Amy Schumer is on top of comedy world
Amy Schumer isn’t just a star. She’s a blindingly bright nova streaking through every pop-culture subset out there.
Schumer’s book “The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo,” for which she was reportedly paid at least $8 million, comes out in August. The fourth season of her Emmy-and Peabody-winning Comedy Central show, “Inside Amy Schumer,” premieres Thursday. She wrote and starred in the summer 2015 hit movie “Trainwreck” with director Judd Apatow and just finished cowriting a script with Jennifer Lawrence.
This kind of meteoric rise has seldom been experienced by any stand-up comic, let alone a woman in a maledominated field. So why does Schumer reign supreme? Here are some of the reasons why she’s the queen.
She’s not afraid to go there.
No matter how vulgar, taboo or previously untrod the territory, Schumer sallies forth with descriptions of her sexual encounters, lessthan-pristine underwear and a fearlessly scatological music video about the obsession with women’s butts. She has the ability to shock unshockable audiences, or at least make them titter nervously.
Yet, Schumer is also so likable.
Women in their 20s and 30s recognize themselves in her funny/ tragic hookup stories. (“Nothing good ever happens in a blackout. I’ve never woken up and been like, ‘What is this Pilates mat doing out?’ ”) Women of all ages want to be her for a night. And guys like her, too.
Minneapolis comedy club tastemaker Louis Lee admires her authenticity.
“She’s so comfortable in her own skin and not afraid to express it,” said Lee, owner of Acme Comedy Club, where Schumer last appeared in 2013 doing a podcast with Doug Benson. “When you see her, you relate to her, men and women of all ages.”
She pokes holes in media’s expectations of women.
From her HBO special: “In LA, my arms register as legs. And my legs register as firewood.” In one brilliant sketch from her show, Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Patricia Arquette explain how actresses have sell-by dates in Hollywood. In another, a star-studded spoof of the classic film “12 Angry Men,” an all-male jury debates whether she’s hot enough to be on TV. “I don’t think she’s protagonist hot,” says Kevin Kane. “But Kevin James is?” shoots back John Hawkes.
A-listers love her.
Scheduled for guest spots among dozens of others on her show this season are Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Jennifer Hudson, Anthony Bourdain and even “Hamilton” star Lin-Manuel Miranda, for whom Amy, in a promo, demos her own Broadway musical based on Betsy Ross.
She’s got the look.
If you don’t look like Amy, you’ve got a good friend who does. She’s the all-American girl in a short, tight skirt, with a bod that doesn’t scream emaciation.
But above all, it’s her personal mantra on attractiveness: “I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story — I will.” She recently called out Glamour magazine for calling her “plussize,” tweeting, “We are done with these unnecessary labels that seem to be reserved for women.”
She’s coated in troll-proof Teflon.
Schumer gets eviscerated by online trolls, whom she blithely ignores or steamrolls over with her own socialmedia troops. She’s also survived accusations of joke stealing and casual racism in her humor with barely a scratch.