STAND-UP COMIC KIRKMAN LIKES AGING
“I CAN’T KEEP UP WITH EVERY STORY,” JEN KIRKMAN SAYS OF TOPICAL SUBJECT MATTER.
At the end of this month, Jen Kirkman will be turning 45. It’s an age with which the comedian is already becoming quite comfortable.
“It is actually relaxing, in a way, to get older because no one really cares what you’re doing anymore and no one really notices you, and it’s kind of a fun way to go through the world,” says Kirkman, on the phone from Los Angeles.
She’s been talking about growing old in her stand-up lately, which she will be bringing Aug. 22 to the Heights Theater. She reminisces about her youthful, carefree days (“I have a lot of nostalgia in my act — a lot of nostalgia for terrible things, like smoking”) and gets into how people her age seem to have a grudge with the young folk.
“I talk a lot about really my sympathy for younger generations, for millennials and Generation Z and how they’re being so picked on,” she says. “Like, every article I read is about how millennials are messing this up and messing that up, and I think people my age and older start to get really scared that they’re being replaced by new people, which we are. That’s how life works. And, so, I talk a lot about growing up in Generation X and being called a slacker, and I try to explain to the younger people we’re on their side.”
As a comic who’s been talking about her life on stage for over two decades (and in two Netflix specials), Kirkman is glad she doesn’t have to comment on the rapidly changing news. She says, “As a human, that unnerves me. But, as a comedian, I’m very lucky … I can’t keep up with every story. Like, I might know about one pedophile, but I don’t know about all of them.”
She may not be topical in stand-up, but Kirkman has been known to ruffle some feathers regarding political matters on Twitter. In the past, her lengthy threads regarding the possibility of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being unwitting tools for Russian bots and trolls to stir up trouble online have made her a trending topic on occasion. But she insists it’s her desire to educate that makes her want to jump in.
“Just like any other human who is reading the news and is reactive and is upset and worried and wants to throw my opinion in and wants to educate some of my followers and wants to say, ‘Hey, I’m an ally, people of color/ LGBTQ,’ it’s always coming from a place of compassion or fear,” she says. “And just like any other human looking at this stuff, everyone uses Facebook and Twitter and writes their opinion. So, I’m just another person doing it. But because I have a lot of followers, people assume I’m doing it in order to get something out of it, and I’m not. I’m just a human like anyone else, going like, ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe this!’ ”
When she’s not doing standup or starting some mess on social media, Kirkman often writes for TV. The former “Chelsea Lately” staffer worked on the first two seasons of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” that Emmy Award-winning show about an outspoken female comedian in the ’50s. So, of course, she fit right in. “They basically needed some comedians to consult — not even to write the comedians’ material on the show,” she says, “but just to consult about what it’s like being a comedian and make it very realistic. What are comedy clubs like? What’s touring like?”
Once in a while, she’ll sell a show idea to a network such as ABC or Fox. But she insists it’s a long and winding road before a program finally makes it on air. “It’s a long chain of moves, and I’d say most people don’t end up getting their thing picked up into series,” she says. “But lots of people sell scripts every year. I really hate it because when they announce it in the industry newspapers, they don’t say, ‘Jen sold a script to this network. She’ll write it. It may or may not become a show. The odds are 10 percent.’ They never write it like that. They say, ‘The Jen Kirkman show has been picked up by ABC.’ And, then, I get 50 emails from people who think I have my own show, and they all want jobs. And I’m like, ‘Nooooo!’ ”
Kirkman can always get back to writing books. She already has two volumes published — “I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids” (a New York Times bestseller) and “I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches From a Life Under Construction.” She’s already shopping around another book idea — one that all the millennials might enjoy.
“It’s like a self-help book for younger people about going through breakups,” she says. “So, if it gets bought, I’ll get to venture into that kind of, like, funny-butreal advice.”