Behind Amy Schumer
INTERVIEW Meet Jessi Klein, the brilliant, but also insecure head writer of the Emmy-winning comedy
When Amy Schumer accepted the Emmy last September for her hilariously raunchy comedy series “Inside Amy Schumer,” she profusely thanked her head writer and executive producer for helping make her “dream show.”
It should have been a fantasy night for Jessi Klein, walking the red carpet and winning one of Hollywood’s most coveted statues. But as she recalls in her new book of personal essays, “You’ll Grow Out of It,” the new mom found herself alone in a basement dressing room after the show, shoved into Spanx while pumping her breast milk. She remembers questioning her future - feeling not so much like a winner, but a “footnote to others’ success.”
While many would have killed to be in Klein’s Manolo Blahniks that night, there’s nothing woe-isme about her confession or her struggles with self-confidence. “You’ll Grow Out of It” hits on many familiar emotions, as Klein shares stories of broken relationships, failed career goals and physical insecurities. Although she didn’t set out to “tell jokes,” Klein can’t help but bring on the laughs: she is, after all, also a stand-up comedian and a former writer for Saturday Night Live.
“I really wanted to stretch into territory that wasn’t funny, but real. And hopefully by being honest and real and specific, be relatable to other people. I was thinking more of how to transcribe my voice like when I am just talking,” says Klein.
“Ironically, I think the stuff about trying to become a comedy writer is less funny and more serious about overcoming fear and learning how to follow your instincts.”
Klein should be considered a frontrunner to fill the void left behind by the late essayist Nora Ephron, whose conversational writing style also revealed the particular absurdities of being a contemporary woman.
As a self-described tomboy turned “tom man” (“nobody likes a tom man”), Klein writes about femininity with an outsider’s eye. She observes that women are divided into poodles (Angelina Jolie) and wolves (Sandra Bullock), depending on a checklist of so-called feminine traits (poodles always wear matching bras and underwear, while wolves own two bras, and neither match their “tattered old Gap underwear”).
She also confesses an enduring love for Anthropologie and The Bachelor and dislike for a culture that suggests the bathtub is the only place a woman is allowed to find peace.
While Klein reveals her specific experiences as a woman, and certainly “Inside Amy Schumer” is touted as a feminist breakthrough, she says the book was not intended to be political. “I am very much a proud feminist, but I wouldn’t say that was the word in my head as I was writing,” she says.
“You’ll Grow Out of It” took her three years to complete, during which time Klein became pregnant, and found herself waking up at 4 a.m. to sneak in time to write — a process she recalls as being physically and mentally draining.
Klein openly discusses the invasive tests and procedures she went through in trying to have her baby, and makes a pretty compelling case for getting an epidural.
“I wanted to write about it in a variety of tones because some of it is so ridiculous that if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry,” she says. “But some of it is uncomfortable and horrendous that you do just cry. I wanted to share that stuff as well.”