe yeah, I don't know, yeah,
something about the boys. Yeah, yeah, So I wanted to remind
you of something that we and I'm trying to remember what year it was,
but I feel like it was like twenty sixteen that we did this thing together.
We were both like, I think you had written Shitty Mom at this
point, possibly and I had written my book. Maybe I had just finished
doing the Parental Discretion. But we got hired to do this a sketch for
Pop Sugar. It was a website but they were doing videos and we'll show
a bit to video that everyone thought would change economy. Yes, and the
other girl that was in there with us was named Nikki. She did the
She did a bit a very a podcast that was really big call. It
was about her best friend dying of cancer and having sex, going like having
this whole sexual reawakening when she was anyway, Niki, Yeah, I remember,
I'm gonna have to look that up, Kaitlyn, Will you look this
up for me? NICKI podcast about best friend having cancer and it will it
should come right up. It was a really big podcast. Nicky Boyer,
Yes, oh okay, yeah, what was a podcast? Called uh dying
for sex? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay for that anyway she
played, So we were all given these parts of like playing these certain types
of moms. Yeah, and you were like if it's sex and the City,
you were the Carrie. You were like the relatable mom who's like,
oh my god, all these moms are crea. Then there was like a
drunk mom, right, and there was like and we were at some sort
of mom party, right, we were kind of dressed stuff or something.
Yes it was a mess, yes, but we all had to like know
the script, and yes it was supposed to be a party scene. But
what I really remember is that everybody, everybody was very I was very,
very scared politically of Trump and everybody. I remember that I couldn't because of
the way the conversation was. I couldn't figure out if you loved Trump or
if you didn't. And I was like, oh wow, I really wanted
to ask. I really wanted to ask. But it was one of those
weird things where it kind of pitted people against people if you were like you
know, and I just remember we were all kind of obsessed with it,
but I wasn't one hundred percent sure what side you were on so somehow are
you like, do you still have questions? Well, it's just so funny
because you're the opposite, because well, it took like a couple hours into
the day before I said something that was like, oh do you I can't
remember what I asked, and you were like no, what the fuck?
No? No, I hate him? Like and then and then I was
like, oh my god, we can be friends because we were talking and
like having fun. But you remember when it was just permeated the air.
I mean it was yea twen sixteen. Yeah, people were tense. Yeah
right, yeah, I don't think anyone stopped being dense. No, no,
no, it's it's even worse now. Yeah, but I'm just saying
at the time, I just remember being like, it just felt so weird
to just be at some house in like Palace Verdes, with everything that was
happening politically in the world and just being like, oh, we're just doing
stupid mom shit. Yeah right yeah, yeah, yeah. Had you written
shitty mom at that point? I wrote it came out in twenty twelve,
so okay, twenty sixteen for sure. Okay, So tell us about like
you're before having a kid, you were just doing stand up or yeah,
writing for stand up time I was writing for I wrote for Tough Crowd before
it I got pregnant. I was I had written for Tough Crowd and a
little bit on The Ferguson Show and then Too Late with Adam Caroll. I
wrote on that show. Oh, and then that's where I met you,
very quickly, at like the party at the end of the season. So
funny. Yeah, yeah, wow. And then I came back to New
York and I got pregnant sometime during that, so I had a little bit
of writing under my belt before I had the baby. Oh that's it.
Are you doing are you doing stand up now? Or or because you're just
tellous about your special like that's really cool. Oh thanks, Yeah, yeah,
I mean, you know, I've been doing stand up since eighty eight,
eighty seventy eighty, a long same. Yeah, but I stopped a
long time ago. But yeah, that's about when I started. My dream
is to stop and where did you? But where did you start? San
Francisco? Okay? Yeah, So yeah, I just kept doing it,
you know, even drought having a kid, and especially actually because it was
so such a wild nuclear bomb that I needed to talk about and stuff.
So yeah, it's just like an hour long, you know, snapshot.
I talk about my mom dying of COVID. I have a chunk of material
about that, about you know, parenting and being docksed by Fox News watchers
doing an abortion joke on MSNBC, and yeah, so a crazy stuff.
Yeah, yeah, So a long time ago, you started tweeting when your
dad was sick, right right, right right. That was the first thing
that happened, and people started you started developing like a following. Yeah,
it was weird. I just was my dad was. He was in hospice
and with lung cancer, and I'm just stuck at the house. I didn't
want to leave the house in case he died. I didn't want to like
go out do a set and come back, and I, you know,
had missed my dad's last words or whatever. So I just started tweeting little
jokes about what it was like to sit with your parent as they died,
and because I couldn't tell him on stage at night. And then people started,
you know, paying attention to that kind of thing. And then somebody
like, did anybody beg retweet you? I think did? Patton Oswald was
like, holy shit, Laurie's dad's dying and she's tweeting about it, and
so that directed a lot of attention to me. Yeah, and then I
did a special about it, and I wrote a book about it, Okay,
Yeah, and then then I kind of did a similar thing while my
mom got COVID because she lived with me. She moved in with me,
and she lived with me for four years and helped me with my son so
I could run out and do sets without paying fifty dollars to a babysitter.
And so you didn't get along with her that well, we you know,
as much as mother daughters do. I mean, it's you know, it's
a tough one. Yeah, mother daughter. Yeah, and her own mom
died when she was young, so she didn't have you know, she had
all this stuff and never went to a day of therapy, you know,
so she had whatever, she had her issues, and she was you know,
Republican as a lot her parents are. And so yeah, we didn't
get along in those ways. But you know, she loved my son and
so you know she and she led me too. Was just you know,
mother daughter stuff. It's hard. It's hard, and we're in a thousand
square foot house with one bathroom, so you know, there's you can't get
away from anyone. So she ended up she had fallen as old people do,
and we took her to the hospital and they they sent her to a
rehab sent her to you know, like a skilled nursing facility so she could
rehab her leg a little bit. And that's where she got COVID, and
so I started tweeting about that too, and that also she died early in
COVID. So I think a lot of people if they were telling about their
parents or whoever was had died, it was afterwards. And I was sort
of doing it during the whole, you know, having them on the iPad
and just having taken the iPad around the house constantly and talking to them even
though she was unconscious, you know, that whole. It was just just
it was June. She hadn't come home. She was still in the rehion
didn't She never came home, So she went to the rehab place, she
got COVID. They moved over to Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, and then we
had to My sister is a psychiatrist, so she belongs to a women's physicians
group on Facebook, and they lobbied for us to be able to go visit
my mom. At the time, they were like, you can't visit and
Huntington was one of the last holdouts of letting people visit someone with COVID.
We got them to let us go, and so we had to dress up
head to toe and beekeeper outfits and like, you know, no skin was
exposed. Were holding our mom's hand with you know, plastic gloves and all
that kind of stuff. It's like it's ebola, yes, exactly. It
looked we dressed free bowl, right. I thought that's a good way to
put it. Yeah. Yeah, that's got to be brutal. Yeah,
but also fun in comedy terms. So there's stuff about that on the special
and whatever. Yeah, so it seems almost like you believe that COVID's real.
I knew this podcast would take a turn. Yeah, this is an
intervention. It's not it's not real. Wow. So so you I feel
like, have mind comedy from lots of dark places? Have you always been
like that? Yeah? But but I didn't have a ton of dark things
happen. Uh, I mean I guess I had. You know, it's
the usual coach, you know, we all we've all I'm sure all been
through that as young women, but like, you know, uh, I
guess I was ready when the real shit hit the fan, you know,
for like to you know, dive into talking about death and loss of a
parents and all that kind of stuff. I was pretty ready for it comedically
when it happened. So do you think that having a kid and talking about
being a mom, like, do you think it's helped or hurt your stand
up? I would say helped one hundred percent. It just gives you something
else in common with the audience. And then even if you're talking to you
know, all these shows where the audience is like in their twenties and none
of them were parents, and they may not even want to be, but
they're very close to my son's age. So I kind of, you know,
you can kind of you know, you're not so disconnected from young people
because you've got one or two or three in the house and you know,
so I don't know. I for me, both ways, it helped me
connect with audience members who were parents, and then I think it helps connect
with younger audience members because you just have like, I know what you I
know the TV shows you watch, right, I know the anime you watch,
Yeah, I watch it too. Yeah, my son, So I
know kind of what you're talking about. Not everything, but kind of right.
Right, So when you were when you were in San Francisco, did
you grow up there Walnut Creek, it's a suburb east of San Francisco,
Okay, And then did you always know you wanted to Like when did you
know you wanted to start stand up? Because you obviously started young. I
started when I was twenty two, but it wasn't I didn't. It was
only after seeing like I went and saw a bunch of comedy in San Francisco's
a great place to see it. It still is, but only when I
saw someone who wasn't very good, like continue, i would see their name
pop up on all the flyers, and I'm like, they're not even They're
not even funny. I'm like, well, maybe I could try it.
Yeah, that is how I've done my whole career. I swear to God.
I you know Bonnie McFarlane. I love Bonnie. Yeah, so she
and I are really it's one of my closest friends. And when we used
to have this conversation all the time, I was like, that is the
only way that I try anything new. That I do anything is by going,
well, there's somebody shitty or somebody's shitty doing it. I used to
wait tables at open mic nights at comedy clubs when I was too scared to
try stand up. I worked at the laugh Factory. I wrote White Bees.
I worked at these clubs, Oh my god. And I would see
terrible comics and I would be like, you know what if this person who's
getting no laughs, I'm not going to be worse than that person. I
may not be better than them, but I'm not going to get be worse
because that person just bombed. But they're doing the thing that I think I
want to do. So that's how I would make myself do it. I
mean, if you ever read a novel that's described as hilarious and you're like,
what, yes, I smiled once it was okay, yeah, yeah,
I mean that I started and not all right, Writing a novel is
a hard thing, so I haven't finished it. But I was like,
the hilarious novels drive me insane because they're almost never funny, right right,
right, Okay, let's take a quick break and we're back. That is
so true, So you I just set expectations low for myself and then I'm
like, okay, that went fine. Yeah right, But comedians, I
think it's easier to write something that's funny because we have, you know,
our hour. Not that funny is still funnier than somebody who's not a funny
person most funny, right right? Yeah? So did when you started out
where you was your group like Margaret cho Greg Barrin. Yes, I'm just
gonna say after after you said Margaret, I'm like Greg, Tony, Kamene,
Kevin kind of Oka, Karen Anderson. Karen Anderson was like one of
the founding you know, writers of Ellen's Afternoon, you know, yes,
yes, yeah, who else? Ray James, Dave Anthony. We were
all, you know, various nights hanging out at the Holy City Zoo waiting
for our turn. Wow. And then when did you move to la Let's
see, I go back and forth, but I moved here for Conan in
twenty ten or excuse me, twenty eleven. Basically, oh, okay,
did you get that? That's amazing? Just I had done packets for him
a couple times, for actually all three shows, and so the TVs show
is the one that did it. But I had tried to get on Late
Night and I tried to get on the Tonight Show. Was it fun?
How long did you work on Conan the whole run of the show seek twenty
ten or I guess it was twenty ten to twenty twenty one, so eleven
years. Wow. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, that's awesome. It
was fun. I mean the last you know, year was hard because of
COVID and stuff, and it just you know, when we ended in June
of twenty one, it was after after everyone had a lot of people had
gotten vaccinated, but right before people started being angry about vaccines, and right
before Delta, the Delta variant, So it felt it was that feeling of
we're free, We're done with this nightmare, right And so we had live
shows at Largo and they were really really fun. But you know, it
was like a year over a year of you know, everyone on Zoom meetings
and shows and it it you know, it was so weird to when we
left the office in March at twenty twenty, it was like we're going off
on a hiatus week and I just remember saying, we might not be back
for a little while, you know, because no one really knew what the
COVID thing was. It was kind of like sneaking up on us. And
then the next time I was back was when they had taken the studio down
already and they had they had like the whole the whole set, the whole
Conan set was just piles of wood in the studio. I remember just I
peeked in and I was like, I wish I hadn't it. It looked
like a bomb had exploded. And then because we all get you know,
we're let in to grab our stuff out of our office. You know,
this is one at a time. Yeah, it was like, oh,
this isn't you know, this isn't the way anyone wanted it to end,
you know, but that's how it did end. But it was a great
job. I really loved it. Yeah, did he call it quit or
he did? Yeah? I think, you know, you know, I
think COVID accelerated. You know, it was just everyone was tired of working
from home and everything. But I think he really loved doing the podcast.
He started his podcast and he didn't have to do hair and makeup, and
he could have these really long conversations and he could be more himself. And
if you listen to the podcast, like that's exactly how he is all the
time at work, you know, just kind of always ball busting but funny
and self deprecating and stuff. And I think he, you know, the
constraints of a of an hour long show and then a half hour long show
or you know, you have like two or three minutes max with somebody you
know, and you can't be your true true self, you know, because
you have tourists that were that were you know, cold from uh some boulevard
and put you know. It's so I think it's more fun. And I
think he, you know, really just enjoyed that from he hadn't I don't
know, I guess because he'd been doing this show since the early nineties,
so he'd never really had that, you know, time off, like he
had a whole family and he never really had more than two weeks off to
hang out with his kids and stuff like that. So I think he really
enjoyed that. So, uh, that's probably that probably also led to him
deciding not to do it anymore. And also late night as a genre is
just changing so quickly and so much like no one watches it when it aired
or the people that do watch when it airs, are you know, aging
and we'll be dying soon and everyone else kind of watches it as the clips
come up, you know, So the future of Late Night is is also
you know, it's not locked in. You kind of don't know. Yeah,
do you feel do you feel like what am I going to do?
Yes? There is every day. I mean right now, I'm just doing
stand up on the road and it's okay, you know, I mean I
love it. It's really fun. Money wise, it's okay. You know,
it's quite a hit from what I was making on Conan, but my
expenses haven't really changed, so you know, I'm going through savings quicker than
I wanted to and going, oh my god, I can touch my IRA
in a year. Okay, you know, like I wanted to put that
off till I was like eighty and not grab it at fifty nine and a
half and a day. But you know, you never know, do you
want to write on another show? Or yeah? I would love it?
I mean it was fun, yeah, fun. Yeah, it's hard because
it has all really changed, and the type of shows that there are to
write on are like that's changing, you know what, there aren't like you
said, there aren't these kind of late night shows, or if they are,
they're very transient. You know, they're they're trying something new, and
then they're off, and you know it's it's hard. I mean, and
coming back from the strike, I think everyone was like, all right,
here we go, and I don't know, like the studios are like,
I don't know, maybe we'll just show reruns for ten years and teach you
guys a lesson. You know. So everything's really although someone told me that
was because of the looming Iatzi strike. You know, if Iatzi strikes,
then everything shuts down again. It's like, guys, like the Writer's Guild
got almost everything they asked for, the actor SAG got most of what they
asked for. Like, you're gonna give Iatzi pretty much what they asked for,
So let's just do it and get back in business. What what's what's
with these in these months long delays that hurt everybody except the CEO who gets
you know, zas Lov got like a huge extra bonus for killing the industry.
Yeah, it's weird. I mean, television's changed so much. Yeah,
there's not any sitcoms that are huge anymore. I know, like there's
not I mean there's Avid Elementary is the one that's broken through that I think
everyone's seen at least once and some people watch all the time. But everything
else is like stuff's been on for seven season and seasons and I just hear
of it because of a tweet that comes through, and like, why how
are you on CBS for seven seasons? I don't know, you know,
it's really weird. I know it is, and like like even like Modern
Family had such a good long run, and then you know, there really
just isn't any like must see TV really anymore, you know, like it
used to be, right, and I guess it's the our attention span maybe,
or even just just seeing clips instead online, you know, like John
Stewart on The Daily Show, Like I don't even need to watch it because
I come across as you'll get it. Yeah, clips, all of them
I see, Like I all right, Like I basically saw his whole Monday
Night show on Instagram, right right right? It keeps coming up. Yeah,
So yeah, it's just weird. Yeah, I mean and there's so
much more to watch too, yes, so many more channels that we're not
all watching the same things. Like it's weird when I think of the references
my kid and your kids too have, like it's not common references. I'm
watching The Americans with my son, and so have you seen that show at
all? Now? Oh, it's so good. It's my third time watching
the whole thing. But it's about uh, these were real life, although
the show isn't about the actual couple, but Russians would they would send d
they would train KGB agents to be completely Americanized, and they would just infiltrate
the United States and there were some that lived like in DC or Jersey and
all that kind of stuff. And and so this is about a couple that
are are Russian KGB agents and they live as Americans and they live across the
street from an FBI agent who's hunting Russians. And it's it's a great show.
But it also takes place during the Reagan administration. And I'm like just
explaining a lot of stuff because oh, I'm like, oh, I live
through that. This is my Like, I'm the same age as Page.
The daughter that's she's a couple of years younger than me. And so it's
just I keep going. And I was at a show last week where a
friend of mine references the the the fall of Saigon, you know, like
like it's the last helicopter out of Saigon. And I'm like, our kids
aren't even gonna know what the fuck they're talking about, Like you have I'm
like, you have to, you don almost have to do the Afghanistan War
to get do they even? I don't know. It just their history and
their sense of what a common reference is so different from us, and we
have so much in our brains that they don't. They're never gonna will never
feel comfortable or like secondhand knowledge to them. It's so weird. Yeah,
maybe every generation goes through this, though, Yeah. Maybe. Well I
think about the fact that so many people don't like nine to eleven feels like
yesterday to me, you know, and it's like this dumb thing they have
to learn in history, right, It's like how we learned about Pearl Harbor.
And you're like, oh, there's still Pearl Harbor people alive, whoa
wow, But there are thousands of years old and we're the Pearl Harbor people
now, right, But we could talk about nine to eleven. It's so
hard, I mean, because nine to eleven is not just I mean,
that was that was a humongous thing. I was writing on a show.
It was you know, I mean, we didn't go to work that day,
and then when we went to work, all the writers were like in
a room crying together. Everybody knew somebody and people like and we had a
British boss. It was I was working on whose line is it? Anyway?
Oh? And our boss came in and he was like, well,
I know you're all very upset about this, but there is a show to
write. Let's get back to work. And we were like this guy,
this fucking guy, he doesn't get it. He's not American. You know,
he probably grew up in London after the bombing, so he's you know,
there's the there's they lived, went through World War two in their own
city night, So yeah, right, I don't care. But it's just
like I remember, you know, the world changed that day, and like,
you know, most a lot of people were not even born yet.
I know, I lived in New York City on nine to eleven, and
just that whole week afterwards of people had put in their handmade posters of their
loved ones all over New York City and like maybe like one or two days
for a day or two you're like, well, maybe they're trapped under the
rubble and they'll be found. And then each day that goes on, you're
like, oh, this, this person's dead, this child's dead, this
mom's dead. Like it's then by the end of the week, it's it
was like just oh they were that these pictures of looking for became like unspoken
obituaries of these people. It was. It's so haunting think about it.
Like Adam's agent at the time lived in New York in one of the suburbs,
and he told us that like seven guys on his street didn't come home
that we're gone. Yeah, yeah, that's in that like seven neighbors.
I'll never like, just that tiny tidbit just stuck in MyD It just felt
so yeah. And then they went to New York like a week after for
like the Hugh Hefner roast Adam and Jimmy. Adam and Jimmy went on.
Yeah, they went, and I was supposed to go, and I was
like, fuck, no, I ain't getting on a plane, No way,
I'm going to New York have fun. Like I was looking forward to
it, but I was like, oh no, hell I was. I
was not flying anytime. Soon, right, And and then Adam told me
that Jimmy was like they were like sitting near the front of the plane and
Jimmy was like, we're gonna we're gonna take anybody down, and we're gonna
anybody. He's like, Adam, you're a big guy, You're a roller.
We're gonna roll. He's like, anybody's like, I got my eye
on that cockpit. And Adam's like, as soon as we take off,
Jimmy's like his mouth is open. His past guy, he's flound asleep.
He's like snoring out. I love when men planned to take down uh yeah,
kidnappers and yeah right and fuck him up. Yes, but yeah,
it was. It was crazy nine to eleven. And I try and teach
my kids some like, you know, every year it comes around and there's
like the specials on TV. I'm like, look at me. I could
look I you know, your parents grew like I was. I was working
at ABC during this time, Like yeah, whatever, exactly, you know,
Okay, it doesn't feel as close to them as I mean, World
War One feels as close to them as nine to eleven, does, you
know? Right, right, let's take another quick break. But then they
all knew where they were. When Jojo Siwa said she was gay, well,
I guess that's a mother of daughter things said, I have. No,
I didn't. I only learned who she was later. But yeah,
okay, yeah, I mean in a way it does make us hipper though
in the like watching Quiet on the set, which we watch it, okay,
so disturbing. Yeah, well I almost felt like it was my not
nine to eleven, but in the way of like, oh, I lived
through all those shows because I carle all those shows that Dan Schneider was in
charge of were from my kids watching TV era Drake and Josh and like,
you know, you pick it up through osmosis. You don't necessarily have to
sit down and watch it. But I mean my kids were raised on you
know, uh I Carly and Victorious and all these and Bunked and what's the
one with Debbie? Oh my god, what Jessie? Yeah, hey,
Jesse and we I mean, all those theme songs are firmly implanted in my
brain, you know, so that when I when there's something like Quiet on
the set, I'm like, I almost feel like I was a kid.
Yeah that era being the bomb of that era, but our kids don't have
that same thing with adult stuff. But this is why I believe that our
memories are so bad, is because we know too much shit, Like we
lived through too much. We have so much information that our kids don't have.
Yeah, they don't have to remember as much stuff as we do.
So that's why when new information, when we come across new information, we
have to lose a little bit of old information. Yeah, how much can
how much gray matter do you have? And we're in a built for this
right exactly? So Okay, so you like to write on a show again
just for that that daily Like I like the collaboration, I like the money,
I like the health insurance. But but also like you know, it's
it's fun to write for it's fun to write comedy and for late night.
It's fun to write at that day and see it on TV that night,
and you know, it's the whole immediacy of it is really fun. It
is weird to see I've never worked on like a half hour show, but
the delay and constant tweaking, Like at some point you don't have time to
tweak something because the show starts in four minutes and so it's it is how
it is, and you can't tweak it, and so sometimes stuff goes out
raw and like awful. But you know, it's also nice to just go
it's done, stop talking about it, and just you know, let's go.
Yeah, I had were There are a lot of women on the staff
of Conan. Yeah, there were more. I was the first one that
of the TBS crew, and then Jesse Gaskell came a little bit later,
and Leah Krinsky. I remember Lea christ Yeah, yeah, I think she's
doing she's also a licensed psychologist or psychiatry maybe psychologist or therapist something where,
yeah, she can help you, And I think she's doing that. Again,
that's cool. I'm like to help that skill. That's a good skill
to have, it really is. Yeah. I mean comedy too, that's
good. It's better than comedy writing right now, for sure, I feel
like I never had. I don't know if you feel the same way.
Something else I could do Because I wanted to be a comedian when I was,
you know, in my very early twenties, and I thought, I
just want to be a comedian and that's it. And then when I was
a comedian, I was like, Okay, I kind of like this.
But it's also I don't like the feeling of being scared every single time I
do it, and that was my thing. I would just get so nervous
and I just didn't like that. But it was like, well, what
else can I The only other thing that was like comedy adjacent was writing,
and then so once I got into writing, it was like, well,
I have to keep doing this because what there's nothing else I would not be
happy. I couldn't just go be a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist, like as if
anybody could. Yeah, I mean I am part time psychiatrist, but I
didn't go to school. That's just based on instinct. Yeah right, right
right, But I'm just saying, like I could. I can't imagine like
going back to school and start and trying to do something different now, I
mean, god bless people that did. Yeah, but I'm stuck. Yeah,
but it's like what profession are we stuck in right now? Like it
doesn't you know. Part of me's like I got to finish my specscript and
I'm like, DoD, why what's happening? Right? So I'm sort of
like leaning into stand up and posting a lot of clips all that kind of
stuff. What was it like writing for the Correspondence Dinner. Oh, it
was just Conan, it was hosting it. It was fun, fun,
and uh, yeah, I have a I have a screenshot of ConA telling
a joke about Mitt Romney and they the camera went to Obama and he's laughing,
but it's that laugh of I shouldn't be laughing at this, and I'm
like, ooh, I love it. So yeah, yeah, that was
that's been fun. Yeah, tell us the story about the abortion joke.
I know you talked about it on Ye Marin, but I don't know if
there's a lot of crossover. Yeah, anyway, I just was, uh,
you know, MSNBC has these shows where you can zoom in as a
guest and sometimes they have comedians as guests. It was it was Aiman show
on Sunday night. It was Mother's Day night, and I don't know,
my son was like fifteen at this point. Mother's Day's over. You know.
I had to remind him to give me something. He'll draw something for
me, right if they're not an elementary school forget. Yeah. So,
uh, it was the weekend that they leaked that Roe was going to be
overturned. If you remember that week and everyone was like, what the fuck?
Yes, and so I just made a dumb little joke about it about
who the leaker was, and that joke, uh, really angered a lot
of people. And it was a joke, it was. It's not that
good of a joke. That's why I hate repeating it. But I said,
I hope the leakers are Republican because I want to find him, have
sex with him, get pregnant, and joyfully aboard the fetus. Okay,
that was it, right? It was more like a quip. It's a
quip. It wasn't. I wouldn't even officially. It was more like an
under you know, a low voice, little quip to move the conversation.
It wasn't like And that got clipped out on a bunch of right wing talk
shows like late like Facebook shows, and then that got all the way up
to Sean Hannity and he did a segment, Oh my god, you know,
like a whole segment, yeah, with Lara Trump and like Pam Bondy,
who's the former Attorney General of Florida and was the one that led him
off on the fraud case Trump University, which had she not done that,
had she prosecuted him, he made not even you know, gone the next
step to run for president. So so so then what happened? So how
did you find out that Sean Hannity did a did a text? So it
was like you said it that night and then the next day everything was just
set a Sunday night and no one watches MSNBC on Mother's Day night. I
got. I watched MSNBC religiously and I don't even know that show. Yeah,
so so I think maybe my manager like, hey, I flipping through
the channel, saw you. Whatever it was. I got zero feedback whatsoever.
And then uh, somebody in MSNBC sent put the clip on media mediaites
this site where they it's a little troll farm where and so they said comedians,
she's no. They called me a guest, they said guest or maybe
woman Democrats something where I sounded like I was a spokes person for Obama instead
of a stand up comic. Right, guest says she joyfully abort Republican fetus
or something like that, which, of course, of course that's going to
get picked up by Republicans, right, And so that's how it that's how
it got into the system. Okay, the system of the anger system.
You know, MSNBC did It wasn't like crowded was watching their show. They
helped there. It's there. They they're they're psychotic both, you know,
both sides of it. To me. Uh, they what they feed and
what they keep going. And they're just constantly shoveling coal into the it's a
whole machine. Yeah, I need the metaphor the oven or whatever, but
you know, to keep it going. So Sean Hannity does it like the
next night he did a Monday night. Yeah. Wow. And then somebody
texted you, yeah, like are you watching this or I'm like, uh
no, I'm not, what are you talking about? And then I saw
it, of course, and then and then just the emails for several days
were so uh vicious and rude and mean, and you know, how are
people finding you? Were they tweeting at you? And you found your email?
I think I had my email on my website. Uh huh, So
you were getting random not people. Oh yeah, I just ran there was
oh there's this one guy. And I responded to a lot of them and
then got in fights with them, and I'm like, this is not a
good use of my time, but I always I do like to fight with
people. Before then I get tired, because then it's then it's like it
feels like it's one man, but his head has been put into twenty thousand
different men. So they all they all say the same thing, right,
so some of it could be boughts. I solve that. Yeah, I
mean, I what, I don't know to keep that rage going. I
think they they're our bots that do respond in a similarly I mean AI bots
or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but go on. So this
one guy in Florida was like outraged he and his wife were never able to
have children's all right. So then so I'm like, I'm sorry, you
know, but I'm you know, I'm a comedians. I don't know.
I just kind of pleasantly responded. And then he's like, I can't believe
replied to me. But then he goes, but since you're a computer expert,
like the fact that I responded to his email, I him think that
I was neverble tech. Yeah, he goes, how did you find my
email? You must be some sort of woman, are you with the C
I A, yes, I replied, because I'm I'm when I whenever I
go on the on the internet, there's these ads for uh gay cruises O
wow, which we know means he's looking at gay but he doesn't know that.
And I'm like, well, is there someone else that has access to
a computer, maybe a handy man, maybe there. I gave him every
at I'm like, maybe someone's looking at gayborn on your computer. And it's
like, I'll look into it. That you and the good that's funny,
that's amazing. I love you. You should have said like, have your
wife It sounds like this is like a email me so she can also express
her displeasure at me and I can talk if I can help. Yeah,
hilarious. So it but it kind of died down after like a week.
But for a while it was scary and people threatened me and stuff, and
I ended up getting like a home like a simply safe home security system,
which is not cheap. And then but then it's sort of it's it's like
it's very intense, and then they are directed by the shows they watch to
be mad about something else and they go away, they go on to something
else. Yeah, yeah, did you learn your lesson or do you still?
Would you still be happy to do a joke like that? I would
not, you know, I Yeah, I talked about it. Yeah,
I did abortion jokes stuff, but I don't think I would go on MSNBC.
I was very disappointed that they participated, Like no one asked about me,
no one said, oh, sorry, this is all happening. They
just they because they contributed to it. Yeah, I would not I would
not appear on any of those shows again. Yeah, got it? Okay,
Well tell us about before we go your special. It's called Woke Sis
Woke Sis woke grief slug. Yes, so yeah. I named it that
because there's a there's a chunk about trans women that's positive. Yes, I
know, sis women need them, and I just wanted to do that to
sort of offset, you know, the guys in my age range that are
coming on the coming at that issue from the other side. And I was
like, I was so so happy to I mean, I just loved your
special so much. I want everybody to watch it because it's there is so
much of that, like Joe rogankrowd like you know, and a lot of
comedians that are kind of railing against cancel culture to me for the wrong reasons.
You know, there is cancel culture and it's not great, but some
people are worried that they're getting canceled for the wrong reasons. It's like,
well, stop punching down. And I felt like your special was sort of
the opposite of that. It was like basically explaining without explaining what you know,
that we should punch up and not punch down. And I thought that,
But it also with lots of jokes and not being afraid to talk about
things that, you know, talking about porn, talking about your son watching
porn, or that whole you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. I mean most of what I talk about on stage or
joke about is stuff that happens maybe, but also when I just see something
that irritates me in current culture, I'll talk about that too. So I
guess that that little check of material about trans women is kind of me reacting
to everyone else reacting to something that is in them. It's like, we
should only actually be hearing from trans women about trans women. Why why am
I talking about it? Why are all these straight guys talking? You know?
I mean, like, why, Well, I'm going to talk about
it because you're talking about it, and so and I'll do a positive from
my little corner of the world. You know. That's great. Where did
you film it? Oh? The El Portel Theater nice in uh NoHo,
Yeah, right around here, yeah, el Portal. Now this is what's
the company that you did this, Comedy Dynamics. Comedy Dynamics. So they
so how did that work? They filmed like seventeen specials in four days?
Oh wow? Yeah, and it's a lot of work. Like I was
the fourth one that night, and I could tell everyone was super tired,
you know, and your special is an hour long? Yeah yeah yeah,
all of them where yeah? Yeah, yeah, it was it a lot
of material that you already had or when you got the special where you like
having to go, you know, go on tour and workshop a bunch of
material. I think I got it maybe like in December. I mean,
I'm always just trying to write more stuff, so it's not like, oh
now, all right, I'm always tinkering with things and trying to get more
material because I'm I get bored with older stuff, and the sooner I can
dump it, the better. So I was like, oh, I can
dump on a bunch of material and the special and never tell it again.
That's good. And although I'm still telling some of it because I don't I'm
not I'm not a fast writer. It takes me years to write a new
hour. So sorry, Anyboddy, I don't flip it around. I'm not
a storyteller, you know. I mean, I'm a joke writer. Sometimes
I'll organize the jokes so they seem like a story, but they're each one
is hard one and it's not. You know, it's not like I wish
I was a storyteller. When I watched, I'm like, I don't have
the patience for it. After a certain amount of time, I'm like,
I'm not getting a laugh. I need a joke, And so I don't
kind of relax into longer stories. So it takes me a long time to
turn an hour over. Wow, I agree. Well, So you can
find the special on Apple. It's on Amazon Prime, It's on Apple TV
Plus, it's on YouTube, It's on Vimeo. If you're out of the
United States, you can watch it on Vimeo. I think starting April thirtieth,
it's the first three months you had to pay to rent it or buy
it. So I think on May first is month four and I might be
free. Oh perfect. So you watch it on YouTube with ads, you
will pay for You'll pay for it somehow. You'll pay you'll pay, but
if you have Amazon Prime it's free. So it's called sis well grief slut.
Yeah. Also, your Instagram is any Lori sixteen. Yes. Again,
did not realize how much I'd be needing Instagram or I probably would have
just used my name, but oh wow, that's okay, any Lauri sixteen
ye. And your Twitter or X yeah it is also any Lori sixteen.
And your website is Lori l A U r I E. Kilmartin dot com.
Yeah, all right, thank you, thank much, fun super fun
and yeah go please go download her special if you still have to pay for
it or watch it for free. Yeah you don't, thank you, thank
you. Okay, bye your parent now don if enough it's manny