David Remnick: Ilana Glazer has been plotting out her life and her career for nearly 30 years.

Ilana Glazer: Since I was like seven years old, I knew I wanted to be a comedian. I think this specific art, an insatiable desire for validation and approval is a tenet of this type of artist that I am.

David Remnick: Glazer first started getting a lot of attention 10 years ago when Comedy Central picked up the web series, Broad City. It was created by Glazer and her co-conspirator, Abbi Jacobson.

Abbi Jacobson: Okay I have one, a gynecologist that's also a bikini waxer. That is a literal one-stop pussy shop. I love it. I love you. I love this day. I think we might actually be literal geniuses.

Ilana Glazer: Oh, we for sure--

David Remnick: On Broad City, nothing was off the table. It was raunchy and irreverent, but after it ended in 2019, Glazer continued to tour as a standup comedian while also working in TV and movies. Her new movie, Babes, is out now, and she sat down to talk with staff writer Naomi Fry.

Naomi Fry: Everyone knows Ilana Glazer from Broad City, the show she co-created and starred with Abbi Jacobson, and Babes is kind of Ilana Glazer, the next chapter. They're older than the women on Broad City were, and so there are different challenges that they deal with that are both dramatic and comedic.

Eden: Does the fetus look healthy, because I didn't know I was pregnant. I've had weed, shrooms, alcohol, coffee, and unpasteurized cheese.

Naomi Fry: Babes, that's directed by Pamela Adlon is about two best friends, Michelle Buteau plays Dawn, who is a working mother of two young children. Ilana Glazer plays Eden. Eden gets "knocked up", decides to have the baby, to Dawn's surprise, even though she doesn't have a partner or family support system at all. Then they have to deal in their friendship with this new situation that has been formed where they're changing as women and that means they're also changing as friends.

David Remnick: Naomi talked with Ilana Glazer about being a new mother and how that intersected with the making of Babes.

Ilana Glazer: I wrote it when I was pregnant. I filmed it when my daughter was one and--

Naomi Fry: Wow, that's rough.

Ilana Glazer: It was sad.

Naomi Fry: That must have been hard.

Ilana Glazer: It was. The whole shoot was 25 business days. We had Michelle for 15 business days.

Naomi Fry: Oh, wow.

Ilana Glazer: While it's--

Naomi Fry: It's super quick, right?

Ilana Glazer: While it's insane-- yes, it's supposed to be like three months. While it's insane, I was also so glad because I wasn't seeing my daughter for days and it was so sad. I missed her first steps, and it sucked, so I was like, I'm happy to do 14-hour days because I'm going to get home. I get it now what it means to be a mom or that I'll never fully know what it means to be a mom, because like scientific discovery, what knowing is is how little you know.

We're told one thing is good and one thing is bad. Certain people are good and certain people are bad. Schools are good and schools are bad. Neighborhoods are good. There's no better or worse, but with my experience and the situation I happen to be in, the cosmic uncovering continues between my partner and my child and me. It's just numbers of components in a dynamic.

Naomi Fry: I think the movie in some ways in a comedic way, it shows, because you have your character, Eden, and then Michelle's character, Dawn, who has two kids already and has a husband and she's a dentist, she plays a dentist, a successful career woman.

Ilana Glazer: Working woman.

Naomi Fry: A working woman, but it shows how that can also be a trap.

Ilana Glazer: Exactly.

Naomi Fry: It's not like, oh, she has it made. Sometimes I remember having a kid-

Ilana Glazer: Ooh, I've chills.

Naomi Fry: -and both me and my husband being at the time freelancers and looking-- I was just thinking about it because I was sitting at a cafe near Fort Green Park and I watched all of these moms like walk around with the strollers. I used to live there around like 12 years ago or something when my daughter was like a few months old, and I remember looking at all the other moms and thinking, oh, they know what they're doing.

Ilana Glazer: Exactly.

Naomi Fry: They have it made, knowing exactly what to do with a baby, not worrying about anything, but of course, and as the movie shows, I think, even when you do have those kind of things in place, being a mother is like, and especially a working mother, you don't exactly know what's going on or how to deal with the juggling act of it.

Ilana Glazer: That's right. Hasan Minhaj plays Marty, Dawn's husband.

Naomi Fry: Very supportive husband.

Ilana Glazer: Supportive, yet multidimensional. He's annoyed. He's struggling too, but what a delicious couple on screen. You want to dive into the screen and be a part of that couple and that family, and yet it's fucking hard. Dawn's character has the patterns in her brain that I guess that I'm referring to, that certain things are good and certain things are bad. She is stuck, because we set expectations and society puts expectations on us, and then if you fail that expectation, you fail.

Like, my standup hour that I just finished touring, I enjoyed this touring experience and I enjoyed standup more than I ever have before. I've been doing comedy for 18 years and I do this whole thing. I talk to myself for four to six hours before each show, talking to myself and then running the material. One of the things I say to myself is, "I aim to take pleasure. I aim to take pleasure." Rather than, "Enjoy it, take pleasure in it." People say have fun.

Naomi Fry: Have fun with it.

Ilana Glazer: Well, what if I don't? I failed? Don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me how feel. I just aim and then I'm on the path.

Naomi Fry: Was there immediate acceptance and interest in the idea of a buddy movie about the friendship between two women that's also about motherhood, and both active motherhood and the process to motherhood? Or was it like, maybe this is something that the market doesn't want necessarily? Was it a bit of an uphill battle or was it an immediate--?

Ilana Glazer: Got to say we had a blessed time getting this movie made. Like a 'whew'. My heart is, steady my heart, as I remember. The relatively streamlined, relatively speedy process. We had this incredible script and we started writing it in Jan 2021 and in Jan 2022, we send it out to the industry.

Naomi Fry: Oh, wow.

Ilana Glazer: People either get it or they don't. Not getting it looked a lot like it's pretty blue.

Naomi Fry: Right, because it is quite blue, right? It is quite raunchy or--

Ilana Glazer: I'm like, is it blue or is it just truly what happens when a person who's able to get pregnant gets pregnant and has a baby? Perhaps we've been so disembodied from our own life force, from our own origin stories that we find it disgusting, but it's not disgusting. It's hilarious, it's beautiful. It's also ugly. It's sweet and soft. Disheartened and tense, but the way women talk still really rubs people the wrong way [chuckles].

Naomi Fry: In your experience, were you basing the way the women in the movie talk on the way you've talked with your girlfriends and--?

Ilana Glazer: Yes, I'm just writing dialogue. All of us.

Naomi Fry: I should tell the listener that, not to spoil anything, a lot of poop talk, a lot of breast milk talk, a lot of a lot of body talk which--

Ilana Glazer: Which is continuing to make humanity, which is what only certain people can do, is a really visceral experience.

Eden: Maybe, just maybe, I am a pregnant person. I'm 28 for 28. I could do a 29th.

Dawn: No, you are clearly pregnant.

Eden: I don't know how this could have happened. I've had sex once since my last period, but I was on my period, so you can't get pregnant on your period.

Dawn: Girl.

Eden: Girl?

Dawn: Girl.

Eden: Girl.

Dawn: Girl.

Eden: Girl.

Dawn: I guess you can.

Eden: Girl stop.

Dawn: Girl, you stop. We went to the same school, we learned the same shit.

Eden: Come on. No, you can't.

Dawn: Ma'am, I'm a doctor.

Eden: You are a dentist.

Ilana Glazer: It's really unheard of, this speedy of a process. Just a year later we were green lit and funded by FilmNation. Then we were looking for directors and we were talking to many people, but damn, Pamela had just come off five seasons of the beautiful show that is Better Things.

Naomi Fry: Yes, great show.

Ilana Glazer: The messiness and passion and color and sound and just rock and roll nature behind that show was really exciting before we met her. Then we met her and she really embodied that. Just her cracking up was so fun. You know what I mean? That's like, okay, great. You see it the way we want, we hope the audience sees it, so let's make this.

Naomi Fry: Were these relationships with women--? Not to minimize Josh Rabinowitz, who co-wrote the script, it's not that men are off limits, but these relationships with women when you work, is that something that's important to you? Meaningful? How do you find that it's different from being on a male set?

Ilana Glazer: I've had such a privileged situation in my career where I created the web series Broad City with Abbi Jacobson, and then we show-ran that show. We hired everybody and we cast everybody and we wrote everything, and we edited everything. Same with this, where I haven't been in a situation where I'm like one of the guys and the only girl in the room or whatever. [laughs]

I've been in that situation a hundred times, but not on my show or my movie. You know what I mean? Even you're pointing out, not to minimize Josh, but it's like Josh is more of a feminist than a lot of women I know.

Naomi Fry: Right. It doesn't necessarily need to--

Ilana Glazer: Whereas it's just like, oh my God, just haven't like, good people and favorite of all, very funny people. It's the best. That's the fuel that these long days and these tight spaces that filming in New York push you into. It's just the best to have funny people around.

Naomi Fry: Yes, there's nothing like funny people. God bless.

[music]

Naomi Fry: Were there certain 'lessons', or things that you learned when you worked with Abbi Jacobson on Broad City that you took with you towards-- obviously, Babes isn't the only thing you've done after. With this movie, how do you see what you learn on Broad City manifest?

Ilana Glazer: I get so emotional about Broad City. It's like Abbi and I--

Naomi Fry: I think a lot of people do.

Ilana Glazer: Yes. Oh my God. It feels like my babies. You know what I mean? Those characters are my babies and--

Naomi Fry: You were also so young.

Ilana Glazer: Oh my God.

Naomi Fry: You're still young, but you were younger.

Ilana Glazer: I'm 37. I started the web series Broad City, I was 22.

Naomi Fry: That's crazy.

Ilana Glazer: I ended the TV show, I was 32. Broad City was a third of my life by the time we ended it. Abbi and I decided to end it because we felt like we had thoroughly told that story. I think we ended it in a place where the quality was just like so juicy. All this to say, I learned everything on Broad City. I learned everything from and with Abbi Jacobson. Something that's been coming up for me in reflecting about Abbi recently is her modeling for me what it means to claim your role as an artist.

Naomi Fry: Oh, interesting. Say more about that.

Ilana Glazer: My mom's really funny and my dad's an incredible musician but didn't work in that area. Abbi's parents worked more in the artistic space. She went to art school. I think her space-making for a creative process was something I hadn't seen so closely before. She loves the process and I hadn't even considered a process. I got to NYU a little bit by the skin of my teeth academically and financially, but I was like, "I'm going to go do this comedy thing." I wasn't in acting. I was in a program for public school kids, and I'm like, "Whatever the financial aid, I'm just like, I got here. I'm here, I'm here." I'm going every night doing sketch standup and improv. Every night, for years.

Naomi Fry: How did you know you wanted to do that?

Ilana Glazer: My brother and I made sketch videos for our entire childhood. Hours and hours and hours of sketch videos. Elliot, my brother, who's also a comedian, went to NYU and was scoping out the scene.

Naomi Fry: He was the lead, the guard [crosstalk]

Ilana Glazer: He's like, "There's this thing called The City. It's called Alt Comedy. There's SNL, of course, and there's standup clubs, of course, but this place is doing some weird stuff. I'm in eighth grade watching Upright Citizens Brigade on Comedy Central. I'm like, "Elliot's in the city and he says they're performing at this place, Mr. Blue, and Janeane Garofalo was doing standup there. I always loved Janeane. I remember her from MTV and Ben Stiller and Jon Stewart, but she was up in that alt scene, too, because she is like a funny, funny little weirdo.

Elliot's scoping it out and he's like, "When you come here, we'll take classes, and that was the thing. Waitressing and babysitting to make the money to do the classes, but Abbi had known, [laughs] had studied art and knew about different kinds of art and had thought of herself as an artist in a way that when we came together to make Broad City the web series, I was like, there was a claiming that just had such an impression on me. The character, she always loved to play insecure characters, and of course, we were in a vulnerable and intense position together, so we certainly learned each other's insecurities. The power in her rootedness of her role as an artist still takes me.

Naomi Fry: It's so important to have this yin and yang when you have a partner, whether in friendship or in a professional situation, or a friend who you also collaborate with professionally. How do you feel it works with Michelle, who is now in this movie the yang to your yin.

Ilana Glazer: With Michelle, so it's a different situation because I created it with Josh and I created it with Josh and Susie and I got to cast my bride. You know what I mean?

Naomi Fry: Yes.

Ilana Glazer: I don't have to get into this shit and argue shit out with her in the way that Abbi and I were constantly meeting in the middle.

Naomi Fry: Of course, because you were co-creators.

Ilana Glazer: Yes, and the middle is exactly where it was meant to be. Exactly where Broad City lives, but it was hard. With Michelle, I was like she just got to be, I want to say, my muse. She and I speak similarly. She's from Jersey, I'm from Long Island. We've been in City for over 20 years.

Naomi Fry: How have you known each other for--?

Ilana Glazer: For 20 years.

Naomi Fry: 20 years. Okay. Yes.

Ilana Glazer: It was wonderful when we finally got Michelle because we didn't have to rewrite that much. We had written in our voice, and it was okay that these two women spoke each other's languages.

Naomi Fry: Yes, in fact, it was probably necessary. They play friends who've been friends since they were 12 or something.

Ilana Glazer: Exactly. Yes.

Naomi Fry: One thing that I found really interesting about the movie is that, obviously it's very high absurdity, physical humor, there's high jinks. Then towards the end, and this also, it might have to do with my mood lately, but [laughs] like [unintelligible 00:16:47] said, I was crying at the very end of it.

Ilana Glazer: As intended.

Naomi Fry: Is it hard or is it natural for you to go from high comedy to a heartfelt mode, or is this something that you draw from your own life with, your own tendencies towards combining these two modes?

Ilana Glazer: It's natural for me. I think people are going to be surprised to find themselves crying. I've heard a lot of that. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, God bless her, did a Q&A with me and Pamela and Michelle yesterday, and she was like, "I was crying in your scene. I was crying in that particular scene." I was like, "Yes, [unintelligible 00:17:30] girl." You know what I mean? Also, she's surprised. I'm seeing that people are surprised. It is so funny that you don't [laughs], you don't think you're going to cry like this. To me, that's what life is. You know what I mean? As I get older, I'm more able to recognize and hold this duality and I'm loving it. It's just magical. It's natural for me, not without lots of prep to remove myself as the writer and to start seeing it as a work. I'm inhabiting as an actor.

Naomi Fry: That's tricky. How did that work? What kind of trick of the mind that you have to--?

Ilana Glazer: Just talking about it. Almost a therapy process of talking about it and thinking about this person as not me. I'm not a single mom. I don't have the parent situation that my character does. I'm not her. Even, even Ilana Wexler in Broad City was not me. This is what life is to me, and especially since the absurd paradoxical experience of becoming a parent. Do I see that--? This is not a bold swing. This is exactly how life goes.

Naomi Fry: Yes. Do you feel that your work has changed and do you think it will continue to change since becoming a mom?

Ilana Glazer: [laughs] Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. The standup really shook me, how much I enjoyed it. The thing that's been so different for me is how much pleasure I am taking in that process. The product is like a bonus. That's not even a personal experience, the product. The movie out there in the world, that's not my personal life. My personal life is the process it took to get here. I do a lot of therapy. I get a lot of support in understanding the different contexts within myself and I've been newly able to allow them to be integrated. Oh my goodness, I've been taking so much pleasure. I really--

Naomi Fry: I wonder what you think it is. Why do you think that the switch happened where you're, "Okay, it's not necessarily about--" obviously, the product is important, you want it to turn out well, but that you can newly engage with and enjoy just the making of something.

Ilana Glazer: Well, and also not even that the product's not important, but if I stay present in the process, the product is exactly what I want it to be. I don't have mixed feelings about it because I know exactly how we got here. I'm in an analytic process, I go to therapy three times a week.

Naomi Fry: Oh my God, lucky.

Ilana Glazer: Very lucky. Very lucky. Thank you WGA and SAG for your two insurances, I love them.

Naomi Fry: Do you lie down on the couch?

Ilana Glazer: I lie down on the couch, girl, I love it.

Naomi Fry: I lie on the couch too, but just once a week.

Ilana Glazer: This is what everybody needs. Especially as capitalism is in its late stages and what we thought the world was is melting and a new world emerges. We all need therapy three times a week at least [laughter]. Absolutely, having my daughter. She is the sun. She is my sky. This is how I start my standup hour. I am shocked by the joy. People love to talk about how fucking hard it is and all this shit. Of course, it's fucking hard. Life is fucking hard. Every day is hard. It's hard to get out of bed, but the joy is the thing that I'm like, "What the hell?" This I'm unprepared for, to tell you the truth. That, I'm still working through, how to manage my excitement in my body, because sometimes I'll be like, [screams].

Naomi Fry: I know.

Ilana Glazer: I'm like, dude, this is actually inappropriate of me.

Naomi Fry: No, totally, you don't want to overwhelm the other.

Ilana Glazer: I have this in my family, this manic. My mom and then her father, this manic love that I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm Grandpa Dave."

Naomi Fry: It's Grandpa Dave.

Ilana Glazer: It's Grandpa Dave. I'm trying to chill that Dave out.

Naomi Fry: No, but I'm sure your daughter appreciates it. Love is good.

[music]

David Remnick: Staff writer Naomi Fry, talking with comedian Ilana Glazer, and her new film, Babes, is in theaters now.

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.