Elisabeth Caren
Comic Natasha Leggero doesn’t assume she’ll ever make a Netflix particular about her daughter. So as an alternative, she wrote a laugh-out-loud hilarious e book about what it has been wish to develop into a mom.
On this bonus episode, Leggero returns to the The Final Snort podcast to speak in regards to the cathartic technique of writing her new e book The World Deserves My Kids. She additionally breaks down how a lot her parenting fashion differs from husband and fellow stand-up comedian, Moshe Kasher, and opens up about how motherhood has affected every part from her profession trajectory to the way in which she sees the world.
Leggero opens the primary chapter of her new e book by laying out simply how a lot her life has modified since changing into a mum or dad.
“You'll be able to’t do shit. Your time not belongs to you,” she writes, explaining that “having a child is loving one thing so intensely that you could’t reside with out it, combined with desperately wanting that one thing to take a nap so dangerously lengthy that you need to go into its room and verify if it’s nonetheless respiratory.”
That mixture of intense love and existential dread runs all through the e book, which manages to be very humorous whereas on the similar time coping with essentially the most traumatic components of parenthood.
“I actually was capable of come to phrases with the truth that you don’t have a baby to remain the identical,” she tells me. “So although I’m lacking the pre-motherhood Natasha, I’m attempting to additionally take pleasure in post-motherhood Natasha, who’s completely completely different and able to way more love and selflessness, but in addition way more worry.”
For a very long time, it was nearly thought of a provided that if feminine comedians needed to develop into moms they must sacrifice their careers. It’s a problem that was addressed in the newest season of HBO Max’s Hacks and explored by comic Jena Friedman throughout her latest Peacock particular Ladykiller. Earlier than a pregnant Friedman joked about her resolution to not get an abortion on stage, Leggero was among the many comedians—together with, most famously, Ali Wong after which Amy Schumer—to tape a particular whereas pregnant as an act of defiance in opposition to a stereotype that has by no means utilized to males.
However after I ask if there was ever a degree when she felt like she had to decide on between changing into a mom and being a stand-up comedian, Leggero jokes, “Possibly, like, previously week.” Her daughter now goes to highschool through the week, however her husband, who's additionally a profitable stand-up, has been on the highway most weekends. “It’s actually exhausting to maintain up,” she admits.
Leggero and Kasher have at all times been brutally sincere about one another of their respective acts, in addition to after they create comedy collectively, as they’ve achieved of their joint Netflix particular and Limitless Honeymoon podcast. However she says it wasn’t till very just lately that she began actually contemplating how her jokes would possibly have an effect on their little one.
“Truthfully, it’s one thing I had by no means considered,” she says. “And it sucks, as a result of I’ll say one thing about her to a good friend in entrance of her and he or she’s like, ‘Mother, don’t inform different individuals what I say!’ So I’m like, hmm…”
Elisabeth Caren
Leggero doesn’t assume there’s something within the e book that might significantly embarrass her daughter. “However am I going to do a Netflix particular the place I make enjoyable of her?” she asks. “Most likely not, as a result of she’ll have the ability to entry it when she’s 12 and I don’t need her to be mad at me.”
Once I ask if that feels limiting as a comic, she replies, “In fact!”
Later within the e book, Leggero seems to the longer term and expresses the anxieties of many liberal mother and father who worry the ramifications of bringing a baby right into a world that may really feel prefer it’s on a downward spiral towards local weather disaster and fascism. She additionally precisely predicted that Roe v. Wade could be overturned by the point her e book hit cabinets. “Welcome to the burning, melting world, my sweetest darling!” she writes.
Nonetheless, Leggero takes on a hopeful disposition, predicting in our dialog that her little one will likely be a “humorous Greta Thunberg, the primary local weather activist who has a very nice humorousness and is simply actually capable of get everybody on board.”
If nothing else, she says liberals must be having extra youngsters to “create your individual military” so the “dumb individuals” received’t mechanically win the approaching civil struggle. And if that doesn’t work, she suggests recruiting a Canadian citizen to type a “throuple” and escape America as soon as and for all.
Hearken to the episode now and subscribe to ‘The Final Snort’ on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be the primary to listen to new episodes when they're launched each Tuesday.