Grisly murders? Tell me more
ATORRENTIAL downpour could not keep the murder-obsessed and crime-fixated young women from storming the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles this spring.
“It’s like the best cult ever,” said a fan in her late 20s, who was wearing Doc Martens boots and a T-shirt that read, “I’m a Karen!”
As the lights dimmed, about 2,000 rowdy fans, mostly women in their 20s and 30s, howled at a decibel suited to a Beyoncé set at Coachella. But they weren’t going gaga for a pop deity. Calling themselves Murderinos, they came to hear expletive-laden tales of brutal homicides told by Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff, the irreverent hosts of the wildly popular true-crime comedy podcast My Favorite Murder.
Standing on an empty stage, save for a small table with two bottles of water, the hosts sailed through the show’s breezy formula: Come for the frank and funny retellings of their “favourite” murder (today’s topic: the Los Feliz Murder Mansion from 1959), stay for the chatty non sequiturs (day drinking and Oregon cults).
“The common urban legend is that a father killed his whole family and himself on Christmas Eve in the 1950s. And that the house sat abandoned and nothing in the house had been touched or changed since that night,” Hardstark said.
Kilgariff jumped in. “Does anyone talk about the level of dust that would be on those things?” she said.
“It’slikeabandonmentporn,” Hardstark said.
“Yes, lots of people here are into abandonment porn,” Kilgariff said in her characteristic droll tone, which ignited loud giggles from the audience. “Me, too,” Hardstark said. “It’s second only to changingroom-shame porn,” Kilgariff said, before being drowned out by deafening laughter.
Alongside Jon Favreau and his fraternity of ex-White House aides at Pod Save America and Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson of 2 Dope Queens, Hardstark and Kilgariff are part of a new breed of superstar podcasters who have cultivated a groupie-like fan base that will follow them to live performances.
The sold-out gig at the Orpheum in March was the halfway point of an 18-date international tour that kicked off in Las Vegas in January and wraps up next month in Glasgow, Scotland. For the past two years, My Favorite Murder has been a permanent fixture atop the iTunes podcast charts, drawing up to 19 million listeners a month.
In many ways, the subversive charm of “MFM”, as die-hards abbreviate it, is today’s answer to riot grrrl, the DIY feminist punk movement of the 1990s. There is a Facebook fan page with 200,000 members and spinoff groups, including “Meowderinos” (for cat-loving fans) and “button bashes” (for pun-happy pin collectors) that meet in all 50 states, as well as throughout Britain and Australia.
“We as women have long felt we had to be cheerful and avoid heavy topics,” said Kendra Granniss, 28, a community support specialist from Brooklyn, who last year started “Murderinos and Mimosas”, a Meetup.com brunch with a dozen like-minded girlfriends. “Then came these two normal women, you know, just talking about murder. It was like, oh, we can talk about this and embrace the darker regions.”
The hosts are starting to play catch up with their newfound celebrity. This spring, they started a $39.99 membership program that includes T-shirts, message boards and other VIP goodies, and will publish an “autobiographical self-help book” this year. A second tour begins in September that will include a Halloween show at the 7,000-plus-seat Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
Hollywood has also come knocking. They have voiced characters for the Cartoon Network series Craig of the Creek, and in January, Hardstark appeared in an episode of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat.
“The sky is the limit here,” said Joseph Schwartz, an agent at United Talent Agency who represents the show. “Podcasters have an incredibly powerful bond with their listeners and can galvanise their audience unlike any other entertainers.”
The day after their hometown performance, Kilgariff, 48, and Hardstark, 37, were decompressing on a well-worn couch in Hardstark’s duplex apartment in East Hollywood. A small room upstairs, furnished with cross-stitches and other Etsy crafts sent from fans, doubles as a makeshift studio where they record their weekly podcast.
When they started the show in 2016, it was in the middle of a true-crime gold rush spurred on by podcasts like Serial and the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer. But they ditched the genre’s dry investigative tone in favour of wry humour and a focus on the overlooked (mostly female) victims of infamous (mostly male) killers like Ronnie Lee Gardner or the Golden State Killer, who was recently arrested.
“Even ‘victim’ can be such a throwaway word because it implies they didn’t have a family or life,” Hardstark said, as she petted one of her three cats. “There’s no reason this couldn’t be any of us.”