TV INTERVIEW: KATHLEEN MADIGAN
Drink Your Beer, Smoke Your Smokes & Always Take the Crazy Bet
Kathleen Madigan enjoys a drink. Maybe because of her Irish ancestry, maybe because of her St. Louis upbringing, maybe just because she’s our favorite kind of both woman and comedian – the kind that also spends inordinate time with her siblings and parents, and refuses to write for anyone that won’t let her work in her pajamas while smoking. Either way, when Buzzine’s Nicole Rayburn got the chance to chat with Kathleen over a tasty beverage in the green room of The Green Room with Paul Provenza at The Vanguard in Hollywood, California, we happily set them up and sat her down…
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Nicole Rayburn: You basically just got to hang out on camera with Paul [Provenza] and what seemed to be a bunch of old friends…
KM: Oh yeah. I’ve known Ron [White] for 20 years, I’ve known Lew [Lewis Black] for 20 years, and Jamie [Kilstein] I met maybe four years ago. He’s relatively new, but yeah, I know them all.
NR: So was tonight more like getting back together with friends and having a conversation, or was it more like doing a show?
KM: It wasn’t like doing a show, but it also wasn’t like if you took just me, Lew and Ron to a bar; we’d be like, “What are you up to?” and then we’d just go through… The good thing about this show is that Paul picks up on weird s*** that we forgot about or that we don’t even think is odd. He does though, but it didn’t feel like doing a show, and the thing I like most about the show is I kept saying, “Well what do we need to do? Do I need to prepare anything?” And they’re like, “Just show up and have a beer.” That’s all I need to hear: I’m such a whore. It could be a murder, and if you told me, “Just show up and have a beer,” I would be the idiot that would show up, and then be looking at the cops going, “I was just told to show up and have a beer. Dur…”
NR: Did you feel any pressure to get laughs?
KM: I don’t think any of us felt the pressure to be funny. And I know every joke Ron White and Lewis Black have written in their lives. I’ve known them literally for 25 years. Jamie, I don’t know that many years, but none of us did bits. There are other shows – I won’t bring up names – where you’re kind of forced to do material. Jamie was forced to do some material, but only because Paul asked him to. It’s not like he busted that out as a joke.
If you’re not interested in comedy, I get that. I’m not interested in country music, per se, but I saw this thing on History Channel or something about the women in country, and they had like Loretta Lynn sitting around talking and Tanya Tucker… And I don’t care about what they sang, but I was really interested in their lives and what the hell goes on… Like, really? You’re Tanya Tucker and you’ve been on a bus for 50 years? [Laughs] What is that? And I think this show is trying to show that...
NR: ..the lives of comics…
KM: …our road lives and our show lives, but our lives, yeah.
NR: That’s what I think that Paul is accomplishing with this show…
KM: I do too.
NR: As opposed to some shows, like you said…we don’t have to name them, but we know…
KM: …We all know which ones we’re talking about.
NR: [Laughs] It’s cool. I appreciate all the comics getting to be on that show too.
KM: Everything for comics on TV is always, at the end of the day, usually a good thing. There’s nothing where it’s like, “Oh my God, that’s horrible for comics.”
NR: This is the super green room of The Green Room so…
KM: …I finished my beer.
NR: [calling out] New beer for Kathleen! Now, what were we saying?
KM: I forgot too. Don’t look at me to remember.
NR: …If Paul’s show is about the truth within comedy, what else do you think needs to be known about the comedy world?
KM: When someone is like, “Oh, comedians, at the end of the day, are depressed,” That’s so not true. That’s bulls***. The ones that are, are the anomalies where we’re all concerned. “Oh my God, I think so-and-so is like…seriously, they haven’t come out of their house for six months…” We’re just normal people. If you took a bunch of accountants, there’s gonna be people that are functioning alcoholics, people that are depressed… and I don’t see any difference in us, except that we are given more leeway to engage our insanity.
I can show up at work and go, “I’ll have a Vodka Tonic.” You can’t work at IBM and show up in the morning at 9:00 a.m. and go, “I’ll have a Vodka Tonic to get the day started.” But I can show up at any theater in America to do my show, and go, “Can I get a six-pack of Heineken?” and it’s totally delivered. So if you do have tendencies towards all that crap, it is a little easier, in our world, to accommodate it. But all in all… I don’t think Ron is secretly sad, or Lewis is secretly depressed. These are my best friends – really, Lew and Ron are my best friends for 25 years. They’re not secretly sad. I hate that cliché. “Oh, you guys are all sad.” No, I’m not! Really, I’m not. I’m SO not sad.
NR: What other myths of the comedy world can you dispel right now?
KM: That we’re like these road people that don’t have any connections and everybody just sleeps with random people in random towns and stuff. And really, even the guys, at the end of the day, we all find people we like and we hook on, and it works or it doesn’t work. But we’re not bands; we’re not rock stars. Even if you have a tour bus - Ron and Lew have tour buses, and Ron has a jet and stuff. But still, at the end of the night, if I go see Ron, it’s me, Ron, his fiancé, and one of the guys that writes for him on the jet.
There’s no insanity. It’s quite boring. It’s pleasant. It’s our little weird world, and we’re a very small, weird world. There’s probably, at the end of the day, a thousand people, out of 350 million in America, making money at this, and by money I mean more than $40,000 a year – I mean making money to say, okay, I’m making a living to support a family or whatever. There’s just not that many of us, so we all know each other.
NR: When do you feel like it clicked for you and you started making a living?
KM: I started when I was 23… but I’d say maybe when I was 33, I was like, “Okay, this is a really good living, and it’s getting better and better and better, and it has a potential…” I’m kind of a gambler: I don’t want the solid bet, safe bet – I want the crazy bet. I want all or nothing, and this job is all or nothing. You’re either going to be 40 and you wake up and go, “S***. I don’t have f***in’ s***,” or you’re gonna wake up 40 and go, “Man, this money keeps climbing…” And the money is not important, but I want to be able to keep doing it without having to go bartend again. So now it’s like, wow.
Now that I can afford s***, I get free s***. It’s like, really? Why didn’t you give me that free thing ten years ago when I needed it, when I was driving a Pontiac Sunfire in a one-bedroom apartment in Hermosa that I was struggling to find $550 to pay for? Now it’s: “Here’s a gift certificate to the Four Seasons.” Really? Now? NOW?
What’s fun is a lot of the extra stuff I get now - because I have six siblings - I just give it to them or my parents, and they come on the road with me and we just goof off and have fun. Because I couldn’t possibly use all the free s*** I get. I don’t even have time to go there. [Laughs] “Hey, here’s a free weekend of skiing in Aspen.” I don’t…no…not interested… no time. Sometimes you just want to shove it up their ass and go, “F*** you! You didn’t like me when I was 30, but I’m 40 and I’m hilarious now…”
The Second Season of ‘The Green Room with Paul Provenza’ premieres new episodes on Showtime every Thursday night at 11pm ET/PT beginning July 14, 2011.
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