Episode #383
Katie Hannigan taught preschoolers and performed as a mime before embarking on a full-time career as a stand-up comedian. So far, so good. Hannigan was a New Face at Just For Laughs Montreal, made her late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert soon after. Hannigan has appeared on Comedy Central, MTV and The Travel Channel, developed a game show for the History Channel, and wrote a horror-comedy series for SnapChat. She currently co-hosts a podcast with comedian Sarah Tollemache, Lady Journey, and in March 2022, she released her debut comedy album, “Feeling of Emptiness.” Hannigan spoke with me about those past experiences, as well as studying in Russia, pretending she’s a garden statue, and how she’s the captain of her own ship steering her comedy career.
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NOTE: Katie and I spoke on the Monday after the Academy Awards. So as soon I hit the record button, Katie wanted my opinion on The Slap. Which led into my first question…
Last Things First, Katie Hannigan: Who’s a more dangerous audience, preschool kids or comedy club customers?
I think comedy audience 100%, because preschoolers — they’re very understanding. They’re very giving and, like preschoolers have, you would be surprised by this, but preschoolers have way better manners than the average comedy audience member.
So a preschooler wouldn’t slap you in the face?
They would, no! Hands to yourself! I used to say that to people all the time, everyone always wants to like have a hug. Like no, please, leave me alone. Hands to yourself, for God’s sake.
What is it about… Do preschool kids make a perfect audience for someone who’s thinking about becoming a stand-up comedian? Because I know many comedians, your current boyfriend among them, have all had teaching backgrounds before pursuing stand-up.
Yeah, you know what? It is actually a great lesson in playfulness. And it’s a great lesson in understanding different types of humor, I think. Because, I remember when I was teaching, I would basically do stand-up. And I was doing it for kids. So it was so funny, because I realized, like, things that we think are different. Like something that’s funny, it’s like an anomaly, right? You expect something and then, you know, it’s a misdirection. And it’s kind of the same way for kids, but like, I would do these bits, I would call them. My students were like, 3, and I’d be like, oh, you know, I have for example a pen, (and act) like it’s my toothbrush, you know, and that to them is hilarious. And it’s kind of the same principle that we have in our mind, where it’s like, but it’s actually not a toothbrush, you know, so the comedy comes from the dissonance of realities.
Was there any overlap between your two careers, where you were doing stand-up and teaching?
Yeah, there was a lot of overlap. The reason I taught for so long was because it was kind of a good fit for, you know, doing my my open-mic lifestyle, where I was like, running around, you know, doing open mics every night, doing my shows, and I would go home, I’d sleep for like a few hours and then I would get up, I would work for four hours and then come home, take a nap, do writing. And that was my life for years and years. So it was actually great. And then when I started doing more road stuff around 2016. So that’s when I transitioned away from it, because it was tough to be able to take off like the Thursday-Friday.
You joke onstage and in your new album, “Feeling of Emptiness,” about a period where you performed as a mime. When was that period of your life?
I was very deeply involved in miming when I was in college. So my friend and I would do street performing together and we actually would get harassed. So that is a joke that’s based totally in reality. We would perform in Indianapolis, different parts of Indianapolis, and I think the first time we did it, we got about $60. And we were like, Oh my God, I didn’t realize that you could be rich from performing. So we just were kind of doing it for fun, but I was very interested in silent movies at the time. I really loved Charlie Chaplin. And then, so I was just interested in any type of physical comedy. This was also in the early days of Facebook. So I befriended some different mimes throughout the world on Facebook. And then when I moved to New York, you know, I just thought like, how cool would it be to go into like a niche art form and really master it. I think that was what appealed to me about miming is that it is such a niche. It’s such a skill-based art form. And so when I moved to New York City in 2008, I did have an audition with the American Mime Theatre. And I was accepted, but I remember I went to one of their performances and it was just like, it was so clearly just out-of-work actors, you know, people that were just kind of trying to do anything, and you also had to buy a suit. You had to buy a black suit that was like $100 at the time. I just had no money. I just thought I can’t spend $100 on this cat suit that’s the required uniform. So I just thought, nah, I’ll pivot.
Would a black suit have been even more prohibitive than, say the miming of the Blue Man Group having to go fully blue?
I probably would have gone blue. I don’t have a problem with the extensive costuming. It was just out of my budget. But I did do, when I was in college, and when I was doing my miming, I did like a few forays into living statue. And I did like this little piece at the local garden show. It’s like the local garden show in Indianapolis, and I played the woman in the garden. I forget what movie it’s from, but it’s a girl and she’s holding a bird bath. So I covered myself in gold body paint. And people really thought I was a statue. I remember, I heard somebody they said, ‘That statue’s got a wig!’ got away. But I also put gold spray in my hair, and it was great.
The statuesque Katie Hannigan, ladies and gentlemen. Was miming big in Russia?
No, I don’t think it’s quite that big in Russia. But I did go to Russia for acting. So I went to study at the Moscow Art Theater, which is one of the most famous theaters in the world, really. So it was kind of really exciting for me to get to go, and we did get to do a lot of dance, a lot of movements, a lot of acrobatic classes.
I bet you didn’t think that would pay off dividends a decade or so later.
Right, right.
Do you bring that up at all, since war has become more of a global threat?
You know, that joke I wrote about studying abroad in Russia, particularly the later tag of it, is actually a newer joke and I have found since the war is going on, it just doesn’t really work because it just feels a little tone deaf to what’s happening over there. You know, I don’t think it’s like, it’s not as fun to joke about Russian people hating American people when, you know, it’s, it’s just now there’s so much baggage involved with it. But when I was in Russia, this was in 2007…And so I remember that joke kind of came out of some of the other Russian students. I remember they were telling us, our families don’t like American people. We think like what you’ve done is wrong. I’m like, Well, I barely read the news. Because I’m 19. I’m not sure what’s happening.
The first time I really remember knowing who you were as a comedian was, I guess you were still a full-time teacher because I saw and wrote about you in 2015, when you and Corrine Fisher did this show called The Comedienne Project.
Oh, yes. That was so nice that you did a little write-up on us. It was so sweet of you.
Yes, my little write ups. Refresh my memory and for those of us listening, what the the object of The Comedienne Project was.
Well, the actual object was that we were trying to get some stage time for ourselves.
The true ulterior motive.
Yes. That was the actual object, so we thought OK, now we need a hook. And Corinne was so involved in her podcast, the Guys We Fucked podcast, at the time. So we thought maybe we do this pivot where we turn it on its ear and we’re doing a feminist piece. A feminist stand-up piece where we don’t involve men in any way in our stand-up. And then we bookended it with this fake comedy show. So the first act of the show was a safe comedy show, where it was me actually telling some very men-centric jokes I had written as different characters. And Corinne hosted the show as a guy who made jokes about like, a character of ethnic background. So it was kind of just poking fun at, you know, this stereotype of women. To which, it does exist in reality, but like these women who kind of are newer to comedy, and they come onstage and they just talk about, you know, drinking cum or whatever, you know.
As you do, as you do.
As you do, you know, we’ve all done it. And then we also added a little bit of a research element to it. We said, you know, what are people talking about? Like, is it just women talking about sex? Because we actually found out that it’s not really women that do it. It’s just comics in general, they kind of lean on sex-dating-relationship, you know, girlfriend-boyfriend jokes as a crutch. So then it evolved from the Fringe Festival and then we did run the show for about three years, I think, at The Standing Room in Queens. And so we would invite any of our friends to come, guys and girls, and it was just a goal of doing no jokes about sex dating or relationships .Just as kind of like a fun exercise to break you out of what you’re used to doing.
Right? Did you feel yourself as a stand-up that you had to go up against expectations or stereotypes of what it’s meant to be a young woman doing stand-up?
Yeah, well, I think it’s just because you want to talk about stuff that’s relatable to the audience, and sex and dating and relationships is such a broadly relatable category, you know. And I would find myself almost like, trying to go away from it, and going towards a feminist angle where it was like, I’m a victim of the behavior of men and you know, I’m on the right side because men are keeping me down. Even that you’re still kind of playing into maybe like a different expectation of women, which is like the Madonna whore complex. I just wanted to get away from that. Can I just do observational humor? Like what Seinfeld is doing? Or can I just do something that’s more grounded in like the mundane nature of reality, and I think you just have to be a more skillful comedian to make things like that relatable and funny.
And because you were doing this with Corinne — at the time, Corinne and Krystyna, their podcast which you mentioned, blew up. Did that have an impact on you, since you were still pretty new in stand-up in terms of like, how you thought the path of success might lead you?
Well, I mean, I had been doing stand-up about the same time as Corrine and Krystyna at that point. So I think Corinne and I had both been doing stand-up about five years. So I think their podcast was maybe already starting to do really well. And yeah, I was happy for them. And I definitely wanted to start a podcast. You know, I think there’s been a big shift in the past 10 years. of going from like, doing straight stand-up and just focusing on that to like a myriad of other things. I think for me, it didn’t really occur to me as an option. So that’s something they’re doing I’m kind of doing this other thing.
Right and you did still take kind of a traditional path because that’s when you got New Faces at the Montreal Just For Laughs festival and that’s when you got Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Like the very kind of traditional, oh, you go through the industry and then you get your five minutes on network TV, and that’s how you do it. So when you got New Faces, that was also the year wasn’t it that Amazon Prime Video was filming everything?
Yes.
How did that color your expectations of how industry might look at you?
Well, first of all, let me just say that I did go the traditional path of stand-up but it was kind of by default. I was trying to do like the Fringe Festival piece. I was trying to do packets. I was also trying to do late-night writing. I did have a podcast in 2018, which kind of never really took off, and so I kind of ended up just going the traditional route of getting better and better at stand-up by default. I was also doing auditions at the time and you know, trying to do like indie films. You know, I have like a big resume of like many indie films that I’ve done, so for me, I just ended up kind of doing the traditional stand-up path by nothing else hitting. But yeah, the Amazon Prime thing was actually pretty hilarious. Because I had gone to New Faces Unrepped, which arguably is much harder. It’s a much huger pool of people that you’re throwing yourself into, and being chosen from than, you know, people that kind of, I think have their hand stamped a little bit. So Amazon basically treated me like an extra. I was forced to sign a paper in order to get my few pennies that they gave us for food and whatever. I was forced to sign a paper and then they would kind of position me like so the stars in the front, and I would just be in the back like, you know, eating nuts, I guess. And so it was honestly a nightmare. I had seen it. My parents watched it. I guess they sent me some screenshots. I’m just in the back. You know, the first day that we got there, it was pouring down rain and we were all like, we got caught in a rainstorm, just frizzy, you know, in a bad poncho, you know, and the stars are in front and I was just in the back like, as though I was a background actor. Meanwhile, I feel like I deserve to be here more than anybody. I’m not getting you know, I’m not getting $60,000. So I’m not like of note.
Did that surprise you? Or did you have no illusions at that point of what the default industry path was going to look like?
What do you mean? Did what surprise me?
How your own experience with Montreal and Just For Laughs ended up playing out? Because I’m old enough to have remembered, in the late 90s, in the early 2000s, comedians were getting New Faces and then they were getting million-dollar development deals, and then that all went away. And then social media and this new frontier of streaming gave new opportunities to people and I don’t know, by the time you got there, like what expectations there were, if any?
Sure, I mean, I didn’t have an expectation of you know, getting a TV deal or anything like that. I mean, for me, I guess and now that you know, it’s just another kind of like a brownie badge of oh, you know, I always wanted to get that one. Now I’ve got that one. A lot of people say like, oh JFL doesn’t really mean anything. It doesn’t do anything for you, but it did help me, you know, doing this huge showcase and introduction to the industry definitely helped me because people were there that saw me, that did later hire me for maybe some smaller freelance stuff or, but yeah, it definitely didn’t do nothing. It didn’t break me into like, oh, I’ve made it now. But I don’t know if there is anything that can do that, in this modern context where you know, the landscape has just shifted so much more towards having your own following on social media and everything.
Well, you have done some work, both online and with traditional TV in recent years, whether it was Snapchat or web series or working on developing stuff with History Channel. How much of that did you have to carve your own path as an unrepped person vs. how much going through the gauntlet of JFL kind of helped give you some momentum?
Yeah, well, getting representation did help. It did help although I realized I didn’t really need to go to JFL to do that. I could have, I guess, waited and gone the next year as a repped person. I could have done that. But yeah, I mean, still it is good to have representation. It’s good. I’m grateful for like any work that they get me, but you know, I’m still kind of the captain of my own ship here. So I don’t think that I’m in a position where it’s like, I’m not at like a top agency or something where everything just like lines up neatly. But I don’t know a lot of comedians that are. I think like most of the people I know, that I work with, that are comics in New York are still doing their own stuff, booking their own stuff for the most part and getting help, you know, here and there. Even people that are really successful, I think they’re kind of going OK, what do I want to do next?
Right. I mean, even with your album “Feeling Of Emptiness” you joked about how you ended up having to self-produce it. Or you ended up choosing to self-produce it. How much of that is being the captain of your own ship vs oh, I guess I have to be the captain of my own ship?
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, it’s not a good trade off to outsource stuff to people that aren’t going to do as good of work as you. So I think with the album, or with for example, if I wanted to self-produce another piece of work like a short film or something, or like my podcast, which we do everything on the podcast as well, Lady Journey, my podcast was Sarah Tollemache. I think it’s just that I have really high expectations. I have high standards. And I know and I have had experience where it’s like, OK, well, let me just let these other people handle it. And it’s like, oh, well, of course, they don’t care as much. Because to them, I’m like another person of hundreds of people that they’re working with. But for me, it’s like, well, this is everything. So I think that’s it’s more of kind of like a professionalism, and also post-pandemic and even pre-pandemic, a little bit, I’m just more drawn to the idea of operating comedy as like a small business and connecting with that 1,000 people. You know what I’m talking about? Where that article that the guy wrote where it’s like, you need to have 1,000 true fans. I would prefer to have that type of mentality of running my own business, doing the kind of work that I want to do and engaging with people who are my fans on an intimate level that just kind of like, you know, doing something that’s a little bit more commercial. In that case, nowadays, you don’t really have that much stability.
Especially in the pandemic, that uproots everybody’s sense of stability in every career. And of course, stand-up comedy is even more obvious because you’re relying on a live audience, and then in 2020, that’s all taken away. Now. I know just not only from seeing you perform in Aruba, but also I recently did an episode of the podcast with Ray Ellin, you spend more time in Aruba than I even knew.
Yes, well, my boyfriend and I were down there for about three months last year. So it was really such a great experience for me. Of course, I love Ray and he’s a wonderful friend. We just went down for about 10 days. And then I was just begging Mike (Vecchione), I’m like, why are we going back to New York? It’s the winter. I hate it. We can actually perform here. So it was one of those like magical pandemic happenstance stories where it’s like, oh, and then I spent three months in a foreign country. I just got to do that. It was also really good for my self-esteem, because now you know, whenever I’m like, oof, I just made $5. And someone heckled me. I’m like, well, I did spend a good portion of the pandemic on a tropical island. So I feel, you know, I have to feel grateful for that.
So it definitely had an impact on your mental and emotional health. What kind of an impact did it have on you professionally in terms of just like, the bare bones of being a performer and keeping the professional momentum going?
It’s always good to perform in different contexts. And the context of Aruba, I would say is different than something that I would normally perform in. Even during the pandemic, in the city, I was doing those rooftop shows, the park shows. In the city in general, the crowds are like a little younger, hipper, more liberal, I would say, and so it was good to perform for that crowd and just get comfortable performing to that crowd. I will often do well in casinos or like this past weekend, I was at a theater in a small town where it was like mostly older people and I think that that can be kind of intimidating. You know, baby boomers can be like a tricky audience to perform in front of because they demand a really good show. And, you know, they aren’t necessarily the most supportive audiences, especially if somebody who looks like me who doesn’t look like a typical comedian, to their perspective, you know? So it was really good to perform for that type of crowd over and over again, because I realized that, you know, I have to set myself up for success by being playful and it’s more kind of about the mindset that you get in before you go onstage than it is about the actual jokes you’re telling.
NOTE: I mention how Katie wanted to talk about The Slap, and asked how she reacted as a comedian to The Oscars kerfuffle.
Well, you know, I think my gut reaction is I just find it really disturbing. Just as a person, not even as a comedian, I just find it a really disturbing sign that our society is crumbling, you know? It’s like, what is happening? What is happening? That was the trending hashtag. That’s how I feel about it. As a comedian, I think it’s just a shame that that kind of behavior has become normalized. I’ve definitely had uncomfortable scenarios where people think that it’s somehow OK to bully comedians. It’s like, well, you know, it’s Chris Rock, you know, that he’s gonna tell jokes. So you know, I don’t know what the — I just don’t understand the overreaction. But, you know, at the same time, it’s like, well, I can’t let myself get too dramatic about it either. So it’s just like, it’s just nonsense.
I mean, you already had a feeling of emptiness before that. So.
Yeah, I know. I can’t spiral. Can’t spiral although, I have to say like, I don’t usually have God willing, knock on wood, I don’t usually have that hard of a time with people overreacting to my personal jokes. But I definitely am living in fear that I will say something that will cause someone to attack me. So you never know. It could be here. You know, it could happen at any time.
So Katie. You put out the album. You’ve been on TV? What is the next goal for you?
I would love to do a writing job. I love writing and I think that that would be something really great and challenging for me. I love writing jokes. I love late-night TV. So I would like to do something like that. Or also, I have an acting background. I’m an actor as well. I just did a short film, and I would really like to book work again. So I am auditioning. My schedule is clear. So if anyone wants to hire me! Yeah, so those are kind of the things I’m focusing on now. I’m writing a screenplay, you know, just kind of for fun. And I think like after a big accomplishment, like this album, it’s kind of like, well, the dust is still settling. So who knows?
Well, Katie Hannigan, I’m sad you’re no longer my neighbor here in Astoria. But I’m grateful that you’re willing to sit with me, and congratulations once more on the new album, and I look forward to people hiring you for more things in very near future.
Yes, I’m available. Thank you, Sean.
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