Iliza Shlesinger is on a roll. Since winning NBC's Last Comic Standing in 2008, the comedian has hit some monumental landmarks in her career.
Not only is she the only woman to hold the title of Last Comic Standing but she has filmed three Netflix Specials (War Paint, Freezing Hot and Confirmed Kills) and held one of the rarest titles in showbiz - a female late-night host (Truth & Iliza).
Now the thirty-five-year-old is heading for Vicar Street on Thursday, 19th of April, with Joanne McNally as her opening act. We spoke to the comedian about millennial feminism, growing up with her audience and playing Ireland.
You book suggests that women are constantly being called 'crazy' and that it's a result of women constantly trying to fill the needs of everyone around them. Do you think it's a societal issue or an inherent behaviour in women?
Interesting... Do I think it's societal? It is societal in that every society requires it but I think it is less about that and more about change coming from within and acceptance from within, and teaching our daughters and our friends that it's OK that you are what you are - whatever you are.
Maybe you are, for deeply disturbing psychological reasons, the kind of woman who wants to be a fitness blogger and the perfect mom and the perfect wife and a best friend - maybe you want to be all these things - but I think the desire to be all these things come from an outdated expectation.
I think a big part of feminism - and this is something I'm sure a bunch of women will take my head off for - but a big part of feminism is women allowing other women to just be the kind of women that they are.
"You belong as long as you think you belong. Most people are stupid, so you'll probably be able to fool them anyway."
I think we're very quick to rip other women apart when they don't fit our mold, which quite frankly is just as bad as a man tearing you down for something, if not worse. So I think it's kind of bulls**t that we demand that people treat us a certain way when we can't even be bothered to treat each other with that respect.
I do think that's changing but in one stroke we'll tell a woman, 'You're perfect, do it' and the second she disagrees with you it's like, 'I hope you die, kill yourself, you're the worst and you're ugly'.
So it's kind of, maybe it's an evolution thing - I don't know. I hope it can be solved in one generation, I know we're trying.
You've described your stand up as a series of love letters to women and you hope to guide young girls through the stages of life that you went through - what's one key learning you want to pass on?
Well, I hate to make it about boys but so much of our lives are about the opposite sex or about people that we're attracted to, and the biology associated with that. If there's one thing that I would say, it's this: Boys are afraid of you. Stop trying so hard, because they don't notice 90% of the stuff.
It's interesting, my mom was here over the week and I noticed that I had three errant ankle hairs and I grabbed my razor and I shaved them off and then I noticed that I had some more random hairs and I said it to her that I didn't even notice they were there, but as a girl there was such an emphasis on shaving your legs and making sure they were really smooth - even though no boy was touching my legs - but I remember that was so important.
You need to go through these things, but need to know to give yourself a break because the things that you are killing yourself over, almost nobody cares.
I think it's fun that my fans kind of get to grow up with me as I experience these things and bring light to them.
Mom and I are the Black White leather gang. Here to rearrange your furniture and ask if you’ve talked to your financial planner yet. We also wanna we also wanna kniow if you are single because we know people pic.twitter.com/XSmKQ1XPyc
— Iliza Shlesinger (@iliza) March 27, 2018
While speaking on Joe Rogan's podcast, you mentioned that women in comedy would message you for advice when it came to male comics acting inappropriately towards them. Have you seen a substantial change since the Times Up and #MeToo movement?
Oh my God, it's massive. I've been fortunate that I've never been in a situation anywhere near what a lot of the women who are at the forefront of this movement have gone through but - I'm a bit of an observer myself - the pendulum has definitely swung very hard in the other direction, to the extent where white straight men who haven't done anything are scared. That is unfortunate, and there shouldn't be a witch hunt.
However, I do think it's necessary for that pendulum to swing so hard that way in order for it to come back to the middle. It's almost like you have to be that aggressive with this to kind of do a shakedown, and kind of weed out that mentality of 'Women are just here to perform sex acts to get what they want'.
And you know, I think it has created a safer work environment for people. I think the most important thing to come out of this movement is that women who were affected by this, feel safe in saying 'This happened to me'.
The silence is the most painful thing, when you feel you can't say anything because no one will believe you or they'll call you a whore or you'll be fired or something worse - so it's not about hurting men, you know, that's not how feminism works. It's about giving those women a voice, and I think that's a wonderful thing to come out of this.
You were a female late-night host, you won Last Comic Standing, you're touring the world - how do you ditch the feeling of having to fill the needs of others and focus on your own career?
It's tough, but I was lucky in that I had a mother who was always supportive. I came up in an academic environment where everything was encouraged, you know? So I guess my message would be to always encourage women.
It's never occurred to me - and I don't know what right mixture of upbringing this was - that my opinion wasn't as important as the alpha males or that I shouldn't try or that I wasn't the funniest one in the room.
And not everybody can feel that, but what you can take with you is that you belong as long as you think you belong. Most people are stupid, so you'll probably be able to fool them anyway.
And yeah, it comes back to the idea that a lot of the things that you think matter, and you can say this in hindsight, actually don't.
I think it's also part of getting into my mid-30's and being given the gift, along with a couple of wrinkles, of being given that hindsight. If you told me these things at 22 I would be like, 'Whatever, you're old, I don't care'.
So, there is the fun of living it as you get older, but it's almost impossible to bestow these gifts fully upon someone younger - I put it all out there because you'll distill what you will from it and that's all I can ask.
Congratulations on your engagement! Are you trying to bring your audience with you from the single scene, where you were facing some awful dating situations to now being in love and settling down?
I think it's so important to say, I never thought men were awful. They were my fans before women were coming to see me in stand up. I think that it's an easy thing to say, that whenever women do stand up, that 'Oh, they must hate men' - and I'm like 'Well, if you listen carefully, it's actually a lovely tutorial that I wouldn't give to men unless I cared'.
I do like what you're saying about taking your audience with you; I'm in this for the long haul as a performer, and people are getting to witness an evolution of my life as I live it. I talk about it in my new special, which I just recorded a couple of weeks ago, I don't know what it's like to be married and I talk about the evolution of a relationship and in the next special, I'll probably talk about the wedding.
I think it's fun that my fans kind of get to grow up with me as I experience these things and bring light to them, because we do this nasty thing in our society where we expect women to expect their lives to be these lovely Stepford Wives, with fairy tales of sugar and tea parties and pearls - nobody ever pulls you aside to tell you the truth.
I'm in this for the long haul as a performer, and people are getting to witness an evolution of my life as I live it.
Women are always like, 'Oh wow! You got your period, welcome to womanhood'. No woman ever says, 'You're going to have a lot of zits, you're going to cry and your body is going to hurt.'
They say, 'You're getting a wedding dress, congratulations!' No one says, 'Oh you're going to try on everything, you're going to feel fat and you're going to cry'. No one tells you how much crying is involved.
When you have a child, they're like, 'Oh my god, you're having a baby!' No one pulls you aside and says, 'You're going to s**t yourself and your vagina is going to get ripped open and society is going to expect you to have your body back the next day'.
I'm just as new to any of these experiences as anyone watching me experience them, so it's kind of cool.
This is your first time playing Ireland, have you been given any tips from fellow comics?
I've never been to Ireland. Well, I've been to Shannon twice to refuel a plane, but I've never left the airport.
No, I haven't [got any tips] because I don't think any of my friends have done a European tour but now that you've said it, I must poke around but I also think that while you want to be conscious of Celsius and Fahrenheit, imperial to metric, grade 8 not 8th grade, the way countries do things... People forgive those things.
When we hear a foreign comic - an English comic, an Irish comic, an Australian comic - we delight in that difference and hearing it because it's a part of the shtick. So I think at this point in my career, you're coming to see me do my act, which is what has drawn you to me - it's not necessarily to hear me do commentary around Irish politics. So I'll be mindful of some things but I'm very much there to do the new hour and give you guys a taste of Elder Millennial - that's the new hour and that's what's coming out, hopefully, this Summer.
