It’s true, he tells me, he hasn’t performed live in a long time. “I stress it so hard on my show: ‘This is a fucking work in progress, please, guys!’ Like, blood is coming out of my eyes, so anxious that people want to see this very stylish show.” Hailing from Ohio, Harrison – comedian, writer and star of hit series including Shrill, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson and the animated Big Mouth – made his first appearance on the sidelines of the Edinburgh festival this year. The heatwave has reached Scotland by the time we meet in August, so we retire to the dark interior of a bar, Harrison’s virgin bloody Mary with a colorful cocktail umbrella. “I picked the creepiest area,” she says as we sit on red plush seats, a giant plush unicorn on one side, a mannequin with a mask that might be J-Lo’s face on the other. It’s the right setting for a conversation about Harrison’s work, where comedy often gives way to something slightly unsettling. When she was asked to do a run in Edinburgh this year, she “didn’t have a show together”. Harrison took songs she’d been working on and added new jokes, keeping them loose so she could feel out of the audience each night and put her improv skills to good use (college improv was her first foray into live comedy). Although some of the lyrics conjure up cringe-worthy imagery (the aftermath of Steve Bannon’s ejaculation, for example), it’s clear that she’s a great singer, with a knack for impersonation. The impersonation of a Tory Kate Bush (“I’m tired of being silenced”) is timely. Patti Harrison with Aidy Bryant at Shrill. Photo: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy On stage, Harrison walks a tightrope between sincerity and irony. He subverts well-worn tropes of the comedy special: checking notes on a stool, later revealing he’s looking at nothing more than a still from a Stuart Little film. The expectation of an emotional journey is squashed as he delivers a PowerPoint presentation with trigger warnings, but it’s sponsored by the “Noise Barn,” so unusual sounds play over slides with titles like “elder abuse” and “pre-transition trauma” (Harrison is trans). “There are so many shows where you have to live in that moment of gravity.” There’s something disturbing, he says, about the way standups are expected to play out an emotional apocalypse night after night. “I’ve felt pressure to do a comedy special, even though I’ve never felt like a standup,” he says. “A lot of comedy developers say, ‘We want you to be able to do your standup show exactly the same, 50 times, before we’ll put money into it.’ This feels so lifeless. I don’t enjoy doing that, even if people laugh.” Harrison is also pushing back against pressure to talk about trans in her comedy. “I like to bait and switch people who think they’re going to pat themselves on the back for seeing a trans comedian, trying to be repulsive,” he says. At the same time, Harrison says, “I don’t want to erase my experience, because it’s a huge part of my everyday life.” But, coming from a background of improvisation and character-comedy, “I never wanted to do anything political because comedy is like my escape from that. Lived experience is so political whether you like it or not. There was a time when I felt that in order to build my career, I was taking advantage of people’s interest in it, and then I felt resentful.” This pressure was exacerbated by social media. “My brain was starting to go haywire,” he says. “It made me feel like if I wanted to make it, I had to lean into these things. It’s not good for the soul, it’s this high-end narcissism that social media normalizes.” Harrison in Together Together. Photo: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Growing up in rural Ohio, platforms like Myspace and LiveJournal helped her connect. Even Twitter had its moment: “You could write jokes, blurt them out, follow your favorite comedians. Once everything became commoditized, it completely destroyed the positive fabric of social media.” Fans of the sketch show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, created by Saturday Night Live alumni Robinson and Zach Kanin, will recognize Harrison. But it might never have been there if it weren’t for social media. “Tim said he found me through my Instagram videos,” she says. “This show is one of my favorite things I’ve ever worked on.” In one sketch, Harrison plays a woman in a driving instructional video who keeps crashing her car because she’s distracted by the dirty tables she’s carrying. In another, she’s a wine-obsessed millionaire in a Dragon’s Den-style show. Harrison spent time in the writers’ room for the second series: “It’s great, the script – people assume there’s a lot of tweaking to it, but there isn’t.” Kanin wrote away while they told jokes. “It types exactly as you say it, so it’s all there in the script, all the oohs,” he says. “They’re great at knowing how important attention to detail is in comedy. It’s important to fight for these little things.” There are parallels between the show and Harrison’s live work, a similar humor that takes us to unexpected ends. Harrison’s acting skills were also in demand on animated shows including Big Mouth and BoJack Horseman. During the pandemic, Harrison says, it felt like there was “a huge boom” in this kind of work – such series were easier to create amid Covid restrictions. “I did so many recordings in my bed with a blanket over my head,” he says. “I voiced a character on this Netflix show called Q-Force. They sent this little tent that was on a stand, you stick your head and your laptop in the tent and it’s 9,000 degrees in there. Harrison’s latest turn in Hollywood, starring as a literary agent alongside Diane Keaton in the body-swapping comedy Mack & Rita, also featured some claustrophobic performances. “I recorded a lot of stuff on an iPad, but I was on set, so I’d hold the iPad and hit the record and they’d have the slate in my face.” Sign up for Within Saturday The only way to get a behind-the-scenes look at our brand new magazine, Saturday. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers, plus all the must-read articles and columns delivered to your inbox every weekend. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our site and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Harrison in I Think You Should Leave. Photo: Saeed Adyani/Netflix/Adam Rose While it’s exciting to work on high-profile productions, they aren’t necessarily Harrison’s favorite jobs. “These big, huge movies, they can get scary, because you feel like there’s so much pressure, so much money, so many people involved,” he says. “My best experiences that have been really fun are small indie things where I’ve made almost no money.” Last year, she starred as a woman who agrees to be a surrogate for an old man’s child in Together Together, earning a Best Actress nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards. Just before flying to the UK, she completed Theater Camp, written and starring Booksmart’s Molly Gordon. “A bunch of my friends are in. It literally felt like I was at camp, because we were shooting in a camp in upstate New York,” he says. “I’ve been pretty selective over the last couple of years about what I work on. Or trying to be, because there are times when you just need to support yourself. But I’m hoping to get to the place where I can make money on something that’s also a nice experience.” Part of this selectivity comes from wanting to forge her own path. “The great thing about live shows is that they are very close to autonomy. It’s the place where I had the most control over my voice and how I wanted to be perceived.” This realization and her time in Edinburgh convinced her – without kidnapping – that she wants to return to the stage. She decided to restart her own comedy night “back in my little safe space in Los Angeles.” But this will be further than expected – after a first short run in Edinburgh, she has extended her stay in the UK. “I’m at a beautiful time in my life, but this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, I feel like every time I turn a corner in the street I see something that makes me cry,” she says. “I’ll rest when I get back. I’m sure it will all hit me at some point and I’ll just pop my spine on stage. But so far, I really like it. I feel myself tightening up as a performer. I feel rejuvenated.” Patti Harrison is at London’s Soho Theater from 23 January to 18 February.
