The New Yorker Radio Hour - Ilana Glazer on Motherhood and Friendship, On- and Off-Screen

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

In their breakout comedy series, “Broad City,” Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson played raucous and raunchy best friends who were the glue in each other’s lives. In “Babes,” the new movie co-written by Glazer and directed by Pamela Adlon (fresh off her own series, “Better Things”), friendship is, again, a life force. Glazer plays Eden, a yoga teacher who gets pregnant unexpectedly and becomes a single mom. This time Glazer plays opposite Michelle Buteau, whom Glazer calls a “muse” for the film. Even though it didn’t take long to get the script green-lit, Glazer says some of the more graphic realities of pregnancy and having children were taken as somewhat “blue.” That assessment, she tells The New Yorker’s Naomi Fry, makes her wonder, “Perhaps we’ve been so disembodied from our own life force, from our own origin stories, that we find it disgusting. But it’s not disgusting. It’s hilarious, it’s beautiful, it’s also ugly, it’s sweet and soft, it’s hard and intense, but the way women talk still really rubs people the wrong way.” Glazer also talks with Fry about what Jacobson taught her about being an artist, going to therapy three times a week, and being wild about her daughter. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Ilana Glazer has been plotting out her life and her career for nearly 30 years. Since I was like seven years old, I knew I wanted to be a comedian. And I think this specific art, an insatiable desire for validation and approval, is a tenet of the... this type of artist that I am. Glazer first started getting a lot of attention 10 years ago when Comedy Central picked up the web series Broad City.

It was created by Glazer and her co-conspirator Abby Jacobson. Okay, I have one. A gynecologist, that's also a bikini waxer. That is a literal one-stop pussy shop. I love it. I love you. I love this day. I think we might actually be literal geniuses.

On Broad City, nothing was always. off the table. It was raunchy and irreverent. But after it ended in 2019, Glazer continued to tour as a stand-up comedian while also working in TV and movies. And her new movie, Babes, is out now and she sat down to talk with staff writer Nomi Fry. Everyone knows Alana Glazer from Broad City, the show. She co-created and starred in with Abby Jacobson. And Babes is kind of Alana Glazer, the next chapter. They're older than the women on Broad City were. And so there are different challenges that they deal with that kind of are both dramatic and comedic.

Does the fetus look healthy? Because I didn't know I was pregnant. I've had weed, shrooms, alcohol, coffee, and unpasteurized cheese. Babes, that's directed by Pamela Adlon, is about two best friends. Michelle Buto plays Don, who is a kind of working mother of two young children. Ilana Glazer plays Eden. Eden gets knocked up, quote unquote, decides to have the baby, to Don's surprise, even though she doesn't have a partner or family support system at all.

And then they kind of have to deal in their friendship with this new situation that has been formed where they're changing as women, and that means they're also changing as friends. Nomi talked with Alana Glazer about being a new mother and how that intersected with the making of babes. I wrote it when I was pregnant. I filmed it when my daughter was one. Wow, that's rough.

That was sad. That must have been hard. The whole shoot was 25 business days. We had Michelle for 15 business days. And while it's super quick, right? While it's insane. Yeah, it's supposed to be like three months. While it's insane, I was also so glad because I wasn't seeing my daughter for days, and it was so sad, I missed her first steps and it sucked.

Yeah. So I was like, I'm happy to do 14-hour days because I'm going to get home. Sure. I get it now, like what it means to be a mom, or like that I'll never fully know what it means to be a mom because kind of like scientific discovery, what knowing is is how little you know. You know, we have, we're told one thing is good and one thing is bad. Certain people are good and certain people are bad. Schools are good and schools are bad. Neighborhoods are good.

There's no better or worse. Yeah. But with my experience and the situation I happen to be in, like the cosmic uncovering like continues between my partner and my child and me. It's just numbers of components in a dynamic. Yeah, because it's really, you know, and I think the movie in some ways, you know, in a comedic way, it shows, because, you know, You have your character, Eden, and then Michelle's character, Dawn, who has two kids already and has a husband and has kind of like she's a dentist, she plays a dentist, you know, kind of a successful career woman, a working woman. But it shows how that can also be a trap. Exactly.

It's not like, oh, she hasn't made, you know, sometimes I remember like having a kid. Ooh, I've chills. And both, like, me and my husband being at the time freelancers and kind of like looking at. I was just thinking about it because I was sitting next to at a cafe near Fort Green Park. And I watched all of these moms like walk around with the strollers. And I was like, and I used to live there like around like 12 years ago or something when my daughter was like a few months old. And I remember looking at all the other moms and thinking, oh, they know what they're doing. Exactly.

They have it made, knowing exactly what to do with a baby, not worrying about anything. But of course, you know, and as the movie shows, I think even when you do have those kind of things in place, being a mother is kind of like you, and especially a working mother, you don't exactly know what's going on or how to deal with the sort of juggling act of it, right? Right. That's right. She has, like, Hassan Minhash plays Marty, Don's husband. Very supportive husband. Supportive yet multidimensional. You know, he's. He's annoyed. He's struggling to. And, but what a delicious couple on screen.

You want to dive into the screen and be a part of that couple and that family. Yeah. And yet it's fucking hard. And Dawn's character, like, has the patterns in her brain that I guess that I'm referring to that certain things are good and certain things are bad. And, you know, and she's stuck because we set expectations and society puts expectations on us. and then if you fail that expectation, you fail. You know, like I've been my stand-up hour that I just finished touring. I enjoyed this touring experience, and I enjoyed stand-up more than I ever have before.

I've been doing comedy for 18 years, and I do this whole thing. I talked to myself for four to six hours before each show talking to myself and then running the material. And one of the things I say to myself is I aim to take pleasure. I aim to take pleasure. rather than enjoy it, take pleasure in it. People say, have fun. Have fun with it. Well, what if I don't?

I failed. Yeah. Don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me how to feel. Like, I just aim. And then, like, I'm on the path, you know? Was there kind of, like, immediate acceptance and interest in the idea of a kind of, like, buddy movie about the friendship between two women that's also about motherhood and both, like, active motherhood and the process to motherhood? Or was it, like, hmm, maybe this is something that the market.

doesn't want necessarily, like, was it a bit of an uphill battle or was it kind of an immediate? Got to say, like, we had a blessed time getting this movie made. Like a, who, my, like, heart is steady my heart, as I remember. Yeah. Relatively streamlined, relatively speedy process. We had this incredible script, and we started writing it in Jan 2021, and in Jan 2022, we sent it out to the industry. Oh, wow. Okay.

And people either get it or they don't. And not getting it looked a lot like it's pretty blue. Right, because it is quite blue, right? It is quite raunchy or is it just truly what happens when a person who's able to get pregnant, gets pregnant and has a baby? Yeah. Perhaps we've been so disembodied from our own life force, from our own origin stories that we find it disgusting. Sure. But it's not disgusting. It's hilarious. It's beautiful. It's all so ugly. It's sweet and soft. It's hard and intense. You know, it's, but the way women talk still really rubs people the wrong way.

Yeah. And in your experience, were you basing the way the women in the movie talk on kind of the way you've talked with your girlfriends? Yeah, just, I'm just writing dialogue. All of us. There's a lot of, I should tell the listener that, I mean, not to spoil anything, a lot of poop talk, a lot of, you know, sort of. like breast milk talk, a lot of, you know, a lot of body talk. Because, yeah, becoming, continuing to make humanity, which is what only certain people can do, is a really visceral experience. Maybe, just maybe, I am a pregnant person. I'm 28 for 28. I could do it 29th. Yeah, no.

You are clearly pregnant. Okay. I don't know how. this could have happened. I've had sex once since my last period, but I was on my period. So? So you can't get pregnant on your period. Girl. Girl? Girl. Girl. Girl. Yes, you can. Girl, you stop. We went to the same school. We learned the same shit. Come on. No, you can't. Ma'am. I'm a doctor. You are a dentist? And like, I mean, it's, it's really like unheard of this, this speedy of a process. Just a year later, we were greenlit and funded by Film Nation. Then we were

looking for directors and we were talking to many people, but damn, Pamela had just come off five seasons of the beautiful show that is Better Things. Yeah, great show. And she, you know, the messiness and passion and color and sound and, you know, just rock and roll nature behind that show. was really exciting before we met her, and then we met her, and she really embodied that. Just her cracking up was so fun. You know what I mean? Like really, that's like, okay, great, you see it the way we hope the audience sees it. So let's make this.

Were these relationships with women? And I mean, not to minimize, you know, Josh Rabinowitz, who was, you know, co-wrote the script. It's not that men are like, you know, off limits. But these relationships with women when you work, is that something that's important to you, meaningful, how do you find that it's different from being on like a male set? You know, I've had the, I've had such a privileged situation in my career where I created the Web Series Broad City with Abby Jacobson and then we show around that show. And we hired everybody and we cast everybody and we wrote everything and we edited everything,

you know, and same with this, where it's, I haven't been in a situation where I'm like, one of the guys and the only girl in the room or whatever. I've been in that situation a hundred times, but not on my show or my movie. You know what I mean? You know, even you're pointing out not to minimize Josh, but it's like Josh is more of a feminist than a lot of women I know. Right. It doesn't necessarily need to. Yeah.

Where it's just like, oh my God, just having like good people and favorite of all, very funny people. Like, it's the best, you know, and that's the fuel that like these long days and these tight spaces that filming in New York push you into, it's just the best to have funny people around. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing like funny people. I mean, God bless. Staff writer, Nomi Frye, talking with comedian Alana Glazer. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come.

Were there certain lessons, quote unquote, or things that you learned when you worked with Abby Jacobson on Broad City that you took with you towards, I mean, obviously, Obviously, this isn't this, babes isn't the only thing you've done after. But kind of with this movie, how do you see what you learn on Broad City kind of manifest? I mean, I get so emotional about Broad City. It's like. Yeah.

I think a lot of people do. Yes. Oh, my God. And it feels like my babies. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like those characters are my babies. And you were also so young.

Oh, my God. I mean, you're still young. I mean, I'm 37. I started the web series, Broad City. I was 22. I ended the TV show as 32. Broad City was a third of my life by the time we ended it. And Abby and I decided to end it because we felt like we had thoroughly told that story.

Right. And, you know, I think we ended it in a place where the quality was just like so juicy, you know. But all this to say, I learned everything on Broad City. I learned everything from and with Abby Jacobson. Something that's been like coming up for me in reflecting about Abby recently is like her modeling for me what it means to claim your role as an artist. Oh, interesting. Say more about that.

My mom's really funny, and my dad's an incredible musician, but didn't work in that area. And Abby's mom was – Abby's parents worked more in the artistic space. And she went to art school. And I think her space making for a creative process was something I hadn't seen so close. before. She loves the process, and I hadn't even considered a process. Like, I got to NYU a little bit by the skin of my teeth academically and financially. But I was like, I'm going to go do this comedy thing. So I wasn't in acting. I was in a program for public school kids. And I'm like, you know, whatever, the financial aid, I'm just like, I'm here. I got here,

I'm here, I'm here. And I'm going every night doing sketch, stand up, and improv every night. How did you know he wanted to do that? My brother and I made sketch videos for our entire childhood hours and hours and hours of sketch videos. And Elliot, my brother, who's also a comedian, went to NYU and was scoping out the scene. So he was already, he was kind of the lead, the guard. It's called UCB. It's called alt. It's called old comedy. And, you know, there's SNL, of course, and there's stand-up clubs, of course, but this place is doing some weird stuff. And I'm in eighth grade watching Comedy Central, watching Upright Citizens Brigade and Comedy Central.

I'm like, Elliot's in the city, and he says they're performing at this place, Mr. Blue, and Janine Garoflo is doing stand-up there. Janine was like, you know, I always loved, always loved Janine. And I remember her from, you know, MTV and Ben Stiller and John Stewart. But she was up in that alt scene, too, because she's like a funny, funny little weirdo. And so Elliot's scoping it out. And he's like, when you come here, we'll take classes. And that was the thing, waitressing and babysitting to make the money to do the classes.

But Abby had like known, you know, had like studied art. knew about different kinds of art and had thought of herself as an artist in a way that like when we came together to make Broad City the Web series, I was like there was a claiming that like just had such an impression on me. And, you know, the character, she always loved to play insecure characters. And of course, you know, we were in a vulnerable and intense position together. So we certainly learned each other's insecurities. But the power in her rootedness of her role as an artist still takes me. It's so important to have, I mean, to have this sort of yin and yank when you have a partner,

whether in friendship or in a professional situation or a friend who you also collaborate with professionally. How do you feel it works with Michelle as who is now in this movie, the yang to your yin? With Michelle, so it's a different situation because I created it with Josh and I created it with Josh and Susie and I got to like sort of cast my bride. You know what I mean? Yes. And I don't have to like get into this shit and like argue shit out with her in the way that Abby and I were like constantly meeting in the middle. Yeah. And the middle is exactly where it was meant to be. Exactly where Broad City lives. But you know, it was hard. But with Michelle, I was like she just got to be my like. I want to say my muse.

She and I speak similarly. She's from Jersey. I'm from Long Island. We've been in the city for over 20 years. How do you know each other for? 20 years. So, you know, it was wonderful when we finally got Michelle because we didn't have to rewrite that much. We had written sort of in our voice and it was okay that these two women spoke each other's languages. Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, it was probably necessary. Yeah. You know, they play friends who've been friends since they were like. 12 or something. Exactly. Yeah. One thing that I found really interesting about the movie is that, you know, obviously it's very kind of high absurdity, physical humor, there's hijinks. But then, like, turts the end, and this also, granted, might have to do with my mood lately, but like, turns the head that was like crying. Like at the very end of it. As intended. And is it hard or is it

natural for you to sort of go from kind of high comedy to a kind of heartfelt mode, or is this something that, like, you draw from your own life with, like your own tendencies towards combining these two modes or? It's natural for me. I think people are going to be surprised to find themselves crying. I've heard a lot of that. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, God bless her, did a Q&A with me and Pamela and Michelle yesterday. And she was like, I was crying in your scene.

I was crying in that particular scene. I was like, yeah, duh, girl. You know what I mean? But like, also, she's surprised. I'm seeing that people are surprised. It is so funny that you don't think you don't think you're going to cry like this. But to me, that's what life is. You know what I mean?

Like, as I get older, I'm more able to recognize and hold this duality. And I'm loving it. It's just magical. And I, it's natural for me, not without lots of, prep. To remove myself as the writer and to start seeing it as a work, I'm inhabiting as an actor. That's tricky. How did that work? Like, what did you, what kind of thing did you, what kind of trick of the mind did you have to? Just talking about it. And, you know, just the almost therapy process of talking about it and thinking about this person as not me. I'm not a single mom. I don't have the parent situation that my character does. You know, like I'm not her. So even a lot of Wexler and Broadson. city was not me.

Sure. You know? Yeah. But this is what life is to me, and especially since the absurd paradoxical experience of becoming a parent, do I see that, like, this is not a bold swing. This is exactly how life goes. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel that your work has changed and do you think it will continue to change since becoming a mom?

I mean. Yes. Yes, yes. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Like, the standout really, like, shook me how much I enjoyed it. Like, the thing that's been so different for me is how much pleasure I'm taking in the process. The product is like a bonus. That's not even a personal experience, the product. The movie out there in the world, that's not my personal life. My personal life is the process it took to get here. I do a lot of therapy. I get a lot of support in, um, understanding the different contexts within myself. And I've been newly able to allow them to be integrated. And I've just been, oh, my goodness, I've been taking so much pleasure. I really... I wonder what you think it is.

Like, why do you think the sort of switch happened where you're like, okay, it's not necessarily about... I mean, obviously, the product is important. You want it to turn out well. But that you can kind of newly engage with and enjoy. just the making of something. Well, and also, not even that the product's not important, but if I stay present in the process, the product is exactly what I want it to be.

And I don't have, like, mixed feelings about it because I know exactly how we got here. Yeah. I am in an analytic process. I go to therapy three times a week. Oh, my God, lucky. And very lucky. Very lucky. Thank you, WGA and SAG for your two insurances.

I love them. Do you lie down on the couch? I love it. I lie on the couch, girl. but just once a week. Yeah. Yeah, I wish this was, this is what everybody needs, especially as, you know, capitalism is in its late stages and what we thought the world was is melting and a new world emerges. We all need therapy three times a week at least. And absolutely having my daughter, she is the son. She is my sky. I've never, I mean, this is how I start my stand-up hour. I am shocked by the joy. You know, people love to talk about how fucking hard it is. and all this shit. Of course it's fucking hard. Life is fucking hard. Every day is hard. It's hard to get out of bed. Right. But the joy is the thing that I'm like, what the hell? This I'm unprepared for, I tell you the truth. That I'm still working through how to manage my excitement in my body.

Yeah. Because sometimes I'll be like, I don't know. I love. And she's like, and I'm like, dude, this is actually inappropriate of me. Right. Right. Right. Right. Totally. Yeah. You don't want to overwhelm the other. And I have this in my family, this sort of manic my mom and then her father, this manic love that I'm like, oh my God, I'm Grandpa Dave. It's Grandpa Dave. It's Grandpa Dave. I'm trying to like chill that Dave out. Yeah, yeah.

No, but I mean, I'm sure your daughter appreciates it. Yeah. Love is good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Staff writer, Nomi Frye, talking with comedian Alana Glazer, and her new film, Babes, is in theaters now. Before we go, I want to thank everyone. Last week, we asked you to email in any questions you might want us to wrestle with about the

2024 election on the show. And a lot of you have written in, keep them, coming, the email address is New Yorker Radio at WNYC.org. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Alicia Zouper. with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Parrish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccan.