feature image photo by Zhen Qin
When “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” premiered on Late Night with Seth Meyers — a segment featuring Jenny Hagel and Amber Ruffin providing off-limits-to-Seth punchlines for headlines featuring Black and gay news, including occassional Autostraddle headlines! — it signified the beginning of a continuously successful era for both comedians. Jenny Hagel has received numerous accolades and been nominated for her Late Night work since, from the Emmys to the GLAAD Awards. Now, the loud, proud, and deeply funny Hagel has returned to live performance with her show “Jenny Hagel Gives Advice,” featuring other comedians and friends providing advice to audience members on everything from whether they should break up with their boyfriend, to if they should beat up their boss. I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down (over Google Meets) with Hagel to discuss her career trajectory, her advice show, and what she’s been watching lately.
Autostraddle: Before Late Night, you got your start with Second City in Chicago and have written for other shows such as “Impractical Jokers” and “Big Gay Sketch Show” (which I believe is extremely underrated). What made you want to get into comedy and writing, and what was your career like before hitting it big with Seth?
Jenny Hagel: That’s a great question. I grew up with a very funny family — nobody is in entertainment, everybody is just very naturally funny, so I grew up with people who joked around a lot and were really sharp. And it didn’t occur to me that was a possible job. When I was in high school, Comedy Central came into existence, and my mind was blown. I was in front of the TV all the time, mainlining comedy. And then my college had an improv group, and this is going to sound insane because improv has pervaded every corner of society at this point, but at the time it was very rare for a college to have an improv group. Improv was still a very niche, new art form. I remember going on college tours, and then I went to one open house weekend and saw this college improv group perform, and I thought “I don’t know what this is but I want to go to this college.” I just wanted to go so I could watch the group, that’s all! I want to watch these 18-year-olds play Party Quirks, that’s how I’m going to pick my college!
There are worse ways to pick a college.
Isn’t that right? Also, no math requirement, so those were the two leading factors.
So when I got there, someone I knew saw the group’s flyer and were like “You gotta try out for this.” They basically had to force me into it, and from then on I thought it was the best. But I still didn’t know it was possible to have comedy as a job until the Second City National Touring Company came and performed at my college my junior year. I remember when I first saw them, I felt that my scalp was tingling really hard. I was like “Oh, I don’t know what this is, but I need to find out where it is, how it happens, how I can do it.”
And from then on, I was laser-focused. At the time, the only place you could learn how to improve was Second City and other places in Chicago, or you could go to LA with the Groundlings. But really, Chicago had three established theatres with training programs, so I thought if I really wanna learn improv, I have to go to Chicago. My whole career was one very embarrassing small step after another.
I moved to Chicago, studied improv there, then got hired by the Second City National Touring Company and did that for three years, and then little by little started to get my legs under me. The real turning point from performing to writing — because I also didn’t realize comedy writing was a job — the whole thing about Second City is you improvise, and then if you come up with something funny, you write it down, massage it, and make a script. Once I got to the writing phase, I was like “Oh, wait a second.” That really clicked — especially because the other performers thought that part of it was a chore, but I thought it was a delight.
Once I was there five years, I started thinking of what would be next, and writing for TV seemed like the next/only thing I could do with these skills. I happened to find out about a program at Northwestern University that was only in its second year, the MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage, so I did that for two years. And then I moved to New York on a true wing and a prayer and spent six years submitting packets to late night shows trying to get hired and finally got hired by Seth.
The longest answer to a question in history!
No, the longer, the better! So you started working for “Late Night” in 2016, alongside your friend and writing partner Amber Ruffin. It’s been almost 10 years: What has that experience been like, and how has it evolved over the course of almost a decade?
The most interesting about working late-night is that it’s the first time I’ve had a comedy job where the turnaround time is so short. At Late Night, we’re working off that day’s headlines or the day before. So the turnaround time is tight. But what I like about that is you’re writing about the news in the moment that you’re also experiencing the news. So what has been so different is that writing there feels different all the time depending on how the country feels. When I first started there, it was the last couple months of the 2016 primaries before we all realized Trump running wasn’t a joke. So that felt very different. It felt like “yeah, Barack is gonna do his victory lap, and then Hillary will be coronated, and then everything will keep plugging along,” and things took a real turn and everyone got nervous. And you could feel that and express that in your writing. I remember the week Trump got elected, I felt very stunned and numb, and that came out in a lot of writing. Because you’re writing for an audience, but you’re also having the same week the audience is having.
I’ve written through periods where things felt great and light, and you’re having a good time writing silly nonsense, but I also wrote for Late Night the week the world shut down for COVID, and those subsequent scary weeks after. So the biggest thing I learned from Late Night is to approach writing from an honest gut place. I’m never going to have all the answers or be the final word in a political analysis, but what I can do is look at a headline and ask “How does this headline make me feel?” And then write from that place. I’ve been shocked by how many times, if you start from there, you end up writing something that connects.
I write a recurring segment called “The Kind of Story We Need Right Now.” Every edition highlights a different, very small, ridiculous news story you might have missed. I wrote it the week it became very clear to everyone in the country that they were separating families at the border and incarcerating children. It was a very heavy week, and every news story was about that, and I had a pitch due the next day. I remember reading the news, thinking “I don’t know a comedic way into this, it’s too sad, I feel too hopeless.” And in the midst of all these articles, was one about a high school principal who had gotten arrested for pooping on the football field of the rival high school in the middle of the night. And that phrase — this is the kind of story we need right now — popped right into my head. We all just need a light moment in the middle of this hellscape. So I wrote that story with that refrain, and we continued to do other stories like that where a very silly crime is committed, or a guy tries to carjack a woman but she beats the crap out of him. It didn’t come out of trying to coin a catchphrase, it came out of seeing that article and thinking “I need this right now.”
I think that’s where, in my experience, the things I’ve written that have done the best are when I really tap into how I actually feel on a Wednesday afternoon about something. Not this big philosophical take on something, just how do I feel on this Wednesday? Somebody else will feel that way today, too.
Speaking of Amber, the two of you have known each other a long time, and in addition to Late Night, you worked on her show The Amber Ruffin Show. What has that partnership with Ruffin been like, and how do you feel being a part of a duo has shaped your career?
It’s the luckiest thing to get to work with your best friend. Amber and I are friends in real life, it’s not a thing we do for work. We are genuinely, genuinely best friends. I would spend all my time with her anyway, so I feel very fortunate that we somehow have twisted fate into making it our job. It’s really delightful to get to walk this creative path with someone who I care about so much.
Working on Amber’s show was a dream, because we got to build a brand new show from the ground up. We got to do everything from the font for the logo, what does the set look like, what is Amber’s wardrobe gonna be, what we want the theme song to sound like, how we set the tone, what we want the structure to be, what kind of work culture do we want to have, what do we want the vibe in the writers’ room to be, what priorities do we want when we’re hiring. Seth and Mike Shoemaker, who is an executive producer at Late Night, set such an incredible example for how to build a happy and productive workplace, so we were able to take what we learned from them. It was such an exciting experience, and such a creative challenge, and such a privilege to build your dream workplace. It really was the coolest experience.
You’ve never shied from your lesbianism when it comes to your career — what was behind the choice to not only be open but very queer-forward in your work?
I’ll be honest, I didn’t really plan that. I do my best to bring my authentic self to work every day. I think that’s where the best material comes from. If I try to sit and write a joke or a sketch that connects with everybody, it’ll be so bland that it’ll connect with nobody. So the most I can do is write from the perspective that I have. Especially the age that I’m at with the years that I’ve lived through, in terms of things like the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the fight for marriage equality — you know, I came out while living in a gay neighborhood in Chicago, when gay neighborhoods still existed and were thriving and were more defined than they are today. That is just an important part of my identity, and so there are times when certain headlines would come about, or I would think of certain jokes, because that happens to be part of my lens. It tends to be this corny-sounding adage about comedy but it’s true: The specific is universal. So I would write things from my specific point of view and those were the things that connected better, rather than “Here’s a sketch called What’s in the Bucket,” where we pull things out of a bucket, I don’t know, who cares.
But if I wrote something really specific about something I think from my queer point of view, that tended to hit with people. And the same is true for other things, like I’m Puerto Rican and written stuff around Hurricane Maria, and I think when you’re specific about your world view people want to hear about it.
I’ve seen you talk about this in other interviews, but for Autostraddle’s sake, how did “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” come about? I think I read in an interview you said you just wrote fifty jokes about Carol and wanted to find a way to use them! Could you expand on that?
Sure! Our writing staff at Late Night is divided into two teams: a sketch-writing team, and a monologue-writing team. When I first started at Late Night I was doing both. One of the first weeks I was there, there was some headline in the news about Carol or Subarus or something, and I had a million ideas for monologue jokes. When I turned them in and saw my boss, the head writer Alex Baze, in the hallway later, I was like “hey, man, let me know if you need more lesbian jokes!” And he was like, “Uh, we can’t use them.” Like, right, Seth can’t just drop a bunch of burns on lesbians, it sounds very different coming from me than from him. So we laughed about it, and the next week everybody had to turn in a sketch. And like any life situation where you have homework due, you’re like, ugh, what am I gonna do. So I pulled Amber aside, and asked what she thought of this idea, where we pitch “jokes Seth can’t tell” where she tells jokes about Black headlines and I tell jokes about gay headlines, blah blah blah.
We used to have this weekly meeting where we’d all bring a sketch and sit around a table to read them out loud. And afterwards, we’d get an email letting us know which ones were chosen by Seth. So we were bringing it in, but it was really more making us laugh. We were thinking obviously it’s not gonna get chosen, there’s no way they’ll let us do this. And then I remember very clearly the moment where we got the email saying what had been chosen. We all had swivel chairs at our office desks, and I remember getting the email, and swiveling around to look at Amber, and both of our mouths are open. Like, they’re gonna let us do this? On TV?
Then when we did it we thought it’d be a one-off, and then it just happened to go well, so we got an email the next day saying, “Hey, guys, write up another one.” So I think now we’ve done 54, 55 of them.
Like you said the specific is universal! And as a lesbian, I love a lesbian joke, no matter what it is.
I mean, right! It’s kinda fun to just be like, yeah, we don’t dress great, do we? But it’s also been a fun exercise because we’ve been doing it for eight years. So it’s been like a social experiment in addition to a comedic one. Because sometimes we’ll write such a specific joke that we know someone from our demographic will get it, but how good are the context clues? Is there enough information in the joke that you can enjoy it anyway, and at the end of the joke you can just be like, “huh, I guess they love to walk dogs.”
There’s probably 10 jokes in each segment, and they don’t all hit! I think that’s the fun of it, like let’s find out. One time I sold Seth so hard on a joke — it was something about bees. They were giving bees antibiotics and I wrote a joke, and I can’t remember it exactly but the punchline was “If you’re a bee, that explains your yeast infection.” And Seth was like, “uh, let’s find a different joke.” And I was like, “No, women are going to love this, trust me.” So we did it in rehearsal, and it got nothing. If there was something called Silence Plus, that’s what it got. And he razzed me so hard. But it’s been fun to see where are the places where you can bring someone along for the ride, even if they’re not part of your demographic.
There was a phase in the pandemic where Seth continued to do shows in the studio without an audience, and we did that on The Amber Ruffin Show as well. As much as it was a bummer not to have the laughter of an audience, there was something really freeing about that time. I don’t mean this as an FU to the audience at all, but it allowed you to not choose jokes based on what are the most people going to love. It was lovely every once in a while to put in a joke, knowing that joke was for like 10 people, but that those 10 people were going to love it. And when you do that in a live studio audience, and only 10 people laugh, the joke sounds like a failure. But if there’s no audience, then you can be at home, and it can wash past you, or you can have the best time because you just heard this bee-antibiotic joke and you’re like, “Yes! I also got a yeast infection!” So I really love that time because it allowed us to dive into niche, specific bits of humor without worrying about getting a groan. We got to just have a good time and experiment.
What was the inspiration and appeal for you behind “Jenny Hagel Gives Advice”?
A couple things came together at the same moment. One was the writers’ strike, which was five months where we weren’t allowed to work anywhere at all within television. I’m glad we struck, but it was just like five months sitting around at home. It really felt like a second quarantine; I was just at home, severely in leisurewear, with nothing to do, and I felt very isolated. So I thought it would be great to do some live performance.
A very real and true thing about my personality is that I am obsessed with giving people advice. It’s very real, it’s not just a thing I came up with for the show. It’s bad, it’s a bad habit. I just have this compulsion to share information if I think it’s helpful. And I often do it unsolicited, which I’m sure people love? Question mark?
I also wanted something where I could perform with different comedic friends. I feel really lucky to have a circle of friends who are all doing well, are busy, and so I wanted something too that could be done with no prep. Where I could just text someone and ask “Do you wanna do this show?” And they could just show up 10 minutes before, they don’t have to prepare anything, and we could just have a good time onstage and goof around.
So it worked on all three of those levels: It got me out of the house, it allowed me to boss people around (which is my calling), and it allowed me to get to mix with a bunch of different performers who I either know well, or who I admire and want to get to know. It allows me to be in community with people in ways you don’t often get to be in television. So I’m on camera lot of the time, but the majority of my job is sitting at a laptop, like any good American worker. So it’s really lovely to get back to that communal aspect of being in a theatre with someone and an audience, and getting to have a moment only you experience all together.
Is this your first foray into live performance since working in comedy writing for television?
In terms of doing so regularly, for sure. When I got hired at Late Night, I also had a two-year-old, so those two things combined didn’t lend themselves to free time. Parenting and Late Night were my focus for awhile, so it was nice to just have a moment to take a breath. There’s a strike, this child can tie his own shoes, I have some free time: What could live performing look like for me?
How has it been coming back into that, coming from behind the desk back to the stage?
It’s lovely, because it’s just such a different muscle. I like both of them so much and just hadn’t had the chance to use the live show/improv muscle. The great thing about writing is you have time to craft something and make it exactly perfect, how you want it. And what I love about live performance is even if it’s scripted, unexpected things happen, and you get to react off-the-cuff to what’s happening. The vibe at different venues is different, the vibes of different crowds are different — I’ve done shows at 5:30 in the evening where people are coming to the show before they’ve gone out to drink, and I’ve done shows late at night when people are coming to me after they’ve had a couple drinks. It’s lovely to read the room, to see where each group is at, and go there together. That spontaneity I don’t get to use much in television.
For this show, you’re working with amazing comedians like Alex Moffat and Murray Hill, but you’ve also done it with Olympian Laurie Hernandez, and you have an upcoming show with Justin Guarini from the first American Idol. I was curious as to why — why in the kindest way — you pick or ask certain people to join you, even folks who are not comedians by trade?
What’s lovely is I think so many people have this impulse — whether they’re quick to identify it or not — of wanting to give advice. I go by two things: I ask people who I think are naturally funny and people who I really do think would give advice. Because it’s a comedy show, but there’s a sincere aspect to it. I’ve asked people who I think are very funny and very kind. Because I think those two things will lead to a good show.
Laurie, I happen to know through a friend of mine, and knew she’d be great. Justin, I met through a project where he was stage-reading a play that Amber wrote. And he’s just delightful. So much of how we connected wasn’t even about performance; he’s just a good, lovely guy who I liked hanging out and talking with. I wanted the show to feel like when your friend has a beer and a half and is like, “You know what you need to do? You need to break up with him.” Anybody who you think you’re going to get that loving honesty from is who I want on the show. Let’s see where it goes.
You have that fun little hook at the end too of having a real therapist come onstage and say if it’s good advice. Is the therapist a friend of yours, or are you just on PsychologyToday sending DMs?
It started out with a referral. I have a friend who’s a therapist, and I asked them if they knew anybody who would be good at this. There’s one therapist I used a lot, but then she had the audacity to go have a baby, so weirdly doing my show isn’t at the top of her priorities. So I texted her for recommendations.
I’ll usually send a long text, because it’s a very weird thing to explain over text, and the text that comes back is always “um, I have some followup questions.” It’s the same thing: As long as they’re a nice and lovely person, they don’t need a performance background. I also am genuinely interested in psychology, so I do like hearing an actual person say, “hm, that’s not how I would say it. What I would say is this, and there’s a reason why.” I think that’s interesting and helps so I don’t accidentally send people out the door with bad advice.
A couple lighter questions to end on: what are you watching/reading/consuming right now?
Oh, I love this. I am obsessed with White Lotus, because I love sloppy rich people. I love to watch rich people have it all and then mess it up for themselves.
I read a ton because I try to not be on screens if I can help it since my life is so screen-based. So I tend to swing between fiction and nonfiction. I just read Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, which I thought was really stunning, and now I’m reading The New Jim Crow, which is bleak as hell. I try to swing between nonfiction about topics I want to learn more about, and then a fiction palate cleanser before diving back into sad history.
Music-wise, I have Bad Bunny and Doechii on repeat.
I watched your Late Night segment on lesbian bars and wanted to ask: What’s your ideal lesbian night out look like? Or lesbian bar?
Oh, what a lovely question that I have never been asked. My ideal lesbian bar has excellent cocktails, also some good draft beers because it’s a lesbian bar. It’s a place that is sometimes a dance party and sometimes a community space, because there’s a long, cool history of queer bars also serving as community spaces. Some nights you just show up to drink and flirt. And I think there’s a little corner where there’s board games because sometimes people are nerdy and scared to interact. Now, do all of those things belong in one bar? I don’t know. But if there’s Yahtzee and a really good old-fashioned, that’s where I’m gonna go.
Yahtzee and a really good old-fashioned is just my apartment.
My ideal lesbian bar is just my house.
Any last words for Autostraddle that you really wanted to say?
I hope people will come check out the show. I think it’s fun, but I also think we live increasingly at-home lives. I know I feel isolated a lot of times, and I have a very social life. So I hope if people want to laugh and want to feel community, that they come out.
This is such a great interview !!