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“We do stupid very well,” says Zach Reino, one-half of the comedy improv duo, Off Book. “But hopefully it can be stupid and impressive at the same time.”
As an elfen green Star Wars character once said. “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” And Reino and his partner in comedy, Jessica McKenna do stupid and impressive extremely well — a combination that has their fans convulsing with laughter.
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After years doing a podcast of the same name, Reno and McKenna, who met and began collaborating at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles, have taken Off Book — roughly 50 minutes of musical comedy improvised entirely from a single word suggested by their audience — on the road. And they are attracting sold-out crowds. On Nov. 19 and 20, they will perform two such shows in New York, one in Brooklyn, the other in Manhattan on their 13-date Up and Autumn tour, which finishes Dec. 7 in Charlotte, NC.
Their contributions to comedy extend beyond improv, and they spoke to Billboard via Zoom about their TV work and Mock Trial, the non-musical movie they financed and shot on their own and plan to premiere next year.
Just so it’s clear, you are entirely improvising onstage. There are no set songs.
Zach Reino: Yeah. We show up to a theater with usually just a pianist and a drummer. We get a word from the audience. Jess and I then talk about that word onstage. You know, what does this word make us think of. Then the pianist starts playing, and we improvise a full musical from there. There is no more preparation than that. People come up to us after and say, “You planned some of that, right?” It’s a huge compliment, and thank you, but we are not lying to you.
In the videos I’ve watched of your improv, the songs are so fluid. They sound like you wrote them in advance and practiced them.
Jess McKenna: Part of it is there’s two of us, and we have worked very closely together as each other’s No. 1 creative collaborator for a decade. Unless there’s a comedic reason, or we unlock something, we’re usually following a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, out, song structure. And if I see Zach take a lead on a verse I’m probably trying to think of the chorus. He knows that he can stop and take a breath. Also, at the chorus, I’m trying to make it simple, and on the comedic side, state the comedic idea in the chorus. The it doesn’t feel halting is there are handoffs happening, and we are giving each other five seconds to breathe. It’s truly just a muscle. There was a period before the pandemic where between our podcast and live shows at UCB we were doing three a week.
Reino: For years.
McKenna: So, you get used to hey, if I end on an open vowel sound, I’ll probably find a rhyme. It’s the little stuff that your ear gets used to doing.
Reino: Which isn’t to say that if you watch a whole show, there won’t be times when the wheels fall off because we’re both laughing too hard at something that we didn’t expect to happen. If you are Googling us and looking at music videos, some of that stuff is prewritten. But if you were looking at a clip from Off Book, that’s all improvised.
So, from city to city, your shows are completely different?
McKenna: Oh yeah, they have to be.
Reino: It makes touring hard because when you do 10 in a row —
McKenna: Our brains are melted. That has been a dial we’ve had to find as we’ve been touring more over the last two years. We’ve been trying to fine-tune what is exactly the right amount of shows to be financially reasonable while hitting as many cities in a region that are reasonable for us as performers.
But the armor we’ve developed is that improv is really ephemeral for the audience — and for us. When you’re a beginner, you have shows where you think, “Oh God, why didn’t I think of something better there?” But for Zach and me, the great gift is that they live, they die, they’re gone.
Reino: There was a time, especially at the beginning, when they were all pretty much narrative structure: hero’s journey, heroes, villains and all that. We still do them occasionally, but we will also do shows where, for instance, Spider-Man goes to therapy, and the whole episode is just Spider-Man in a therapist’s office. We have an episode that’s grad night at Disneyland. We get to explore storytelling from a lot of different angles.
What kind of music inspires you?
Reino: It’s a blend. In our show, you can tell that we are both lovers of — capital M — musical theater, but musical theater tends to be a snake that eats its own tail in terms of the vibe that’s put forward. And it turns a lot of people off. We are both huge pop music fans. We’re both huge emo fans. We are both Irish and Scottish folk music fans. I won’t speak for Jess, but what we try to bring to the show is, what if also rock and roll? What if also rap?
McKenna: There used to be a lot of rap.
Reino: But that was another time.
McKenna: As working partners, Zach and I are like, “Work smarter, not harder.” So, the music needs to be knowable, hookable and [uncomplicated enough] for us to think of lyrics as we come up with them. We did 300 episodes in the studio, and we’ve continued to tour. We would get bored if we were only doing musical theater pastiche.
We’ll be like, is there a genre choice here that will hang a lantern on the joke? Is there a choice that will fly in contrast to the joke, which will then make the joke funnier? For instance, we did a show in San Francisco earlier this year where we had a whole song with a very “Cat’s in the Cradle” vibe about a father and son. It’s really exciting to be able to pull as many different musical references as possible.
Reino: Our third collaborator in improvisation is the band. So, if the band is like, this one’s a ska song, then, it’s, “Well, I guess this is a ska song.”
McKenna: We just have to say “yes.”
Do you have muscle memory for structure and time?
McKenna: Yeah. There’s that internal metronome of set up the story, meet our characters, maybe introduce what might be a conflict or an area for discovery or growth or what have you. Then let’s make sure we have some fun and games in the middle where we introduce characters that may or may not be involved in the climax — where, say, a random butler character walks on and says one ridiculous thing about needing to polish the shower. And the piano player starts playing.
Like Zach said, our band is our third collaborator. If they think there should be a song, well then, the character who was going to say just two lines, is singing a whole song about why they love a gleaming shower.
We like when our stories have a satisfying narrative and when the music is great, but we’re comedy-first. So, we have to make sure that we are leaving space to pursue a purely comedic idea even if it stalls our momentum. So, if we’ve given ourselves the impossible task of doing a murder mystery while playing with time travel in a wormhole, we can yada-yada in a way that, our audience is, “Yeah, we get it.”
Additionally, we do a talk back with the audience where they can ask us questions, like, “Why did the time portal turn into friendship?”
Reino: They use that opportunity to lightly roast us for things that they noticed that we have done wrong.
McKenna: Then we always end with a song. Often, it’ll be super tangential. Remember the butler who polishes the shower? He also polishes the refrigerator. Here’s that version. It’s pretty silly. We take it seriously in that we try to be our best at it, but there’s nothing dorkier in the world than musical improv.
How long is the show usually?
McKenna: From suggestion through the talk-back and final song, it’s typically 75 minutes, with the main meat of the musical being around 50 minutes.
Given that your shows are entirely improvised, does that mean you don’t have to get together to practice?
We don’t practice. We travel with a pianist, but we hire local drummers. When I email them, it’s, “The practice will be the soundcheck and it will be mostly getting levels. That’s pretty much it.” One of the reasons we stopped doing the show weekly in studio was that when you are doing too much improv, you get worse at it. You need to go out and live your life, so that you have things to bring back to the show. Otherwise, you’re just doing improv about the last improv scene you did, and no one wants that.
You also write music and comedy for TV shows, and I understand you are working on movies. Can you talk about those projects?
McKenna: That’s the first thing we did at the beginning of our careers. We would write one-off comedy songs and shoot them as music videos — definitely inspired by The Lonely Island. From there, one of our first writing gigs was writing music for a Nickelodeon digital initiative which led to writing for musical TV shows and movies for Nickelodeon and DreamWorks.
We’d love to make a musical feature. We understand that the modern audience has [difficulty with] suspension of disbelief when it comes to musicals. We’ve had some success in developing animated projects. Another is the kid space. But that’s not exactly where we want to live. So, we’ve spent the last five years writing, in an ensemble, a live-action, true comedy musical with David Wang that he would direct.
We developed it with Elizabeth Banks‘ company, Brownstone. We sold it to Amazon, Amazon eventually passed and it came back to us. Now we’re looking at pivoting to the stage because we love it. It’s very funny. So, if you have a hard time watching a real human break into song, maybe you won’t feel that way if you’ve been laughing. We adore this project, and it will get its way into the world one way or another.
Reino: We are doing a live presentation of it early next year in Los Angeles.
Do you have a title?
McKenna: It’s called Three Months Later, and it’s about a plane that goes down safely in the Alaskan/Canadian wilderness. It’s a mother-daughter at its heart but also a broad ensemble comedy about what happens three months later when they’re still stuck.
It sounds like you’d be great to do an off Broadway or Broadway play. I’m thinking of Book of Mormon.
Zach Reino: Yeah, what was our movie, Three Months Later — which is now our live musical Three Months Later — that is the plan for that.
It sounds like you could follow in the footsteps of The Book of Mormon.
McKenna: That’s a huge yes. That musical is a North star for sure. And the South Park musical [South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut] is huge for Zach. It’s clear that Trey Parker and Matt Stone love musicals.
Reino: The South Park guys have been doing this forever and tricking people that don’t like musicals. Obviously, there’s a tonal difference between our work and their work. We tend not to go a blue as they do. [Off Book] is rated for adults but we…
McKenna: It’s only because we don’t know where it’s going to go and we don’t want to be limiting ourselves. We often have shows that you would be very safe bringing a 10-year-old to, but then oops, there was a song that was all about buttholes. At the beginning, people were like, “You know, this might be really big if you could guarantee it was PG.” And we can’t.
Reino: If your kid is cool, they can come.
Any other projects you want to mention?
McKenna: Zach and I are often performers with the internet streamer Dropout, which has become an amazing homebase playground for a lot of improv comedians. We absolutely adore doing stuff over there, and we are in development with them over a couple of projects. They have been kind enough to foster us as musical voices and keep finding ways for us to interject music.
And we just wrapped a movie that we’re in post for that has some original music. But because making musical projects has been such a hurdle— they’re always in development — we were like let’s make a non-musical something that’s scalable. So, we crowdfunded, wrote, starred in — and I directed — a movie called Mock Trial. One of the things Zach and I also have in common is that we did high school mock trial in California. So, we literally did the same cases. We’re in post for that right now, and Zach has written some great original music. But all the music is diegetic or in montage. It’s not a character breaking into song. But [the film] relies on improv and [harkens] back to those huge foundational Christopher Guest ensemble movies.
You’ve written for Rick and Morty, right?
Reino: Yeah. We were brought into write with Ryan Elder, who’s the main composer for Rick and Morty. He had a Dear Evan Hansen-esque song that he wanted to do.
McKenna: It was awesome to have a song in an episode of that series. It was also a very sad pandemic moment because they were talking about doing a bigger music tour.
Reino: They were going to do a Rick and Morty tour.
McKenna: And they were like we might want to fill out more music. We were in these early stages and then it was like, “Oh, never mind. It’s not going to happen.”
Reino: We also were lucky enough to do some songs for the Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin TV show on Peacock. We wrote a couple of songs for that.
McKenna: Get your head around this. We also wrote original music for a baking competition show called Baking It on Peacock. That won us two WGA awards. So, we have two Birds for writing songs about pie for a baking show.
Reino: And about a scary reindeer and…
McKenna: A mint that’s at the bottom of your grandmother’s bag.
Reino: We were very much helped by the fact that that show was hosted by Andy Sandberg, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler. So, there’s a lot of star power and extreme talent behind these awards, but we’ll take them anyway.
McKenna: Yeah, the [writing] staff won the awards. We have found ways to inject music wherever we go, and eventually the world will say yes to our full musical. Until then, we’ll be sneaky about it.
Reino: And Off Book is very much our baby and our creative answer to keeping our souls alive. No one can tell us to stop. It doesn’t get stuck in development.
McKenna: There are no notes.
Where do you two see yourselves in five years?
McKenna: I’m really hoping Pasadena.
Reino: Yeah, it’s a great neighborhood. You would be a great fit for Pasadena.
McKenna: I know. Thanks. Zach and I are a successful duo for many reasons, and one of them is that we share a front-facing humility and an inward monstrous cockiness.
Reino: Monstrous ego.
McKenna: Yeah, that we only show to each other and maybe our spouses — which is, “Yeah, we’ll probably have a Broadway musical. Yeah, we’ll probably also have a movie someday. We’ll probably win an Academy Award for best original song. These things will probably happen.” You have to have that delusion that you can do all those things.
Reino: The Mock Trial movie was a huge lesson that it’s important for creative professionals to seize the means of production and do it yourself and not have to wait for someone else to tell you yes. So, the five-year plan is to make more movies and musicals where no one can say, “No.”
This past year has been a real eye opener in terms of how much is possible. We spent the last six years building up a fan base with Off Book, and that fanbase then kickstarted this movie for us. We used that to go out to investors. They were like, “Oh, you’ve already got some money. We’ll give you some more.” Then hopefully we’ll deliver this movie that people will really, really like, and then that will open the next door and so on and so forth. So, houses in Pasadena, world domination, Broadway musical, several EGOTs maybe. We’ll see.
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“I feel very bad about how this call is lit,” says Josh Johnson on Zoom. “I did my best, but I am in a hotel room in Jacksonville, Florida and there were only so many lights to work with. There is some shadow being cast that is not wholly flattering — so you have caught me.”
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It’s a few days before Johnson, 35, takes his third spin as one of the revolving hosts of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Nov. 11-14 — the program’s pater familias Jon Stewart hosts on Mondays — but the weeks before and after are bookended by his extensive Flowers stand-up tour. Hence, his location.
Johnson’s reference to the shadows in his hotel room has to do with his college major: theatrical lighting design at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. (He grew up in Alexandria.) Although he had done stand-up at open mics while in college, Johnson says that his decision to commit to a career in comedy happened after he moved to Chicago. “I moved there to start doing stand-up,” he says, “but I think if I got a couple of design jobs here and there, or had a fast track to the union, it would have been a slightly different story.”
It’s a good thing United Scenic Artists Local USA 829 didn’t come calling. Johnson’s turn at The Daily Show’s anchor desk is but the latest achievement in an increasingly successful career, which also includes the stage and social media.
He joined the program as a writer in 2017 and, along with his fellow scribes, is a four-time Primetime Emmy nominee. He was named New York’s Funniest Standup at the New York Comedy Festival in 2018, and has starred in several specials. He has more than 8.7 million followers across his social media, where he is quite prolific — and very funny — on the latest cultural and political news of the day. (His take on the announcement that Bad Bunny would host the Super Bowl Halftime Show — see below — is a must-watch.) He posts weekly stand-up sets on his YouTube channel on Tuesdays, and that content has been viewed nearly 430 million times in total.
That popularity has translated to his Daily Show viewership. His first night as anchor in July drew 590,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen — making it the most-watched non-Stewart-hosted episode of the year by total audience. His demographics were even more impressive. In the 18-49 age category most desired by advertisers 226,000 viewers tuned in, a larger audience than Stewart’s top-rated episodes — until September, when Stewart hosted a special Thursday night episode in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel‘s suspension by ABC. That show drew 443,000 viewers in the 18-49 demo. (It’s also worth noting that when Johnson scored that ratings achievement, he posted a video to his YouTube channel thanking his fans for their support.)
Despite these, um, flowers, Johnson was chill, thoughtful — and extremely modest — in this conversation with Billboard, where he talked about the challenge of his transition to the anchor desk, and his dedication to being fair to the public figures he covers, even if he’s not a fan.
You’re about to host your third week of The Daily Show. What has the ride been like?
I’ve been having a lot of fun, and everybody’s been super supportive. So, it’s been really special, but I still have a whole lot to learn so I’m excited at every opportunity I get.
It looks like everybody on the show is having a blast. What’s the culture like there?
Everyone with a role has been in it long enough to feel really comfortable with it and inspired by Jon [Stewart]. For the most part, whenever I’m hosting, I look at it as an opportunity to learn more about what everyone else is doing. When I started as a writer I was so focused on writing and style and voice — and the writer’s wing in general — that sometimes I didn’t understand how a piece I’d written affected props or costume, for example.
Now being on the correspondent-slash-hosting side, I see what it takes to make something happen from that perspective. Understanding how everything comes together makes me feel like a better writer, because I’m now speaking more of a shared language. The show is a great culture for that. Everybody can learn from everybody else, even if it’s not their department.
When you host, are you writing your own material?
It’s a group effort.
Has there been any particular challenge to making the transition from writer to correspondent to anchor?
It’s probably hitting refresh after each show. That’s not a bad thing — but you could be on cloud nine after you do a show, and right after wrap, there’s this element of, “OK, but we do have to come back tomorrow and start again.”
At the end of a week, you get to enjoy everything that you did and be like, “Wow, what a great experience.” Day to day, hitting refresh is sometimes a challenge, although I’m used to it from doing so much standup on the road. You’re in West Palm Beach one day, Jacksonville the next day and maybe Tallahassee the next. I feel the same way about my YouTube channel where I post every Tuesday.
Tell me more.
Every Tuesday I post a new set. Sometimes, it’s extremely topical or political, and sometimes it’s more culture or pop. I really love doing that. We premiere live every Tuesday at 9:00 p.m., so you can hop in the chat, meet other people and have good conversation with everybody. Then the sets are available for free on YouTube for the rest of time. Outside of that, I’m touring. I’m going to continue touring into the future so if you miss me in your city, don’t worry, I’m coming back.
You’ve been a writer since 2017. At what point did you think, “I want to be on camera”?
It wasn’t something that I was gunning for for years and years. It started to set in as I got more comfortable with the show. I was having a great time writing for everyone on the show. Then as some years passed, I felt, “OK, this could be a cool move, and I can write material for myself when I’m hosting.” And I continue to work with the writers the same way when I’m on the other side.
In the ’60s, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies’ motto regarding political figures was “make them small” through humor and satire, which is what The Daily Show does so well. At this particularly volatile time in our country, do you feel like you are performing a public service?
I can only speak for myself. I very much appreciate that people love and enjoy what I do, but I think the people doing public service are doing real public service. I don’t want to conflate making TV with making change. At the end of the day, it’s a comedy show. There are plenty of people out there doing their best to change things, whether it’s in their local community, their state, the world. The best I can do is raise awareness of who they are and what they’re doing. I wouldn’t want to take any of that shine away because there’s already so little of it on the people who really matter and are super important to the morphing of the world in the way that is a bit safer, a bit more equitable. Those are things that I also want, but to say that I am doing it would be too gracious to myself.
I just watched your stand-up bit on New York’s mayoral election, in which you break down the candidates and their campaigns in an authoritative and easily understandable way. Has your comedy always had a political bent?
Not really. That is a product of learning and working at the show for so long. The real testament to how the show has helped me grow is that before I was at The Daily Show, all of my observations were taking regular, everyday things to the most absurd place. Here, I learned more about, not just politics but the world and storytelling from the perspective of people who may know nothing about the story you are telling. So, you have to make it comprehensive, interesting and funny within the time constraints you have on TV.
When you’re not doing The Daily Show, you’re touring. Do those two things complement each other?
A little bit because even though they’re two very different things, expressing your ideas to an audience is never going to not make you better at expressing your ideas to an audience. So, doing as much as I possibly can to learn every day helps me be a better host and bring more spark to every show that I’m doing. It’s a nice upward spiral.
You are one of the most chill stand-up comics I’ve seen. You’re not a pacer or a mic stand fiddler. Has that always been your style?
Yeah, somewhat. I’m not necessarily a high-energy individual, so I think that’s really what you’re clocking. Even offstage, it’s going to be a similar speed.
You have talked about being confused with the NFL player Josh Johnson. Have you guys ever met or talked?
No. We’ve never run into each other.
Have you ever had a politician or a politician’s supporter come at you for something you said on the show or in your act?
No. I try to be fair in my assessments of people. Even if they’re people that I really don’t like. I still can acknowledge when they did a thing for the collective good or made a smart political play — even when it’s something that I consider to be terrible propaganda.
I do my best to give kudos where they’re deserved and that’s not so people like me. You have a better political understanding if you can be as close to objective as your political leanings will allow. I talk about everybody, and if I see something that does not hold water, I’ll say so, even if I like that person. When you start to visibly play hardcore favorites in the face of things that you would not let slide for another person, that’s when people get called out. And so, I only speak about politics in a way that is cyclical and universal.
What do you mean by that?
If you stay in the big arc of history and how politics works, you can see that there is precedent. We already had a Gilded Age, so there’s already a playbook on how people combated that robber-baron era. But there’s also a playbook for the robber barons to get and consolidate power. So many of these things are bigger than any one political figure, and they’ll last much longer than any one person’s political career.
It would be shortsighted to act like everything begins and ends with a Donald Trump or Joe Biden. These people are moments in time. Your lifespan will see many presidents, senators, governors and mayors. Holding them to account in the way that gets results that we benefit from the now is the way to [evaluate] them — not so much how one person makes us feel.
There’s that phrase that “history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” When you hear people saying that Trump or New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will bring about the end of the world, do you think that’s an overreaction? Are you optimistic about where our country is headed?
I always lean towards optimism, just because that’s the best way for me to live. But I’m not ever going to pooh-pooh the idea that things can get worse than you imagine. I do think that with optimism and hard work, they will turn out better than someone could have projected.
I look at history the way I look at a ball on a table. A ball on a table can roll in several ways. It can return to the same point that it was at before. That’s the cyclical side — the repetition of the political arc that we’re seeing. When economists look back, they point out that depressions happen every so many years and recessions happen every this many years. But I acknowledge that the ball could eventually roll off the table. I acknowledge that you could squeeze the general American consumer to the point where they don’t bounce back the way they did in the 1930s and ‘40s — if we don’t have some sort of great resurgence without the right legislation, like FDR’s New Deal, put us back on track.
I do think we are at the table’s edge, and that’s not to be alarmist. That’s looking at it from a perspective of, you can’t have this many mass firings, tariffs, the gutting of government programs and a government shutdown all at once. People can go back and forth about how necessary some of these things are, and some of them, like layoffs, are seasonal. They create a lot of pain, but it’s something that we see all the time. For example, Microsoft slowly and quietly hires 10,000 people over the course of nine months, and then they do a massive layoff.
Do you think that’s happening now?
What I think is happening now is very different. A lot of these companies are masking their hiring freezes or layoffs as the results of AI. People are like, “Oh, AI is taking jobs.” In a lot of cases though, these layoffs were going to happen anyway, because the company isn’t making enough money or because they’re gutting themselves for the ability to buy back stock, or whatever. All these things wrapped up together puts us in a place we have been before, but through different means. And if not corrected — if not taken very seriously by people who don’t seem to be taking it seriously — the ball could roll off the table.
That’s terrifying.
Look, hopefully I’m wrong and everything is going to be fine in a week. I would love that. I love when people say, “No the Uber’s not going to get here for another 10 minutes.” And I’m like, “It’s probably going to be 20.” And then it’s just two minutes. I want to be wrong so bad. I want the next time that we talk for you to be like, “You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Things only got better after we had our call.”
I hope you are wrong too. Would you ever think about running for an office?
Here’s the thing. If you’ve ever been in the back seat of a car with someone who is not a good driver, and you see that the car is about to go off a cliff — saying so might be an astute observation, but it doesn’t mean you can drive. Sometimes, people think being subversive or calling something out is the same thing as being able to do drive, and it isn’t. So, I do my best to throw support behind people who, I think, are saying and doing the right things and have a track record that will allow them to get the things done that they’re promising. But as far as me hopping in, it would be a huge misstep; one of the saddest moves of hubris — the hubris I see in people who, think, “Oh, I’m famous so I can run for office.”
As soon as they’re campaigning, people are picking apart everything they say. And if they win, that’s when things get even worse, because then, it’s all their fault. So now, you’re the guy driving. And there are cliffs everywhere.
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Leanne Morgan says that when she was three years old, she went on a family trip to Memphis. First stop was the local zoo “before they had glass over the monkeys and they threw their poop at us.” Next stop was Graceland, “where my mama Lucille swears that Elvis Presley‘s father, Vernon, came out on the driveway and said, ‘I’m so sorry you all, you can’t come in. Elvis and Priscilla are here riding horses.’”
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“Mama climbed the gate and saw their heads bobbing, then she put me on her shoulders so that I could see,” Morgan says. “When she set me down, she says Vernon patted me on the head and said, ‘She’s a cute little trick.’ And mama says, “‘I just know that he anointed you and that this is happening for you because Vernon Presley patted your head.’”
As recounted by Morgan, the encounter with Elvis’ father is unfolds like a movie. Storytelling is the foundation of her comedy, and she has built a hugely successful career on it. According to Billboard Boxscore, she is the No. 4 highest grossing woman comedian of the 2020s so far, with $22.1 million in box-office receipts and 352,000 tickets sold over 152 shows. She published a New York Times bestselling book in 2024, What in the World?!: A Southern Woman’s Guide to Laughing at Life’s Unexpected Curveballs and Beautiful Blessings, and her Netflix sitcom. Leanne, which premiered this past summer, was renewed for a second season. And on Nov. 4, her latest, very funny comedy special, Unspeakable Things, premieres, also on Netflix.
A lot of comedians are storytellers, but what sets Morgan apart is her unique perspective as a 60-year-old church-raised mother and grandmother, who always saw herself in entertainment but wanted to raise a family first. To use a comedy term, she kills with kindness. She punctuates her conversation with “honey” and “darling,” and her comedy is clean, often self-deprecating and family-friendly, with a pinch of wickedness that emerges at unexpected moments. After telling the story about Vernon Presley, Morgan alludes to less wholesome things that went on at Graceland. “There’s no telling what went on on all that carpet,” she says, one eyebrow raised. “And there’s a lot of shag carpet.”
Like Nate Bargatze, Morgan’s style of comedy appeals to underserved audiences in the flyover states who aren’t interested in the blue stuff, and Morgan says she is grateful for them. “I’ve got the best fans in the world. They love me and believe in me and they want to see me do well. And they come out, they’ve got money. They want to be entertained, and I think they’ve been ignored.”
Unspeakable Things was shot in Morgan’s hometown of Murfreesboro, Tenn., and it’s a time-traveling collection of tales about her husband — who is always referred to as “Chuck Morgan” — her children, and her experiences filming You’re Cordially Invited with Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell in Atlanta, which included a visit to the city’s legendary basement strip club-cum-dive bar, The Clermont Lounge. It is one of the high points of the special — and below, Morgan talks to Billboard about her experiences there, the trajectory of her career, her take on the manosphere, and the magical properties of Mississippi pot roast and Trisha Yearwood’s Chicken Piccata recipe.
What is your process for coming up with new material?
Well, I do work it out in clubs and see what works, but before I start, I have in my head stories that I want to tell. Then I work them out on stage. So, now I’ll be working on a new hour. I’m finishing my tour this weekend in Boston and Philadelphia, so, all this year I’ve been putting stories in my phone. And when I’m with my kids and my husband, they’ll go, “Oh lord, you’ve got to tell when so-and-so did this.” My middle child said, “Mom, you’ve never talked about the outfit dad bought you when you were pregnant with me in the hospital” — which is in this special.
That story is hilarious.
And that’s all true. Chuck Morgan did that. I’m a storyteller, and I like to gather stories and talk about all these babies and these grandbabies, and my parents and all that. And then the occasional strip club that I was forced to go to. Promise me you’ll never go to the Clermont Lounge in Atlanta, honey. It’ll scare you to death.
I love that story. So, anybody can get up there and just dance?
I think those little women get on a list, but it’s not your normal stripper woman. There are women from all walks of life and all shapes and sizes — with prosthetic [limbs] and all shapes and sizes. I mean, I’d never been to a strip club, so when they took me to that I thought, what in the world?
I was on a movie with Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell, and the actor that played my little sister, Meredith Hagner, is Goldie Hawn’s daughter-in-law — and she says, “Every time Goldie comes to Atlanta, she has to go to the Clermont.” I thought, what? It’s entertainment, and it’s just nuts. Imagine a circus in a strip club.
Maybe in the next hour I do, I’ll talk about going to Magic Mike Live in Las Vegas. Somebody took me. Maybe it’s because I’m 60 and don’t have any hormones left, but I remember thinking, “I could be their mother” and “Does anybody need their clothes washed?” I felt like I needed to cook for these boys. I look at everything through the lens of a grandmother and a mother.
So, the stories you tell all happened? You’re not making up things for entertainment’s sake?
Yes. There was a time when I stretched things, There was a bit a long time ago — it’s not on a special — about when I found out I was pregnant with my third baby, and I went to Walmart and peed on a stick in front of my two little children. And Charlie, my oldest, who was only three, said, “Is it positive?” But for the most part now, the stories are real. My husband thinks I embellish some, but he doesn’t pay attention to me talking.
You also talk about religion in your set in a way that’s funny but also sounds genuine — not like you’re making it up for an act.
Well, thank you my darling. Everybody in the South was raised in church. And they’re good storytellers. But yeah, all of that is genuine.
What does Chuck Morgan do?
He’s worked for the same company for 30 something years. It’s a Berkshire Hathaway — Warren Buffett — company. It’s manufactured homes. They’re the largest homebuilder in the United States, and Chuck Morgan has done everything in the world for them. I call him a mobile home man. When we met at [the University of Tennessee] he had never stepped in a trailer as they call them. When he was 27, he bought a business that refurbished mobile homes and then went to work for the big company where he works now. I told him he cannot quit. They have wonderful health insurance, and I don’t want him on the road with me because he will eat mixed nuts and watch basketball, and I can’t take a comedy nap.
In the special, you talk about his reluctance to spend money. Looking at your Billboard Boxscore gross for the last five years, I’m thinking, “How can he be concerned about that?” Especially since you are both clearly successful at what you do.
I know. He’s been a saver, and we’ve lived below our means, but he does not believe in spending money. When I talk about all that in my act, that is true. My daughter, who’s my makeup artist, travels with me, and we have shared a hotel room for 150 cities because we don’t want to spend too much money.
People say to me all the time, “How many people are on your team out there? Who’s driving you, and are you on private planes?” I go, “No. We’re in a Mitsubishi rental car. We fly commercial. I’ve got an opener. All I need is a bottle of water, a stool and some cough drops. I don’t have security. Somebody could come up and whip us. We don’t have anything, honey.” It’s just like I’m a road comic from 20 years ago.
What made you want to be a stand-up comedian? You were a housewife before embarking on this career.
From the time I was little bitty, I wanted to go to Hollywood, and I loved SNL. My mom would let me sit up and watch it. I loved Match Game, Paul Lynde, Hollywood Squares. I loved all comedy, stand-up, comedic actors, sitcoms — all that. And I thought, “That’s what I’m going to do.” But I wanted to marry and have babies.
It’s crazy when I look back on it. The whole time I was in the foothills of the Appalachia mountains with him in a mobile home business. I thought, “OK, this is going on now, but I’m going to Hollywood.” And I had three babies before I really could call myself a stand-up. When he went to work for that big company, he opted to go to South Texas. That’s when I did my first comedy club. My kids were then about three, five and seven. But I had been piddling in it back in Tennessee, and when I say that I was doing the Rotary. I would do the luncheon for the Rotary, and they would give me $50 and I’d drop a baby off at Moms Day Out. But I considered myself a stand-up, honey.
Did you ever do stand-up in college?
No. I think there was a comedy club around the University of Tennessee, and Steve Harvey was coming through all the time. But ding-dong me was just making out with boys and smoking cigarettes. Listening to Prince, Annie Lennox and blacking my eyes out. I wanted to be Madonna. In my mind, I thought, “I’m going to do something.”
You lost little time.
And I got to raise my children. I’ve got friends in comedy that would drive 300 miles to make $50 and have to sleep in their car. I was lucky. I had Chuck Morgan, who was a good provider. I skipped a lot of steps that other people had to go through. I did terrible gigs, but financially I could lean on him, so I had it easier than a lot of people.
Leanne. Leanne Morgan in Episode #101 of “Leanne.”
Patrick McElhenney/Netflix
In addition to your stand-up career, you’ve got a successful Netflix sitcom, Leanne, that was renewed for a second season.
Yes, honey, and it came out at the same time as The Hunting Wives. All those women hunting boars in their panties — I had to be up against that. The first two or three episodes, I did not know what in the world I was doing. It was very daunting, but they put the best around me. My cast, Kristen Johnston, Celia Weston, Ryan Stiles, Tim Daly, Blake Clark. So, it was hard and I was scared — but when you get to about episode six, you’ll go, “OK, I think Leanne can do a sitcom.” I feel like I could really do it well. I feel like this could be a big thing for me.
Has a premiere date been set for season two?
I don’t know about the premiere, but we’ll start shooting again in the beginning of the year. I’ll move back out [to Los Angeles], and we’ll start again. The writing room I think starts at the end of this month and I’ll Zoom in and help.
That is true. I’ve got to ask, why aren’t you doing a Biz laundry detergent commercial? You give them quite a plug in Unspeakable Things.
Why aren’t I? And everything else a woman uses in a household. I swear, I think, “Why aren’t I the spokesperson for Honda vans?…” Maybe Chuck Morgan would quit and get off my back then. I do love Biz though. I don’t know if you’ve needed to get a stain out. Oh, it’s wonderful.
As a very successful woman who does clean comedy, what do you make of the guys who are categorized as the manosphere — the Joe Rogans, Andrew Schulzes and Theo Vons of comedy?
I don’t know those boys. I did meet Andrew Schulz at the Tom Brady roast. Honey. I got to go to Tom Brady’s roast, and I swear, I thought Gronk was flirting with me. I thought, “Lord, I’m a grandmother, is Gronk…?” But he wasn’t. He’s been hit too many times, and his eyes — I thought they were looking at me, but they weren’t. I met Shane Gillis. I never met Joe Rogan. I tell you who I think is so wonderful: Theo Von. The uniqueness of that Theo Von, honey, from Louisiana. I think he’s so funny. I’ve seen him live. and I laughed until I was weak. He talks about hamster bones. I can’t even.
But all those boys doing those podcasts. I don’t listen to them. I’m listening to pop culture, women talking about The Real Housewives and who slapped who in Salt Lake City — which is terrible. I should be listening to something informative. All those boys, they’re a big deal, I guess, and you know I love men. I was on Nate Bargatze’s podcast the other day. We did a charity event last night, and he was hilarious. He talked about going to marriage counseling with his wife, and McDonald’s. He can sit and talk about McDonald’s and blow your mind.
I think I’m in such a lane by myself, even [among] female comedians. I’m 60 years old and a grandma. All these girls doing comedy have got pretty legs and short skirts. I’m in a big girdle.
I celebrate all of them, because I love comedy. I am a huge fan of Dave Chappelle. I love Katt Williams. I guess I should have started a podcast. I did one years ago that talked about menopause. That’s what I talk about, menopause. Not politics. Don’t ask me about politics. I’ll start crying. I don’t like conflict.
Would you consider doing another podcast?
I would and I would love to do one with my daughters. I’ve got funny kids, and my baby is 28 years old. She does not want to be in stand-up, but if she comes out on stage people throw their purse in the air. She’s got something and people beg to see her in videos and all that. She likes money, so she might do a podcast with me if it meant money.
Is that the daughter that, in the special, you say is “fascinated by sin”? I love that line.
Yes, honey, that’s the baby. She said, “Please tell people I try not to commit it, but I am fascinated by it.”
Have you considered writing another book?
I’ve thrown around an idea for a cookbook, but I’m so busy right now I don’t know if I could pull that together. I like to cook. Honey, when I get off an airplane, I go to the grocery store and I start cooking for all these kids and their daddy and the grandbaby. I love that, and I love family, so I think I could do something like that. Then, later on, I do want to talk about all my sin in the ‘80s.
When I wrote that first book, I was starting to tell really twisted stuff, and my literary agent, who is a doll, goes, “Lea, let’s let this first book be an intro to Leanne Morgan.” He goes, “I’m sorry, but you’re not Joan Crawford yet.” So, someday I might tell all my twisted goings on, Frank.
This year, you starred in You’re Cordially Invited with Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell. Do you have more movies in the pipeline?
I hope so. I’m talking to people, Frank. I would love to. That was like summer camp. Can you imagine — Will Ferrell just walked around, wouldn’t say a word, and we would all bust out laughing. He was a doll. Jack McBreyer was in it, and has been on my sitcom. I’d like to have more guest stars from that movie, because we had a ball.
In your special, you talk about listening to Prince in college. What is some of your favorite music?
Honey, I’m still a big R&B girl. I’ve seen Earth, Wind & Fire a million times. I love to see live music, and I love to see people perform. It moves me and I feel like I’m an artist, too. But I like all music. I like country. I’ve gotten close to some country music stars because I’m in Nashville. Little Lainey Wilson — I played [against] her in Celebrity Family Feud.
I did, and we beat that little thing. I couldn’t believe it, but Chuck Morgan took it very seriously,
When you cook what’s your go-to dish?
I have been on a Mississippi pot roast tear. I want you to Google that recipe and make it. You will lose your mind. So flavorful. I come from meat people. You know, my little mom and daddy were meat processors, so we eat a lot of red meat.
And then I love a chicken piccata. When everybody is having a birthday they go, “Mom, will you make your chicken piccata?” And I got that recipe from little Trisha Yearwood, honey. Trisha Yearwood’s chicken piccata will blow your mind. Her first cookbook is one of the best cookbooks I’ve ever had. But this winter, I want you to fix a Mississippi pot roast.
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With Primetime Emmy nomination voting beginning on June 12 (and running through June 23) and for your consideration ad campaigns are ramping up, the comedy business buzz is that Iliza Schlesinger’s Amazon Prime Video stand-up special, A Different Animal, has a good shot at getting a nod for the Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) category.
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A Different Animal showcases the veteran Los Angeles comic, who has been headlining shows for almost 20 years, at the top of her game. Among her comedy calling cards: millennials vs. Gen Z (she is the former) and in her words, “digestible feminism” — humor that validates and celebrates women, warts and all, while making men laugh as well, even when it’s at their expense. It’s a tightrope walk of an act — Schlesinger, 42, and the mother of two children, says her aim is to never pander but also to not alienate her audiences — and in A Different Animal she makes it look effortless, while wearing a pair of revealing pants that caused a viral sensation when the special debuted in March.
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Before heading to one of her frequent stand-up shows, Schlesinger spoke to Billboard about her comedic process, a new film she has written, and yes, those pants.
Hi, Iliza.
You’re catching me right before I get in the car to drive to Huntington Beach to do a random Friday night gig on the beach.
I was looking at your tour and after Huntington Beach you’re going to Estonia, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece.
All the big comedy hits.
Why those cities?
I’m very lucky to have fans all over the world, so I always get to do Europe. I was in Finland, which is an incredible comedy market, and these girls came to my meet-and-greet. My fans make me a lot of artwork and stuff, and they made me this really cool card. These girls kind of looked like me, and they were like, you should come to Estonia. I’ve never thought about A, Estonia, and B, that there would be cool girls there like that. So, we’ve been working on routing this tour for a few years, and it was inspired by meeting these really cool girls. I hope they’re still my fans because I’m coming.
Do you have to adjust your set when you’re performing overseas?
You should always be mindful of where you are, and what your audience is. Outside of America certain references will land because of our pop culture, but I think it’s always good to cater to and never pander. And after six Netflix specials and this Amazon Prime Video special, when you’re coming to see me it’s not a flier. You know what you’re getting. A couple local jokes is great, but the point of view stays the same.
Speaking of your Amazon special, A Different Animal, it’s being talked about as a contender for this year’s Emmy nominations. Do you think it’s because of the pants?
If it were just the pants, a lot of models would be up for comedy for best outstanding variety special. I think it is despite the pants. Only women get their outfits weaponized against them. I talk the talk, and I walk the walk — and that is you should be able to wear what you want to wear. As distracted as people claim the pants are, I do believe the comedy and the substance speaks for itself. And they made me feel good. I thought they’d be really fun. I did not think they would be as divisive as they were. I thought people would just think like oh, cool pants. She works out. But not only am I proud that I wore them, I would wear them again. Just in a different color.
They could end up being your lucky pants.
They could be my lucky pants. I’m going to have to get them dry cleaned though for sure. For what it’s worth, this is the closest I’ve ever come to anything in the realm of an award, and I’m really enjoying this FYC [for your consideration] season. It’s been incredibly validating as an artist to have Amazon support me.
I was blown away when I learned that you don’t write out your jokes, except for a few key words. Have you always had that ability?
I guess so, and moreover, I never questioned it or even thought about it. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve even been asked about it. I just figured everybody had a little list of little words. I know people like Joan Rivers had a whole card catalog, but what I do is ephemeral. I’m only using that material for about a year, and anything that I don’t use gets jotted down as a word or a sentence or two. I don’t have a library, and maybe that’s stupid. Maybe I forget punchlines that I could have used. I have a famous bit amongst my friends and it’s about Las Vegas. I did it on the road for a year, and I never wrote it down. To this day my husband is like, “Why don’t you do your Vegas bit?” I’m like, I can’t remember it. So, I have to rely on random friends and my husband to remind me, what was that I said about curling irons by the pool? Also, I write so much material, and I believe the good things stick when I’m creating that hour. To me that’s the litmus test. It’s also a great way to fight off Alzheimer’s.
In A Different Animal, you talk about how after childbirth part of a woman’s brain shrinks to make room for the growth of the part of the brain that gives her parental instincts. Has that affected your ability to remember your set, or is that just me asking a stupid question.
Motherhood comes for all of your brain. I think that because the stand-up part of my brain is the part that I work out the most, my joke recall is fairly intact. Also, it’s normal to do a joke 2,000 times and then on the 2,001st time you’re like, what was that punchline? But, for me, that’s where the craft and practice come in. I go up a lot, and I love doing it, and I’m always running and rerunning and fine-tuning. Because when I do my special, or when I go on the road and people spend a lot of money to see me, I want to give them a polished product — not me sifting through a notebook or being drunk onstage. This is art, and the people who come to my shows deserve a polished piece of art.
That extends to your production values. They are polished and sophisticated.
I appreciate that. Call me old school. I like a shiny floor. I like a high production value. Lo-fi production, for sure, has its place, and we live in a world where people are getting famous off of a TikTok clip from the Giggle Hut. But there’s something special about getting to create a special. It’s a moment to be as big as you wish in a business that is so difficult and does not always reward you. I like the show business of it all. I want people to feel like they’re watching something of quality, and I believe that what I create is of quality.
You have used the phrase “digestible feminism” to describe part of your act. For the uninitiated, could you elaborate on that concept?
Feminism has become such a divisive word, and it wasn’t even a word I used until I realized women are totally misunderstood. Digestible feminism is about getting your point across without aiming to exclude anyone. You can stand up for women without bashing men, because feminism, by definition, is about uplifting everyone. And so I try to be skillful at getting the point across about the way women are represented, and the way women feel — our point of view — while including the men in the audience. The men who love us, who date us, who reject us, who brought us there, who we’re friends with, who we’re related to. Because if you don’t get the other half on your side, whatever the debate, is you’re going to lose. Nobody wants to spend money to see a performance and leave feeling bad. I’m a big believer in being fair — taking shots at everyone and always, even if I hurt your feelings, bringing you back in.
You did a video interview with the Los Angeles Times in which you talked about the pitfalls of women comics talking about their kids. You observed that men can do it, but with women, the response tends to be, “Eww, she’s unf—kable now.” How big of a factor is the perception of being, quote, unquote, fuckable in comedy?
I don’t care about that perception in stand-up comedy, but it is something that gets put on women anyway. I show up with my jokes ready to do the work, and then the comment is always about being at an attractive level or being hot. That’s not to say that women don’t want to be attractive, but you’re factoring in these variables that you have to reckon with whether you wanted to or not. And that applies to the way that we dress. Is it tight? Are you attractive? Are they distracted? These are just micro hurdles that are not insurmountable, but it takes a lot of practice to be like, well, I’m wearing this and I’m talking about this, get on board. And people always do. In terms of the motherhood of it all, I think the overarching seam is people and appearances. Now that I am a mother, people are unkind to mothers. There’s a big battle, and you’re always having to prove, as a woman, why you are good or worthy of attention or love, or anything like that. As a comic, I’ve always talked about what it is I’m going through. And you can believe that even if you are not going through what I’m going through, I am an expert at making it relatable. That’s what we do. We talk about our lives that are not always like yours, and we make it funny, and we make you see yourself in us.
A chunk of A Different Animal is about exactly that.
I never want a guy to feel bad. I mean, a huge part of my audience is men, but I always want to remind women hey, you’re not crazy. You’re not wrong. We can laugh at this together. And whether you decide to have kids or you don’t, or you can’t, you’re going to always have to account for those circumstances — a lot of times in a way that men don’t have to. So, I have to wrap my mind fully around what I’m going through because for me it’s seldom the actual thing I’m going through and more the commentary on it. I’m never going to get up there and tell a story about something my 3-year-old daughter said. That’s just not me. But I will get up there and make fun of something that someone made fun of once when they heard a kid tell a story.
You became a headliner at 25, and you have said that you were thrown into the deep end without any swimming lessons. Do you have any pro tips for up-and-coming women comics?
I have pro tips for comics, male and female This is an art, and there’s an alchemy to it. And that means there don’t have to be any rules. You don’t need to ask for permission. A lot of times, comics ask, “Do you have any tips?” And I’m like, in the time that you’re using to ask me about this, you could be setting up a show. You could be writing. We don’t ask for permission to do our art. We do it because we have to do it. So, my tip would be, if you are struggling, just go and do it. Find that bar and ask, what is the slowest night you have? Can I run a show here? And you get up with the five minutes you have, you take your punches and keep doing it because you love it so much. And you have to do it because you can’t live without it.
As a Millennial what’s your take on Gen Z’s excessive use of exclamation points?
Oh, is that a thing?
I’m reading restaurateur Keith McNally’s memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, and there’s a passage about his irritation with young people overusing exclamation points.
Well, he has never read a work email from my millennial team leader because I can tell you Millennial women are the first ones to be like, “I hope no one is mad at me Have a great weekend! Circle back! Emoji, emoji, emoji. So, once again Gen Z taking everything from us and leaving no crumbs.
You’ve written books, a movie, you’ve acted in movies and television. Any future projects you can talk about?
Yes. I am actually filming a movie. There will be an announcement at the end of this summer. It’s an indie film that I wrote, and we have an incredible director attached. I worked on it for a long time. I’m a big believer in creating the roles for yourself because it’s such a hard industry. It’s kind of its own genre, but it’s a comedy. I would put it in the category of movies themed around coming back home and how frustrated we all get when you have to return home for whatever reason We’re going to be casting it over the next few weeks, and my stomach is in knots as I read with actors who are better than me.
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