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David Remnick: Ever since Samantha Irby emerged as a breakout star from the blogosphere, readers have loved her for being an unvarnished truth-teller. On her blog and in her bestselling books of essays, Irby exposes a lot from her battles with Crohn's disease to her addiction to QVC.

Samantha Irby: My passion is to truly make like dirtbag, slacker Black lady stuff because there is not enough like this Black lady doesn't have ambition art in the world and I'm going to try and get it out there.

David Remnick: Recently, Irby made the leap into writing for television on shows like Hulu‘s Shrill and HBO’s Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That. Doreen St. Félix, a staff writer for The New Yorker sees Irby as the ideal chronicler of which he calls the malaise of the millennial condition. When Doreen sat down to talk with Samantha Irby, it was three days into the Writers Guild strike.

Doreen St. Félix: What changes have happened in the industry that have caused writers to take the stand that they're taking?

Samantha Irby: I think the biggest change, and we all know it because it's changed our lives so much is streaming and the opacity that the producers and studios work under that you don't even know the ways you're being screwed. You just know that your cheques are smaller. The other day I got a residual check. It was based on my episode from And Just Like That, so a big network, we know a lot of people watched it. My residual check was $40. [laughs] It's like you hear about people who worked on like Law & Order, things that are so syndicated and they haven't written anything in 20 years, but they're having a great life off those residual cheques. That is not possible for writers right now.

I think what makes me feel the worst is there are super young people in this industry trying to cobble together enough writing jobs to have writing be their only job and they can't do that. I was reading a thing about how this person, I can't remember who it was, this writer, the day they got nominated for it, the day they found out they got nominated for an Emmy, they were in Target applying for a job. It's like we get that that is the reality. I worked in customer service for like 15 years, but I feel like when I was making $15 an hour bagging donuts, my boss wasn't making $200 million that she refused to share with me.

Doreen St. Félix: That would be very weird donut shop.

[laughter]

Samantha Irby: The disparity between you and your regular boss is one thing. It's like maybe they have a newer version of the same car you drive, but the difference between the writer's take-home pay and the executive's take-home pay is bonkers because Hollywood is weird. If they have their way, you would just move to LA immediately, be in meetings every five minutes, never sleep, always be hustling, but I think one of the things about coming into this work at 43, I do not have the stamina to hustle. [laughs] I'm like, "Oh, I'll have one job, and when that job ends, I'll wait till someone asks me to do another job."

I think all of like my fake curmudgeon leanness and physical distance has kept me feeling like the same person, even though Cynthia Nixon texted me. You know what I mean? It's like that's her, she's fancy, and she lives in my phone. That's not me.

Doreen St. Félix: I'd be curious to hear about how being in the space of the writer's room where it's a collaborative environment works with or maybe works against your very much one-person kind of essay writing that you do.

Samantha Irby: I think that TV writing is hard but also is maybe the easiest because you have other people to bounce things off of. Like in my own work, I have complete confidence in my brain. I'm like, "This is what I'm going to write about, this is the format that feels like a list or whatever," and then I write it, and then I fix it with my editor, and then it's good. I feel good about that. Having a book out in the world, I feel good and confident in what's in it.

With TV, because I don't fully understand TV and I haven't been doing it long enough to feel like I know what I'm doing, I appreciate the collaboration because I think it all helps to keep me from looking stupid, which is my biggest fear is like looking like an idiot. It's nice to have someone, like if I throw out an insane pitch, to have someone be like, "That wouldn't work because this," or, "An audience doesn't like that." Or even something as basic as like, "We have to keep this thread going throughout the episode and you forgot it."

Also, the writer's room is just the beginning. Then it's the showrunner, and then it goes to the network. The first time I saw an episode of television I wrote, there was lots of stuff on the screen that I didn't write.

Doreen St. Félix: What episode was that? Was it in [unintelligible 00:06:49]

Samantha Irby: It was Shrill.

Doreen St. Félix: Shrill.

Samantha Irby: It was the pool party episode of Shrill. When I wrote the script, and you write from an outline that everybody puts together, there was no fight with the boyfriend in my episode and I was like, "Good." [laughs] I'm like, "We don't need any men." Then I see the episode and there's a scene I didn't write. I wasn't offended or embarrassed or anything, it's just like, "Oh, yes, okay, that's how it works." What I turn in, then goes through so many hands. It resembles what I wrote, but maybe not. Jokes get punched up and scenes get taken out for time.

I think with TV, I enjoy the collaboration only because it further helps me let go of control, but in TV, you're just going to get your feelings hurt over and over and over if you stay married to literally anything you put in a script.

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Doreen St. Félix: Coming into this conversation, I had this idea that Sam Irby and I would begin by talking about her memoir, and then talk seriously about writer's rooms and just like that. Of course, all that went out the window as soon as she began to speak.

Samantha Irby: A real sticking spot for me, or a real sensitive spot for me is I have always felt, and it gets worse, I think, as my career gets better with not having a college degree. It makes me feel, especially with writing, you know how writers are. They're like, "What MFA program-

Doreen St. Félix: That very pedigree.

Samantha Irby: -did you go to?" and I'm like, "Oh, I went to high school. [laughter] I don't even have a bachelor's degree, I certainly don't have an MFA." Unlike people who are all chummy from their grad school programs and they exclude, and then you add to it that I write a lot of filth and it makes people take me less seriously. Because I have thought of myself as undereducated, whenever anyone has criticized my choice in book to read, I have the feeling of like, "Oh, I guess I didn't know any better that this was a bad thing to consume." I don't want to feel bad because some random person wanted to make me feel bad.

Since I started doing I like It, which is like let's say you're reading Gone Girl, which is one of my favorite books, and I don't think it's trashy but some people do, and someone says like, "Ugh, that book is bad for women," first of all, am I going to give a feminist lecture off the top of my head to some asshole who just wants to be rude to me? No, I'm physically incapable, but what I can do is go, "Oh, well, I like this book." Then the person does not expect you to say that. They're basically standing there waiting for you to apologize to them for liking something that they don't deem worthy. Then it gets a little awkward, and then I just keep doubling down. I just keep going, "I like it."

It's a tiny handy tool to just get people off you. I feel right now, and I don't know if it's social media or just a general hostility in the air, but everyone is just waiting to judge you but for something that doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Nobody's seen me kicking a puppy or yelling at a kid. Those are the kinds of things I'd be worried about someone finding out about me, not that I am deep into all the Real Housewives. Also, this is a thing with you as a critic, it's like I know you, I trust you. Everything you say about a thing, I'm like, "I know this person. I trust her. I believe what she says about this show. I trust her analysis." The whole thing. JoBlo on the street, they're not a trained critic.

They don't know how to consume things in a critical way. They're as stupid as I am. I'm going to feel bad because they don't want me to read John Grisham? No, I refuse. There are so many things to feel bad about and I do. Taking back my taste, defending my taste is a thing that is worth it to me. I'm going to start standing up for the things that make me happy. I love Billions.

Doreen St. Félix: Do you?

Samantha Irby: I watched Succession too, but Billions is good.

Doreen St. Félix: Right, and they both are doing actually very different things. It makes me wonder what your relationship is to the real fever that got created when, and just like that, came out. You talk about this in Essay collection as well, but there was a real like, "This is our baby. You have to do right by our baby," even though you guys had a different mandate that you were pursuing

Samantha Irby: Even as a Sex and the City bonafide super fan, I was not ready for the fire hose of opinions and the bad reviews and recaps or whatever. I am the last name on the writer list. I decide nothing. I had to unsubscribe from people's newsletters.

Doreen St. Félix: Oh, gosh.

Samantha Irby: I was listening to this NPR podcast. I was in the shower, so I didn't see it was going to the next episode, which was about And Just Like That. I'm listening on my little shower speaker because I'm fancy. At one point, one of the women on the panel is like, "Were there any Black people in the room?" and the host is like, "Samantha Irby was in there, she's Black." The person says, "Well, all skin folk in Kinfolk."

Doreen St. Félix: Wow.

Samantha Irby: When I tell you I almost fell out of the shower. I'm like, okay, I am not Black enough to this person who has no idea who I am. I didn't bring any changing Blackness into the room. I have betrayed the entire race by not taking over the show and casting all Black people. When people go to things like that, it's like, "What can you do?" I can't call that girl and be like, "Oh, so actually I'm a Black Panther?" You know what I mean? [laughs] There's nothing to do, so it was so overwhelming.

Doreen St. Félix: You were so important in your anticipation of what body positivity did to a lot of people in terms of actually making much more grotesque their relationships to their bodies because it did not allow them to have honesty about how it is that they feel about living in this meat sack. One of your pieces that I love is your profile of Lizzo in Time because here's this person who is so, as you had really beautifully articulated this idea of body negativity, which is tongue-in-cheek, but also very real. Then there you are being set against just the absolute patron saint of body positivity. I love that little tension there.

Samantha Irby: Yes. That was tough for me and sometimes I vacillate between like, am I jealous or is what they're doing wrong? Because I would never be in my underwear in any photograph ever. I would never be photographed with a tank top on. That is not the relationship I have with my body. I've no problem with other people who do, no outward problem, but I do feel some resentment because I'm not that way. I'm like, "These people are out in bikinis and they're having a great time. I cannot do that. I hate her." Not hate, but you know what I mean?

Doreen St. Félix: Right.

Samantha Irby: When they approached me about talking to Lizzo, I was just like, "I'm not going to turn it down. It's Time Magazine."

Doreen St. Félix: This was a profile of Lizzo that time reached out to you to do.

Samantha Irby: Yes, it was their 100 notable something.

Doreen St. Félix: Something like that.

Samantha Irby: Most important--

Doreen St. Félix: The most important people in the world. [laughs]

Samantha Irby: Yes, and I'm certainly not going to inject a whole lot of, but you can't love your body all the time. Time Magazine was not wanting that from me. Still, I feel like if no one talks about the stuff that's bad or the stuff they don't like, or that they woke up this morning and their shoulder hurts and they wish they had a different body, there has to be space for all of that. The you go girl of it all. This is not about Lizzo, but just in generally is so hard, especially when you consider accessibility for very fat people, medical care for very fat people.

I think that's a thing that we lose in the body positivity of it all is you see somebody with a burrito belly in a bathing suit and it's like, "Oh, that's so brave." I'm like, "Great, maybe it is, but why are airplane seats so small and why are theaters made for people in the 19, 20s or whatever?"

Doreen St. Félix: Vanity sizing is another thing.

Samantha Irby: Oh my God, it's so real. I think sometimes that people think the struggle is over because we see fat women in bathing suits on our feeds in Old Navys making 4X or whatever. I think with putting the lipstick on the pig as it were, no pun intended, is great. I love the visuals. I went to Target and saw my girl in one of their jeans ads on the wall. I was very excited, but then you can't buy the size clothes she wears in the store because they don't stock the fat clothes. Then as a fat person, you got to remember what you liked.

Go home, see if they make it in your size, get it, have it fit weird, send it back. You know what I mean? [chuckles]

Truly, my only beef with the love yourself of it all is that you're trying to in a society that hates your guts. I was listening to, I don't even know, some podcast, and the host was talking about how white men are the last people acceptable to make jokes about and I was like, "Okay, sir, there are fat jokes everywhere in everything that you watch all the time. There's no warning." You'll be watching a soap opera, and then somebody will say something. It's like it's in the culture. It's people on the street will say things to you. It's just like I don't want everything to be boiled down to whether you're okay wearing shorts outside in the summer because that's the least of the issues.

Doreen St. Félix: Sam, it was so great to talk with you.

Samantha Irby: This really made my day.

Doreen St. Félix: Oh, gosh.

Samantha Irby: You are the best. Oh, when are we getting a Doreen St. Félix book?

Doreen St. Félix: Wait, what? What did you say? Sorry, the feed is dropping off.

[laughter]

David Remnick: The New Yorker's Doreen St. Félix speaking with writer Samantha Irby. Irby's new collection of essays is called Quietly Hostile. HBO's and just like that returns for a second season in June.

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