From The Comic's Comic

“The Lesbian Agenda” comedy showcase founder on finding her voice

My job is a lot of fun, most of the time. When comedy becomes your job, or even comedy journalism, business and pleasure become one and the same. One of the pleasures is meeting and talking to people I grew up with and/or looked up to. Almost as much fun is meeting and getting to know people before they become famous.

Last week I got to talk to Niccole Thurman. This week it’s Sophie Santos.

Reading her new book, “The One You Want to Marry (And Other Identities I’ve Had),” which is out Oct. 1, I learned Santos herself got introduced to comedy through her cousin Amber Nelson, whom I adore and somehow have not yet had on my podcast?! Must fix that.

In the meantime, get to know Santos, who wrote for MTV and the Bravo revival of Blind Date in 2019, and also took her love for a show from The CW and turned it into a two-person musical parody revue, Riverdale Live, and performed it at the Edinburgh Fringe. We talked about all of that and more. We didn’t get to talk about her two Audible Original podcast gigs, voicing roles in Hit Job starring Pete Davidson and Keke Palmer, and Hot White Heist starring Bowen Yang, Alan Cumming and Cynthia Nixon. I hope you’re OK with that.

There’s an instructive moment during her tenure at Blind Date that says a lot about where we are now, how far we’ve come in terms of equality and sensitivity to folks who aren’t straight white guys, and what it takes to get there. That felt, and still feels, more important.

If you’re not already subscribed to my podcast, seek it out and subscribe to Last Things First on the podcast platform of your choice! Among them: Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Stitcher; Amazon Music/Audible; iHeartRadio; Player.FM; and my original hosting platform, Libsyn.

Here is an edited and slightly condensed transcript of my conversation with Sophie Santos!

Sean L. McCarthy: Congratulations on your memoir. But I also loved the piece you wrote for McSweeney’s last year — “AN OPEN LETTER TO STRAIGHT COUPLES WHO HAVE BEEN QUARANTINING TOGETHER AFTER ONLY DATING FOR A FEW WEEKS FROM A LESBIAN WHO’S BEEN THERE BEFORE.”

Sophie Santos: Thank you. Yeah, actually I think that might be my best work. So, forget the memoir. We’re just gonna talk about that piece. No, that one was, I was noticing and I don’t know if you noticed this, but there came a time in March 2020, when the pandemic was happening, and people were dating because that’s, you know, everyone was just going about their normal lives. Couples, or people who were just casually dating, were kind of left to the decision: Do I continue dating this person that I have feelings for? Which means I have to quarantine with them. So it’s such an extreme decision. Or, do I just break it off and then be alone during quarantine? And obviously we didn’t know how long quarantine was going to be, but I cannot tell you how many of my straight friends did this, and literally moved Upstate. And, you know, did all these stereotypical things. I’m seeing them, like you know, just in foliage, you know, I’m seeing them just like, you know, shopping for apples together and I’m like what is going on? So, yeah so that came from a place of like amusement and also kind of calling out my friends. And I had people text me, they’re like, ‘Is this about me?’ and I was like well yeah.

Me: Well, I believe that Rosebud Baker and Andy Haynes got engaged three days into quarantine.

Santos: Yeah, I think so, too. I don’t personally know her, but I did see this through like mutual friends. And when I was like discussing the article with people about like you know, am I gonna write it? Should I write it? You know blah blah blah. They were like well, Rosebud did this. This happened. Okay, well, I have to now.

Me: I take it that the identity crisis didn’t even start with you, because as you mentioned in the book, your parents named you Sophie Elizabeth. But then, they called you Elizabeth when you were a kid. Was that confusing?

Santos: It’s so confusing, so confusing. And to all the parents out there, or to anyone who wants to be a parent. Just call your child by the first name, because it’s so confusing and it’s hard, and like I was like so attached to Elizabeth, but then when I show up to class, of course they’re going to call me Sophie, because it’s the first thing on the roster. And a lot of times, it’s like Sophie E., you know. They won’t even put your full middle name. So, just from the time that I started going to school, preschool or whatever, kindergarten — when I can, like, when I actually have opinions — I’m like kind of slowly having a panic attack because A) I don’t like the name Sophie because I think it’s too girly, which I’ve been told later in life that Elizabeth is also like pretty feminine, and if you think about any sort of period piece, they’re all named Elizabeth, or Elizabeth Swann if we’re thinking about Pirates of the Caribbean. So yes, it was so confusing for me, to answer your question, even in college and then in the book, my mom’s like, well, you have to choose even though she put this on me. And then we went with Sophie. And now it’s Sophie.

Me: You also mentioned, and I had forgotten, that while you were at the University of Alabama, that there was a fatal tornado that almost was fatal for you. How did that affect you?

Santos: It was crazy. I mean, it was terrifying and wreaked havoc on the school and it killed a bunch of students, and it just killed a lot of people. Completely destroyed like our strip, you know, like everyone has like a downtown strip of restaurants and bars and houses. I was just in class, and, you know, when you’re from the South, you take tornadoes seriously, but you’re also at the same time used to them, weirdly enough. And I think we just all were like, yeah the tornado is coming but a tornado always comes around this time, so as long as we’re in like some sort of brick-type building you’re going to be fine, and it just happened to be one of the worst tornadoes.

Me: But when you’re in those formative teen slash college years, where you’re also starting to figure out your sexual identity, how to brushes with death, or things like that. How did those impact your thinking, in terms of what you want to do with your life? Does it change?

Santos: Yeah, it changed everything. I mean I was also just, you know, an only child. I’m definitely like lived in a bubble, and was for sure, a late bloomer. I mean I talked about how I believed in Santa Claus until I was 13, fully believing in Santa Claus.

Me: Why wouldn’t you?

Santos: Well, see that’s the thing. And I think we need to normalize that. But I did, going back to the the tornado situation, I did feel invincible and especially when you’re in college and you’re just carefree. You know you’re just going to class and you’re drinking, and you’re just, you know, being wild and letting loose really for the first time because you’re not under your parents gaze. It was the first time I realized that I could die. And obviously, like, when you see, you know, I’ve been to my grandmother’s funeral, but she was older. So I didn’t think that like me as a 19-year-old could just die like, that and so it, it truly like it was like an electric shock to my body. I remember a couple days later after my roommates moved out, because they canceled school everyone went home. I was lying in bed, and in my house, because I just like had a house on campus, with two of my friends and I just started having what I thought was a panic attack, and I called my mom who’s a nurse, and she was just like, ‘Yeah, honey I think that’s what that is. I think you need to go down and see somebody.’ And I did, and they gave me Klonopin, which I’m not really sure if a college facility should give you Klonopin like that, but they just really said, this is gonna help. And I had no idea like what it was, and ultimately decided to not stay. I was going to take summer classes and I was like no I’m not gonna stay in this house by myself. I really can’t be alone. I went to Kansas City where my mom was living at the time, and was just so terrified to my core that death was imminent. I couldn’t walk outside without thinking that, you know, some sort of terrorist attack would happen in my like quaint neighborhood, you know, or a plane would just fall out the sky. When I’m eating pizza somewhere. You know more things that are like, I guess a little bit more realistic, like me driving. I got terrified of driving because I was like well, a semi’s gonna come and smash and kill me. And so I went to an outpatient facility.

I was in therapy for eight hours a day for two weeks, and then I got on medication, and it was the first time also I was acknowledging that I had anxiety. Which I talked a lot about in the book, that I had anxiety as a kid and but didn’t know how to diagnose it. No one could really figure out how to diagnose it, which no shade to my mom, but that wasn’t her specific niche as a nurse. And I really had to kind of start from the ground up. And in addition to that I was like, OK, I’m in a sorority, at the University of Alabama. That’s not my path. I don’t think I want to marry a frat bro and live in Birmingham and have two kids by the time I’m 22. I didn’t know that I was gay at the time, but I at least knew that much. And I was like, I’m like a free thinker, I’m like, you know, I like Obama, which was like polarizing with everyone that I was around, and I started to really kind of reclaim that sort of inner identity that was there that was totally lost at Alabama in that culture, and also dealing with the anxiety and coming to terms that I could die. And you know what, like, that’s just how it is, but you know, you’re gonna be fine when you walk down the street, most likely.

Me: But you figured out you were a lesbian before you figured out that you were comedian.

Santos: Yes. Which is odd. I think it should have been the other way around, right? I would have loved though actually for a moment for me to be on stage, and to just be talking to an audience, and then all of a sudden it just like hits me. And I’m like, that guy’s like, that I’ve never thought of it before. It’s like I think. Holy shit, I think… And just really kind of have to deal with that. That would have been great, but that’s not how it happened.

Me: You did go toward acting, which I guess for someone who’s quite closeted/wrestling with your identity is great because you’re already acting in life. But you were you only started to even think about comedy because of your cousin?

Santos: No, I mean I grew up watching, like you know I grew up watching SNL and really, I was obsessed with late-night shows growing up. And so a lot of times like when I would go to bed, I would like watch Conan and Letterman and Kimmel and just, Leno and everybody I could watch. That was like my thing. And I would just watch it by myself. I was kind of confused when the next morning, I tried to talk to my, you know, fourth-grade friends and they hadn’t seen the bits. And so that’s kind of like really, I think, was always something that was fascinating to me I always really liked it. But yeah I gravitated towards musical theater and that was like, sort of, that was definitely my thing not sort of it was 100% something that I was fully pursuing for a very long time. But when I was 16 I started going to comedy clubs because of my cousin, Amber Nelson, who’s a very funny comedian, and she was just starting out and basically like every Spring Break I would fly up there and I would just like follow her around when she did bar shows, while she did shows at UCB, you know while she was on sketch teams, and was like so immersed in the environment, but I also was like, oh I could never do this. There was something in the back of my brain that I was like, I can’t do this! I could never do this! It’s too crazy, you know. They’re so funny, I can’t be that. So I kind of ran away from it. Before I really embraced it.

Me: So what was the first time that you could picture yourself onstage? Was it at a comedy club or was it UCB? I know you’ve, you’ve taken classes with UCB so was was UCB the turning point?

Santos: UCB was definitely the turning point, because before I was just doing auditions for musical theater, and I wasn’t in equity which is you know, the union, so it was just like, wait for 10 hours, and maybe be seen. And I did it for like two days and I was like, I can’t do this. I can also just, being around the women that that were there I was like, ‘This isn’t me.’ If I ever did a part, it would really have to be tailored to something like very specific, so I just like, kind of on a whim started making sketch videos, but they were really bad. And I was like, I like this, but I know that I need some training. So I then signed up for UCB. The moment I started taking sketch classes, I was hooked. I was like, I mean, I was fully in it, I was in the cult, and I was going to shows every single night, and from there, that’s kind of how I got my first writing gig. My first comedy writing gig, my teacher. Eric Cunningham, shout out, who is the best, got me a job over an MTV. And I was like, ‘oh shit I can get paid to write comedy?’ I can like do this? And then really started to follow that route. But then as far as the onstage, it’s kind of a two-parter. I was really just, you know obviously I wanted to perform, you know, I come from a performance background. But as far as like, being on stage. I kind of just started doing random shows at UCB I kind of first started just doing like bit shows. I remember doing like a ‘Thank You Notes’ a la Jimmy Fallon, but they were thank you notes like from a lesbian’s perspective like thank you nail clippers. I don’t know if that resonates with anybody but maybe it’s a slow burner.

Me: I think nail clippers all the time. You know, your background is Filipina Spanish. And I know, you know, UCB theaters are closed now. But since you were there and there was a lot of talk about diversity, and whether UCB was doing enough to expand outside of upper-class white folks. Did you feel any of that while were you there?

Santos: I did feel like I was taken care of. I was on a diversity scholarship. I felt like my voice was heard. And also, what was really fun is in my Sketch 201 class, I think most of the class was gay, and it just happened to be that way. So all we did is we just wrote like gay sketches, and the two straight people just had to deal, including Eric, but Eric is just such a good like, he gets it. He has all types of friends so he was like, obviously understood the humor when he did it, and he was like, I can see you guys think it’s funny so yeah. Hell yeah, let’s do it. So that was really nice. So I never really had a negative. Me personally, I never had a negative sort of experience there.

Me: And I know a lot of people who go through the UCB system, their ultimate goal was like SNL, or something like that. So then to get jobs working for MTV or Bravo has to be kind of weird.

Santos: Yeah, yeah, I mean, of course, like, you know there’s still a pipe dream to be honest, and now I think that dream will never go away. But, so if you’re out there, you make decisions. But no, but I mean it was, it definitely like doing sort of like variety stuff, I never really thought that was my sort of path. I mean I guess it makes sense because I am onstage doing bits. I watched late-night TV. Now I’m doing like, more variety stuff. But I was just grateful, especially at the time I was just grateful to have, to be in a room, and to be with people that were 10 times funnier than me, and to be accepted, and to have some money and also just not go to my restaurant job at the time. I was like this is great. I’m making more money, which wasn’t even that much, but than a 10-hour shift for a day? It’s like those small things for me were, like, huge wins. It didn’t really matter what the work was at the time.

Me: From what you describe in the book of your experience working on Blind Date, it, it did sound like you had quite a win there as well, where you’re writing thought bubbles for these folks who are who are going on blind dates for TV fame and fortune, and you’re writing thought bubbles for them. But then the producer-showrunner listens to you.

Santos: He does. Yeah, there was a weird moment. His name’s K.P. Anderson, who again is such a great, such a great person. And he came in because our showrunner got fired. Which, you know what, ultimately made sense, because the showrunner that was there at the time was, he was on the reality side, because it’s a reality show, and then they bring comedy in and post production. And so these people go on blind dates and then like you said, we write thought bubbles and we like make, it’s almost like watching a dangerous Snapchat filter is basically what it is, and it was a show that already existed but they wanted to, you know, but they rebooted it. And one of the writers had a lesbian date, which I personally kind of wanted to work on the queer dates but I also was like, oh, you know, it’s kind of cool that they don’t. It doesn’t really matter who’s doing what, which I think also is very important, it’s like, just because I’m queer, I can write for anything for anybody. I can write for treatment. It doesn’t really matter. So I was sort of battling with that, but I was like you know what, no, it’s actually kind of cool like let him do the lesbian date. But then I watched a cut, I watched down the cut, and there’s these two queer women in a hot tub, and out of nowhere this frog comes out. This animated frog, and it’s like ‘kiss her!’ And it’s clearly the writer’s voice, and I’m taken aback, and really just, I don’t know, it was kind of like shock. It felt like a gut punch and then, when I thought it was over, it happened again. And it was just like, ‘More!’ And the whole point of the reboot was to be diverse, and to have like, you know, queer people, people of color, you know, I get that it’s a show on Bravo, but it’s still at the end of the day… What we’re doing in this moment is acting like queer relationships are for men. We’re still doing that. Which is such an archaic way of thinking. It’s not true and it’s like, we’re not for your pleasure. And they were having such a great time! And the date was so good and all the other jokes were really good up until, up until that moment, and I wrestled with it for about a couple of weeks.

Me: A couple of weeks?

Santos: Yeah because I was also really nervous. I was like I didn’t really know KP at the time. Our showrunner just got fired. He decided to keep all the writers, but like, Oh, it was one of those things where I’m like I don’t want to get let go. I need this job. And no one had made me feel uncomfortable at the job but it’s one of those things that you think about which is unfortunate. It’s like my last day, and I knew that they were, because I like we all like had staggered exits and I was going to actually work on the book, and I went to his office, and I told him more or less what I told you, and he immediately fixed it and was like, ‘See, I didn’t, I wouldn’t have even known this, and I really appreciate it,’ and then thanked me later, like, a year later, and like offered me a job because of it. That was like kind of cool, I was like, you don’t have to offer me a job. Thank you. I mean, I’ll take it. But I was so anxious for no reason. Because, like in this day and age, anyone with like a right mind would be like, duh, that’s so stupid. Also frogs aren’t in hot tubs.

Me: It’s a testament to the fact or the necessity for having a diverse room. Because if you don’t have your voice in the room, that frog ends up on the air.

Santos: 100% Yeah, 100%. And I think, again no fault of his own, but like he didn’t put that together. And I think sometimes, and I saw the wheels clicking in his head. And also he was under so much pressure to that like, he probably watched it down, was like, he didn’t think too much about it. And that’s the thing. You know what might not seem like a big deal to you is actually a big deal to a specific community. And I really was like, well I’m the only like lesbian here. And my argument, too, was like you know you wouldn’t do this for the gay dates with men. I haven’t seen any of this for that. And, you know you’re not doing it for the straight dates, so why are we doing it for the lesbians? What’s the point?

Me: Riverdale is not something that I think is for me. But for you, it took you all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. So how did that go like because you hadn’t been to Edinburgh before.

Santos: No, never. I mean I’ve been overseas but I’ve never been to Edinburgh specifically or to be in the festival or to go see the festival. Yeah, so my buddy and I were really big fans, and this all started before The Lesbian Agenda, so this is kind of like me really kind of finding my own voice. And my buddy John Trowbridge who also is a very funny comedian, he was watching Riverdale, and he was like you have to watch this show. Because he knew that I was also obsessed with like teen dramas and like that was like my thing. And that was his thing too, and we watched the show together, and we were both like we gotta, we gotta do a two-man show, And the thing is, Riverdale is based off of the Riverdale comics, and the show Riverdale on The CW is a hypersexual version of the comics. And we said, what if our show is a hypersexual version of the hypersexual version of the comics? Because it’s like, it is CW, so it’s all these things that almost might happen, but because you know, they’re all 30. They’re all cut. They’re all just like, taking showers together but it’s like very like PG-13. And so we kind of were saying all the things that weren’t being said, and then we did it. We did it the infamous Duplex. The Duplex. Then we did it over at Union Hall, which has become my home. And then I was looking at festivals and I realized that we had missed a lot of the submissions for the festivals, and I was like, Hey dude, what if we just got to Edinburgh? And he was like, I mean OK, sure. And that’s just really what happened. And then we did it. We did like a weeklong version, which was nice because we were able to test what it’s like to be there and like be, you know, at the festival without having to commit for, you know, our finances for a whole month.

Me: Even though you didn’t do the full month, you still had to compete with hundreds of different shows.

Santos: Yeah, and we had people come up and we had like Riverdale fans. I talked about this in the book: There was like a 50-60 year old Scottish man, that was like. They traveled, like, two hours from the country to see this and he’s like it’s changed my life, or the wife said it because he couldn’t, because he was in tears, and I wish I was kidding, but I wasn’t kidding.

Me: But now see, I wouldn’t even have thought that Riverdale would play for Scottish audiences. That they would know The CW or even if they had read Archie Comics. I don’t think of Archie as a UK thing but

Santos: I think because of the CW it just made it international, and all of these actors were just so, yeah the actors themselves, sort of made it famous, but yeah, we weren’t sure either. I mean we were just really just going to just try it out. And it was very funny, very fun and I love that show and one day I would like I would hope to bring it back, because it’s both of us playing all of the characters. And the premise is that, I don’t know how much you know about Riverdale, how much do you know?

Me: Just what you’ve told me.

Santos: So everyone’s just so hot and horny all the time and so our thing was, gonorrhea is spreading like wildfire, and only Archie Andrews, the a number one hottie can save the town by his music. And that’s where the story unfolds, and I can’t give you more because you know, I want people to come to the show when it happens again in 10 years.

Me: Well, none of that sounds like it would be part of The Lesbian Agenda? But prove me wrong.

Santos: I’m in drag. And it was something that I liked doing so, it gets to be a part of the agenda because I liked it.

So The Lesbian Agenda is a show in Brooklyn, and I’ve been doing it for about three years now. It’s a very serious show where we try to enforce our new world order. For example, casting Rachel Weisz in every lesbian movie until she becomes a lesbian. Stuff like that, it’s very important.

Me: Does Daniel Craig know about that?

Santos: I think he’s aware. But I don’t think he understands that it’s gonna be a problem soon. So and it’s his wife who keeps making these decisions of what movies she’s starring in. I mean, we’re definitely sitting the scripts over and we’re like, ‘Do you want to be in, you know, do you want to be in Fast and Furious, or do you want to be in Disobedience? You make more money and Fast and the Furious. You have more exposure. You get to be a badass. But you chose Disobedience. I didn’t force that I just put it in front of you. My team. We have lot of people on the team, not forced, just put the scripts in front of you. So, and then we do things that are a little bit more like more like low-key, I guess. Like anyone who suffered through all three seasons of The Real L Word gets a lifetime of free IVF. You know, that’s something that’s important, or if you straight women who say that it’s so much easier being gay, have to read Anne Lister’s diaries as penance. That’s a little more harsh. I think it’s a harsher one but like you know it’s fair. And there’s a lot of things that are up my sleeve that I can’t exactly tell you right now, but it is coming back in a big way. We used to be monthly. Now we do it like, whenever we’ll just say we do it like every second Tuesday of the month, but you know we’re starting to take it on the road and take it to like LA and other places as well because, because it’s growing. The agenda is growing.

Me: Now I don’t know how, how closely you follow comedy community drama on social media. But last week, I noticed there was something that circulated quite widely through comedy Twitter, where there was a hullabaloo, a kerfuffle, over a comedy show that was called Men Aren’t Funny. That was the title of the show, and then it showed the flyer showed pictures of women and nonbinary people, but then within a straight male comedian, like retweeted it or quote tweeted it and said, This is a comedy show.

Santos: Oh wow.

This is that Tweet that I referenced, from comedian Jeff Dye, by the way…

Me: Yeah, and then. So I wonder how, how much grief you get or feel just because the title of your show is The Lesbian Agenda?

Santos: Honestly, I haven’t gotten any grief, and now I’ve set myself up for failure… ut no, I mean, OK, the only time which was crazy, was, we’ve been doing the show for like at this point like a year and a half, and we went to like go and just like Google ‘the lesbian agenda’ to see like if we had made any sort of listings or whatever. And when it was in Google, like “lesbian” was bleeped out. And, so it was Google, and then we ended up talking about it in the show and it’s never happened again. But I was so confused I was like why? It had gotten flagged by somebody. But ever since then, like, you know, now it’s, I think there’s too many lesbian agenda things that it’s, I mean I don’t know. Try me, you know, flag me let’s see what happens. But for the most part, you know, everyone’s been really cool and I actually have a very diverse group of people. A lot of straight guys that come and not a weird way. They’re like straight, they bring their girlfriends. There’s a lot of straight couples that come.

Me: No frogs this time.

Santos: No, they’re there because they want to learn. They want to be educated and we are making it more well rounded where it’s not just like, you know, it’s things that can be beneficial to everyone with less men in charge, which is the ultimate goal.