The New Times Interview
The redhaired comic dynamo known as Kathleen Madigan has been burning up comedy clubs, casino venues and late-night gabfests for more than two decades, yet somehow stays fresh and funny despite her years on the road. Following her debut performance at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino Showroom in March 2011, Madigan returns with a second helping on Thursday, May 31. Tickets to the 8 p.m. show in Verona are $25, $30 and $40; call 361-SHOW for details.
During a recent phone interview, Madigan said with a laugh, “I’m at my sister’s house in Missouri babysitting, so if you hear a baby, it’s not mine.” Then the St. Louis-born chuckler expounded on her insights in the comic process, her popular gig on the old Last Comic Standing series and the side benefits of doing a Turning Stone show. “I have friends who live in Oswego so it’s a perfect opportunity for me to go crash on their couch and have fun with them for a night before I get up there {to Verona}. It’s gorgeous!” Madigan exclaims. “Oswego is phenomenal! I mean, if you could afford a summer place there, like wow!
Q: Is there anything different that you’re bringing this year compared to when you were previously at the Turning Stone?
A: I always have new material, mainly because I get bored with stuff after I do it for a while. You see some comedians and they never change their act, and I’m like, God, I would just want to vomit if I was saying the same stuff every night. If you’re gonna say the same stuff every night, you should be an actor, because that’s what acting is all about—being able to do the same thing over and over and still seem like you care
Yeah, I change it up. I keep some stuff just because it’s always usually the same topics, the same areas of discussion: my family, politics, religion. Especially Catholic jokes, because, you know, the pope just cannot be quiet for an entire week. He’s always got something crazy to say, so that’s easy pickins.
Q: Are you constantly making observations about the world in order to construct your new material? It almost seems like work, but it’s got to be fun for you.
A: Yeah, I never think of it as work, per se. I don’t sit down and write jokes; everything in my act is true, it either happened, or it’s something I saw in the news. I mean, I will write a word down so I don’t forget the topic or whatever, like now I just have a personal bar napkin with weird words. But yeah, it’s more like just go out and live life and report back. If I come to a place once a year, that’s fine, because then I feel like, OK, it’s all new to them. But not in two months; I’m not that magical. {Laughs}
Q: Does the material relating to politics have a shorter shelf life when you’re touring?
A: It does, but it depends. You can count on Mitt Romney and Barack Obama being around until November, and then one of ’em’s going to be around for a lot longer. Yeah, the Republican debates, I had a lot of jokes about that and then those kind of fall by the wayside, because people aren’t gonna think about Newt Gingrich. I mean, he’s not forgotten but he’s not in the news. So it’s fun while it lasts but then it’s more overall topics rather than specific things about the person.
Q: Do you get the feeling that the late-night talk-show comics would like Mitt Romney to win the presidential election because then it gives them four years of great material to work with?
A: Well, he’s easier to make fun of than Obama, for sure, because he’s so awkward. I don’t understand who’s handling him; one of the jokes I do in my act, I’m like, stop trying to make him a common man. He’s not; we know it: He’s a billionaire. Leave him in a suit, because when they try to get him out of a suit, he ends up in mom jeans and some weird shirt. It’s uncomfortable; he looks like a cop at a drug party. Everybody knows: We can all tell you’re not common, you’re the 1 percent. So what they should do is say how fabulous the 1 percent is instead of trying to say he’s not and downplay it. They’re goin’ in the wrong direction, I think, tryin’ to make him seem normal. He’s not normal! {Laughs} He has elevators in his house for his cars! I didn’t even know you could do that! That’s a level of rich where now you’re buyin’ things I didn’t even know were for sale! I don’t understand who’s handling that guy, or maybe they’re telling him the right things and he’s not listening. I don’t know, but it’s awkward.
Q: You went to school for journalism, but apparently that didn’t pan out.
A: I only took journalism because I sucked at math and science. It wasn’t like I loved it, it was just what was left. {Laughs} You know, like I can write a sentence and I can write a paragraph and I can go somewhere and then write what happened, but I didn’t have the passion for it. There were kids in my class who were sportswriters and they were totally into it, and I was just the kid who was there. Plus it’s hard to make money. . .
Q: Tell me about it!
A: . . . and I was making more money bartending, and I liked that. So unless you get a really good gig, journalism doesn’t pay what it should. {Laughs} Sounds like I’m preachin’ to the choir, I’m sure.
Q: Going into standup comedy, did you do stage plays in high school or college to get that type of embrace from an audience?
A: No, I have no theater background. {Laughs} I worked at a bar and they wouldn’t let us drink there after work anymore because somebody misbehaved. So we used to go to a comedy club just to have beers and we would just watch these open-mike nights and go, “Oh my god, these people are terrible, like I’ve said something funnier than that today.” And I wasn’t that afraid to speak in front of people because when you’re bartending and waiting tables, you’re walking up to total strangers and starting a conversation.
Plus, I have six siblings, and nobody in my family shuts up—ever. My sister is married to a guy who is from a small farm family, and I go, “Matt, you never say anything,” and he says, “Kathleen, when would I get a chance?” And I’m like, “Matt, nobody’s going to come up to you in this family and go, ‘Hi, Matt. How are you today?’ You just gotta jump in, Matt.” {Laughs}
Q: It seems like a lot of comedians have always wanted to do a dramatic role. Even Lou Costello did it in the 1950s on a Wagon Train TV episode. Do you harbor such aspirations?
A: Well, I don’t really think about it but I would prefer that instead of some cheesy sitcom. A lot of my friends that are comedians have been on Law & Order, like Lewis Black and Judy Gold, because it was New York-based, so they actually used a lot of comics, so stuff like that would be cool. Some of the sitcoms were like, “Oh, do you want to come in and read {for a role}?” I’m like, “No, because the sitcom’s not funny, the role’s not funny and I don’t understand why I would want to be involved in something like that.” {Laughs} I mean, it’s not going to boost my ticket sales on the road if I’m playing a Southern waitress in some sitcom. I don’t get that whole thing, unless it’s your own sitcom like the Ray Romano show {Everybody Loves Raymond} and it’s based on your act.
But I don’t really have the patience for acting, and I know that; I think the older you get, you know what you don’t have patience for, and you should just stick with what you’re good at. Lewis did a role on The Big Bang Theory—I’d never seen it; it’s a very cute show, it definitely had funny moments—and he was like, “Come with me because I’m bored.” And we were there like seven hours for him to do what ended up, start to finish, a three-minute scene. It’s too slow; in 10 hours I could do nine shows and get paid.
Q: How many road shows do you perform in a year?
A: Probably 250, maybe 300, with traveling in between. But I’m having fun. I still like it {otherwise} I would just stop and go open a bar, there’s other options. I mean it can get to the point of “OK, I have to go home now; I’m beat,” and we all know when that happens. I came home to help when my sister had twins and then she had another baby and I said, “Well, I’ll deal with the twins while you deal with the new baby.” And I was here where I am right now at her house for three weeks last August—and I haven’t been anywhere, my home or anybody else’s home, for three weeks in a row since I was 23. It seemed like forever, not in a bad way, but in a very different way.
Q: Did you have any bad club experiences in your career?
A: I liked the clubs. The second-show Fridays are always {filled with} Drunky the Clowns and basically you’re just babysitting them, but it also makes you better and it makes you harder. I never got that many hecklers because I’m 5-foot-1, I’m a woman, but usually I would just talk to them to find out what the hell they were saying. But if they were super-drunk I would just have them thrown out because it’s not fair to the people who paid.
The only drag about some of the clubs was the club owners who were kind of sleazy, and you had to expect that. You can call it a comedy club but it’s still a bar and the only thing important to them is drink sales.
Q: What comics, past and present, still make you laugh?
A: Lewis Black, Wanda Sykes, Garry Shandling, Dom Irrera, Roseanne Barr still makes me laugh. Even Joan Rivers; I just saw her in New York City in a tiny basement gig, and she was hilarious.
Q: Did Last Comic Standing change everything for you?
A: Nooooo. {Laughs} What Last Comic Standing was good for was building and getting some new people {as fans}. But most of us on the season I was on had already been on The Tonight Show or David Letterman or already had Comedy Central specials. I mean, we were all headliners. I never thought Last Comic Standing did a good job saying that these people aren’t amateurs: You can’t be an amateur comedian and be on TV all summer, you’d run out of material.
But Last Comic Standing got the prime-time people who are putting the kids to bed and who aren’t staying up late watching Leno or Letterman, so it was a new demographic added on top of the one you already had. But it’s not going to change everything, and I think some people who were on the show thought that. And I’m like, “It might make you super-popular for a couple months, but people will forget.” It’s like American Idol: They will remember you instantly, then move on, so you’d better make your money quickly if you don’t already have a fan base.
Q: When you do interviews with journalists, do they try to bring the funny, like their A-material, so they can be as funny as you?
A: {Laughs} Never usually print people, but some radio people do. And
if I do local TV, I don’t know why, it’s always the weatherman who
always thinks he’s hilarious. And sometimes they are, but sometimes
they’re really not and it’s a big miss. It’s not a subtle miss, it’s a
huge miss.
