I Can Barely Take Care Of Myself. I Seem Fun. I’m Going To Die Alone (And I Feel Fine). The titles of Jen Kirkman’s recent projects—her 2013 bestselling book, her podcast, and her new comedy special for Netflix, respectively—may sound self-absorbed with all of those Is, or at least prone to making some kind of statement. The book sort of did: Subtitled Tales From A Happy Life Without Kids, it examined how her decision not to have children often engendered peculiar reactions from people. (Her second book arrives in 2016.) Kirkman originally wanted to call it I’m Going To Die Alone, which she has repurposed for her first Netflix special. It may sound provocative, but as Kirkman tells The A.V. Club, it’s more about what she learned from her preschool days hanging out with widows who seemed happy. I’m Going To Die Alone draws from years of material, including some recontextualized bits from her stand-up albums, 2006’s Self Help and 2011’s Hail To The Freaks, for a self-effacing look at her recent life. The A.V. Club caught up with before the special’s May 22 release for a personal, wide-ranging conversation about what she’s learned and controversial leather pants.
The A.V. Club: The special pulls a few bits from previous albums, like the masturbation story from Self Help and some of your grandmother story from Hail To The Freaks. What made you decide to adapt that stuff for the special?
Jen Kirkman: When I did Hail To The Freaks, which was probably a mistake, I was really excited about new stuff I was working on, so I put it on the album, and then I kept doing that stuff for years and making it longer, better—subjectively, in my opinion—and now it all has a theme, I think, that fits in. Admittedly, the masturbation story is just a “Hey, this is one of my best-of’s, I’ll throw it in the special.” But the grandmother stuff, really, I feel like is part of the theme and part of the best way to end the story that I’m telling with the special.
But also, seriously, I just put a lot of stuff on Hail To The Freaks way too soon. Even the masturbation story ends differently on that album, I think. I didn’t even have an ending—I was just like, “Uh, whatever.” I used to make albums because I wasn’t touring, and so I thought, “This is the best way for people to find out about me,” and then I started touring right after that album. I had the chance many times a week to work on that stuff, and then it just got—again, I’m saying “good,” but I’m saying I got it the best I could get it. Now I’m pissed because I just did a month run in Melbourne, and I thought of a lot of funny paths for some of those jokes. I thought I was done with these!
People said to me, “You know, when you record a special, you’re going to regret it. The one thing you’ll regret because you’re a comic is you’ll think of better tags.” I’m like, “No I won’t!” Because I’ve been doing this stuff so long. And I was like, “I don’t know why I thought that.” You’re never done.
AVC: You recorded Self Help at the UCB in Los Angeles, which is tiny. You made this offhand comment at the beginning of it that the only people who know who you are are the people in that room—and even then, only about 70 percent. Did you feel like you did that and Hail To The Freaks too early? Do you feel like you should have waited to record an album?
JK: No, I’m so glad I did them. Honestly, I’m a different person anyway, so even the way I say stuff is different. In Hail To The Freaks, I was so angry. I was literally in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Self Help, ASpecialThing had come to me, and they asked me to be their inaugural album. I’m just competitive enough that I was like, “Well, of course I’ll do it. I don’t want anyone else to do this.” That’s partially why I did it. I tried to talk them about of me doing a comedy album. I was like, “I don’t want to do that.” I was really doing a lot of short-story shows then, where you write a short story that’s supposed to be funny, almost like a “David Sedaris essay” kind of show, but not as funny. So, I was reading short stories. I thought, “Why don’t I just read a bunch of those in front of a live audience?” Do something cool like that, because it’s different from my stand-up, and they were like “No.” I knew at the time I was never going to do a special with Comedy Central—I don’t have a big relationship with them. The people that run the specials don’t think I’m funny, and then I just kind of told them to fuck off. I’m truly glad I didn’t [do a Comedy Central special], because I don’t want my stuff edited. People were doing half-hour specials at that point. I had been doing stand-up for 10 years when I did Self Help. I was like, “It’s time to put something on tape.”
AVC: Was there anything you wanted to pull from those albums that didn’t end up on the special?
JK: No, I never think about those albums, ever. I don’t even know what’s on them, swear to God. It’s like they don’t exist to me. I was just thinking about what I’ve been doing for the last three years on the road. I never even consulted them. I don’t even know what’s on them. When you said my grandmother, I’m like, “It is?” Maybe I forgot something, but I felt like there’s a few jokes I have that are probably really funny. Some of my earlier jokes that I wrote about my mom and stuff are pretty funny, but I just felt like unless it went with the theme, why bother throwing stuff in? I knew it would go over an hour anyway, and I had plenty.
AVC: On Hail To The Freaks, you have the joke about Kanye West’s “Gold Digger,” which you also mention in passing in I’m Going To Die Alone. On Hail To The Freaks, it’s more about how you were trying to figure out what songs to put on the playlist for your wedding reception. But on the special, the joke is about how you weren’t focusing on the right things at your wedding, and that should have been a sign.
JK: I don’t have any jokes about my divorce or my ex-husband, who is a lovely person. It really is about how I was an idiot trying to push this guy to get married when I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to. The one joke that I have that explains everything is that—this isn’t in the special either, I thought of it in Australia—I’m a boy-crazy passionate person, and I was trying to get rid of that and lock that down. I thought marriage would be a good thing for me. I think I did do this on Hail To The Freaks, where I say out of nowhere, this old lady was yelling “Go!” and telling me to walk down the aisle. She’s going, “Go, go!” I think my joke is people were like, “That woman does not work here!” I was like, “What is she, a ghost or something?”
But then, in the new version, I say because I got married in a haunted inn, so if you believe in ghosts, it’s quite possible it’s like, “She’s been dead 40 years!” My new joke about it is I think it was an angel sent from God, and she was just really dumb, and she pointed the wrong way. It’s an easy way to wrap up that I shouldn’t have gotten married. Everyone could see it.
If I were to do it again, it would not involve my extended family, no offense to them. It would not involve anything but what it is: a very romantic legal-contract ceremony. I don’t say that with cynicism. I find it actually the height of romance to legally bind yourself to someone because you’re really taking care of someone, and letting them take care of you. I actually have no cynicism about that. I just mean that I don’t understand why it’s so public. Having done it once, I find it strange. You’re absolutely right that the new tone is I probably wasn’t thinking the right things, or you know, I find it absurd what I did. It just doesn’t seem like something I would do, but I did it.
AVC: When we talked in 2012, it was about a year after Hail To The Freaks came out. So much of what you were talking about on the album had changed by the time we spoke, and it had only been like a year since it had come out. You had this big transformation in your mid-30s with marriage and when you left Chelsea Lately for a network TV writing job. Here’s how you described that decision: “Why don’t I just take a nice writing job now, get some money, and get comfortable? It’ll be a nice consolation prize for when my dreams don’t work out.” It seems like you were settling or, like you said, locking in.
JK: Yeah, I just wanted to calm down and be stable. Just working for Chelsea, I saw—I don’t mean it in a mean way against her—but how random it is that someone really, really makes it and becomes really wealthy and really famous. Not that that’s my goal, but when you’re very wealthy and very famous, you can have a lot more decisions in what you do. You have a lot more opportunity. You can maybe even not work for a few years. It puts you in a great position to make some decisions. You’re not always taking every job that comes and that kind of thing. When I saw how many funny people I knew, and I knew one person out of them, maybe Zach [Galifianakis] is the other one, that got really famous. I was like, “Wait a minute. My odds are not that great.” I didn’t ever see myself just making a living at doing comedy. I didn’t know how that would look. I really couldn’t imagine it.
So I just thought, “Let’s not be stupid, here. Someone offered me a network writing job. That’s probably where I’m supposed to be.” When it felt so wrong that I was physically ill all the time, it’s like, “I guess I’m not.” Then everything worked out. But yes, absolutely, when I say settling, I don’t mean that to do with the person I married; I just mean the situation of it all. It was like, “This is nice and permanent. I have a person, they have a family, we have a family. There’s lots of support around. I have this normal job that will lead to the next job.” And it really does. If you want to stay in network, you can. It’s kind of like they never kick you out. You can just keep moving show to show unless you’re annoying to work with. So yeah, I just thought, “Phew! It’s all figured out.” I guess I’m not like that, because it really made me sick. I really mean I was physically sick—like, I was sick. If I’d have stayed in, I bet I would have had something seriously go wrong with my health. I mean, all that weight gain, I had this crazy acne that came—it was bad. I was so tired all the time, and I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I couldn’t believe it. It was really insane. So, I guess my soul is meant to explore a little more, even though I find it a little scary. I think I need a little of that adrenaline in my life.
AVC: Well, it’s funny, because you talk a lot about in the special how you’re 40 now. Do you foresee making another big 180 in the coming years?
JK: Yeah! Oh, I’m in the middle of one right now. There’s stuff I don’t talk about onstage. With the dating around after I was divorced, I can’t keep up that pace of what I was doing. I realized that even I have weird intimacy issues with humans—like, I need my friendships to get deeper, I need to be locked in, I need to remember people’s names. I know this sounds really stupid, but I just need to be more present in my life. I think people with anxiety do different things during different years, and for me, I waded through my anxiety during the last two years with men, and flirting, and dating, and this thing and that thing, and so that’s going to stop, and that has stopped. Whatever my life looks like, I want it to be real and big and full. I want when, if I get hit by a car, I want to know that I have deep and real friendships, people to visit me in the hospital.
I do have that, by the way. I’m not saying that I don’t. I have some pretty wonderful friendships, so that’s been really good for me. In the past year, I’ve really worked on that. I think when I was married, I let my friendships go. I think people thought, “Oh, because she’s married now, she’s so happy all the time.” But I really was just isolated in my house.
I think a big life change will come in that way, and I’m excited to see what happens to me. It’s never bad. I’ve never changed for the worse. I think good stuff, or whatever they say, more will be revealed. I think the tough part about my special and title is that I don’t really think it’s cool to stand on—or die on that hill is the expression—of “I’m going to die alone.” I’m just joking. I’m just taking something people say to me, and then I made the R.E.M. title joke, “(And I Feel Fine),” at the end. If someone casually glancing at it wants to be like, “That sounds dark. I’ll check it out” or, casually glancing at it like [High-pitched voice.] “That’s what I say to all my girlfriends, oh my God!” That’s fine, too. But if people really think I think it’s cool to be alone, that’s not what I mean.
I have no interest in saying “This is who I am! This is what I’m like!” And I used to be like that. Now, I’m like, “Who knows? I have no idea what could happen.” And I’m okay with that, because whatever has happened to me, I’ve usually been able to handle it.
AVC: Your first book had that “taking a stand” angle. But your upcoming book isn’t that way, right? You’ve said you’re more vulnerable in it.
JK: This one was actually supposed to be more like—not advice, but like, “You go girl. Other women who are out there like me, it’s all good. Here’s how I do it.” Halfway through writing it—it took a year and half to write—I was like, “I don’t feel this way anymore.” I think it was just a little phase I had to go through after I got divorced. I don’t know if I don’t believe in monogamy. I think I do believe in it depending on the person or situation or something. I don’t have a way that I am.
The book is sort of like… just the way that married people get to say, “Marriage is a lot of work, and some days, ugh.” Single people don’t get to say that, because everyone goes, “You should get married. See? You shouldn’t be alone.” Listen, I’m just saying there are times when it’s hard to live the kind of life that I do where I am never home, and it’s hard to keep up with things that are good for you to have in life like relationships, whether they be romantic or friendship. I have to work twice as hard to make sure I don’t just check out. That’s what I mean by vulnerability.
Or admitting I was a really bad person to my husband in a lot of ways. Part of me is like, “I hope this book doesn’t come out.” I mean, it will, it has to. I talk about how I had a friendship with a guy toward the end of my marriage, after my husband and I talked about separating, but it took us a long time to do it. I was having a friendship with a dude, and there was something there. He was long-distance, but I never told my husband that. I’m embarrassed about that. I talk about stuff like that. I guess it’s not as vulnerable; it’s really revealing. There’s absolutely a chance people could really judge me and think I’m an asshole. But I don’t care, because I can only be me.
My nana was always a widow as long as I was alive; my grandfather died before I was born. All the women on my street—there were four houses in a row with all old women who lived alone who were widowed. They all had kids, but they were all widowed. My mom didn’t put me in preschool; I didn’t know that was a thing. I just hung out with these women all day. We would watch game shows, and have tea, and they would tell me about their lives. I thought that’s what happened to women: You live alone when you’re old. They seemed fine. They were happy, and they loved me. We had a nice time together. We’d have hors d’oeuvres. It was the greatest—just reading, doing stitching, it was amazing.
I’m so happy I grew up like that. To me, I always just thought dying alone was totally an option for everybody, even if you had once been married and have kids. Usually, that happens. If you see the women that I saw, who maybe didn’t grow up in such an independent generation, ended up really independent at the end of their lives and really loving it. I never saw it as sad, and they die alone in their homes. I wonder if you asked them if they were sad about it, I don’t think they would be. I don’t know what happens on your last breath, if you’re scared or whatever, but I don’t think they would be like, “I really wish…” because they had been alone for years. I’m kind of thinking of those women when I say this stuff. There’s no funny way to put it, so no one really knows what I’m thinking. But that’s really what I’m thinking. [Laughs.]
AVC: When we spoke in 2012, you said you didn’t have any material about the changes that were going on in your life, and you were also working on your first book at the time. When you found yourself exploring all that stuff, did it turn out how you expected? Did you find anything that you hadn’t anticipated?
JK: Yeah, what I found out about myself was I am not someone who doesn’t believe in marriage. I am not someone who knows what they’re doing. That’s what I found out, and thank God, because I think that’s a lot funnier than, “I don’t believe in marriage, and I know what I’m doing!” I mean, we get it.
AVC: Like being an atheist, almost.
JK: Yes! I didn’t want to say it, thank you. You put that in there that you said that! But it is. I’m kind of an agnostic about life as well. I don’t know, and I’m not upset that I don’t know. I don’t need to know. Whatever happens is fine.
Then I realized that I didn’t really have any jokes about—I don’t like to joke about dating. I have stuff about not dating. I have jokes that aren’t on the special—they just weren’t cooked enough for the special—about what I don’t like. I realized I need a certain kind of chemistry and a certain kind of look to be into someone, and like 1 percent of the population has it. A lot of times that I’m single is not for a lack of anyone being interested; it’s me. It’s not even me being like, “I need to take some time.” My joke is a picture of David Bowie on his balcony in the ’70s in a suit in Paris, and unless that’s you, I’m not interested. There are very few aesthetic types that I have, and people who look like that are not always necessarily good for me.
That’s my next frontier, talking about that kind of stuff. I still haven’t figured out how to do that. What I found is that I really don’t have any definitive way that I am, so I don’t have a lot of material about it. It’s much easier to make jokes about not having kids. Well actually, my friendships are changing because my friends have kids, so that’s a new aspect to the material. Not just that I don’t want to have kids, it’s that I’m having a hard time relating to people I know. There’s a sadness there—no there’s not. There really isn’t. I have to make a conscious effort to be friends with people that do what I do, kind of how parents do it. They become friends with other people who have kids so that their kids can play together. I need to be friends with people who do what I do so that I can have conversation about things we both understand.
AVC: That’s on them, too, just speaking with someone who has a kid. If your child is the only thing you can talk about, it’s super obnoxious.
JK: I wonder if that’s the difference between fathers and mothers. I’m friends with people who have kids that are like 5 and under, and they’re still in that intense mother-bonding phase. It might just be that. Because the dads haven’t changed. The moms really have, and that’s totally fine. I’m just waiting for everyone to come around again when the kids get in school, that kind of thing. It’s not that they only talk about their kids, but the scheduling is hard, and a lot of the hangouts… I only have time once every six or seven weeks to see certain friends, so that boils down sometimes to three times a year, and usually those three times, the child is present. It’s like, “It’s been so long since you’ve seen the kid.” So then, I always end up co-babysitting. I hate to say it, I’m just not that interested in it. Because I spend all my time alone on the road, when I make a plan to see a friend, I really need it. We don’t have to talk about me or anything. We can talk about the kid the whole time—I don’t care. I just need adult bonding and conversation, actually, to not talk about myself, since that’s all I do on the road onstage, in interviews, blah blah blah. When I get around the moms and their kids are there, oh, it’s tough. It’s not that I don’t care about their kid; it’s just that I don’t have a lot of time to give, and I did not intend on going “Choo-choo!” and saying weird words. “Oh! Pretty! Thank you for handing me this pile of mud!” It doesn’t fulfill my soul.
AVC: One last thing about that interview we did in 2012, because obviously I went back and read it. What surprised me is how it seems like your focus has shifted. This could be completely wrong, but I asked you about what is your ideal work situation. And you said, “Nothing. I’m not that ambitious.”
JK: [Laughs.]
AVC: When we were talking about TV, you said that you’re not willing to work as hard as someone like Louis CK to make the show exactly the way he wants it. But when you did an interview with Splitsider earlier this year, you said that you have to say yes to everything because opportunities go away. Has your focus shifted?
JK: No, I think I was saying the same thing in both interviews, just two different sides. When I sat with you in 2012, I was writing a book. I was writing on a show called After Lately, acting in it, writing on Chelsea Lately, appearing in it, and going on tour, and I worked seven days a week, 365. My brain was always occupied, and I had to say “yes” to that because it all tied together. To drop one would forever lose that opportunity, and I was trying to save money and this and that. It probably looks to some people like I was super ambitious and super busy, but I knew none of these opportunities would lead to other ones, if that makes sense. Like, writing a book would would lead to writing another, and touring would lead to more touring, but I had to do the TV job. Anyway, whereas Louis does all that stuff on his show, he seems interested in editing and directing. I don’t mean I’m not ambitious.
I have been listening to, well there’s not many out there, but the few interviews with Seinfeld this year have so articulated how I feel. I love that he’s still saying it after all these years, because he’s a very accomplished 60-year-old man with a wife and kids, and he still has this ability to own up to his laziness and immaturity, which I think is as the heart of all comedians. I think that, for me, my favorite thing to do is perform standup onstage. Everything else I do is for the exposure to do more stand-up onstage, and for the money, and for the health insurance. If I could make crazy money just doing stand-up, that’s what I would do. If, for some reason, everyone knew who I was without me having to have my own TV show, that’s what I would do. That way, I could do less shows a year. I wouldn’t have to be on the road 200 days a year. Maybe I could be on the road 50 or 100, and do one big theater, and then go somewhere else. Then keep working on my stand-up, and maybe write a book. That’s really what my heart wants.
You have to keep your agents happy and make some feel like they’re not wasting their time with you. My brain does like the idea of hosting a late-night show. My brain does like the idea of maybe having a show about me. So, I often pitch ideas and work on scripts and do that just because I may not be right about how I feel, so why not just do this, and if it happens and I got my own show, well maybe I would really end up falling in love with it. But I’m not like, “Oh my God, I need this!” What I’m really ambitious about is being a really good comic and doing it for the rest of my life and getting really big. Not really famous because I want fame or attention, just a little freedom. So, that’s where I’m ambitious.
AVC: Have you lost some of your drive to try to do a TV show? Because I know you’ve talked about how you’ve pitched shows about your life before. You did a pilot with Michael Ian Black.
JK: Well, that was given to us. That was like handed to us, and we were like, “I don’t know.” We both didn’t have time to film it. We just kept saying no, and they were like, “Just film it. It’ll take two seconds.” And it didn’t take two seconds. We actually just declined to go further with it. They wanted to redo it, and we just didn’t have time.
No, I mean the FX show—they bought my script, and then every other network passed. Then it was time to write my second book and go on tour and write a new hour and do a special. So, I was like, “Screw this. I’m not going to think of a show right now. I don’t have any brainpower left, and the only show I could think of is my life.” I have a new version of what my show would be, but I don’t want to say it, because it’s a really specific idea, and someone could steal it. But I have a show that I wrote nine years ago—it’s a nostalgia show—but there’s a way to involve me being in it. It’s based on my life when I was younger. Right now I’m meeting with showrunners, like people who know what they’re doing in terms of running and pitching a show. I’ve just been in Australia for two months during the season when you should be doing that, but I would have rather been touring, so I did that instead. Now I’m slowly feeling out this idea I have for a show that I would love, but it won’t kill me if it doesn’t get on the way it would kill me if I were forced to stop doing stand-up.
No, no, I’d love to work in television because I need the fuckin’ money, and I need to exposure—like, it’s never going to stop being a thing. If I ever stop coming up with show ideas, then there goes my sweet agents at CAA. So it’s like, no, I can’t stop unless the touring money gets so fucking crazy that they’re like, “Oh, we see why you want to stop. We’re all making millions.” That will always be a thing. I don’t know right now about a show about me, currently, but there’s just this other idea I’m working on.
In my Netflix special, I purposely filmed scenes, because I was so disappointed in one sense about my show not even getting piloted that I was like, “I want to just film stuff that I think is funny. It’s what a show about me would look like.” It wouldn’t be about me being a stand-up, only because I just think that’s a harder sell for networks. In my Netflix special, the first five minutes of it is a scene with actors, and I wrote the script and we improvised and we did it. And then the last after-the-special part is a scene, and that really fulfilled me.
I just thought those scenes would be a funny way like, if I never get a show about my life, there is something on Netflix that looks kind of like what a show about me would look like. So there it is, there’s my five-minute pilot, everybody. If you don’t understand who I am yet from that, I can’t help you. I’m tired of explaining to Hollywood that people would laugh at me, because I go around America making them laugh every week. Nobody would be offended, nobody would think my leather pants are too controversial. Like, I’ve heard every comment from everyone. I’ve heard, “Well, I don’t know what real America would think about this.” You’ve never been to real America, you fucking network asshole. I’m in real America every week, and everyone is fine, and everyone is wearing leather pants, and everyone is laughing. They’re just a little heavier than me. That’s the only difference.
AVC: Pants are seriously a quibble?
JK: Oh, I lost a job because of it.
AVC: Really?
JK: I’m convinced I did. I had a meeting with a show that ended up not existing, because these people couldn’t get it together. But it was going to be like a daytime talk show that was going to have all different points of view, and they wanted a comedian. I wore a fashionable pair of leather pants with a silky blouse and high heels to the meeting, and I saw this woman glance at them. She was my age, and not an uncool person, and she was like, “Now, my only concern is that we don’t want to alienate anyone watching, and this would go out to real America.” And I go, “Where is the last place you went?” And she went, “New York.” And I went, “Before that.” And she went, “New York.” It could’ve been a scene in a TV show about TV shows. And I said, “I was just in Appleton, Wisconsin,” or wherever I was. It was like the speech in The Devil Wears Prada that Meryl Streep gives Anne Hathaway. Like, “You think you’re outside of fashion? Yeah, like blue is chosen for you.” These leather pants, I did not have someone make them for me. They were in a store, a store called Macy’s that is all over the country, and everyone is wearing leather pants. It is not alienating two moms out there; it’s how people dress at night. And they’re not even real leather, and they’re not tight like Russell Brand’s. They are ladies pleather pants. Calm down. Sarah Palin would wear these pants. What are you talking about?
It’s just this thing of like, “Well, you might come off harsh.” Then I go, “Then I won’t wear the pants. Get me a wardrobe. I’ll fuckin’ wear it.” The leather pants were an indication of, “Ooh, we do want all points of view on this show, but…” I think the pants just symbolize their fear of having—they said they really want moms to watch. Moms are interested in other things besides other moms. That’s why I laugh when I hear “Hollywood liberals.” I’m like, “Where are they?” Maybe the entertainers are, the comedians are, the outspoken people like Bill Maher, and some of the guests on his show, some of the actors. But real Hollywood, the behind-the-scenes corporate people, it’s even more conservative than the conservative people who hate liberals. It’s like Christian conservative morals from people that aren’t even that. They’re just so condescending to America that they’re trying to guess what will offend people.
It is unreal to me that they have seen examples of how people can handle things, and for the most part, they still push back on a lot of stuff. I really will never understand pushing back on comedians who are like, “I’m like a politician campaigning and shaking hands with these people. They’re going to be okay.” And they have examples of how they’ve been wrong, like Seinfeld and Louie and Roseanne. They’re wrong, but they just keep doing it. I’m not saying that the shows that are on the air now are bad or wrong. There’s more awesome shows on now than ever, but that’s what’s so crazy to me. There’s still just as much pushback, even on your coolest little cable TV network that you can’t even believe some of the shit I’ve heard.
And, of course, the whole notion that I don’t appeal to the demographic—all my fans are young men. Someone asked me the other day, “So are your shows just full of 40-year-old single women?” I’m like, “I would be rich if that were true.” If I actually tapped into one market, and they loved me obsessively, and I was there leader… No, it’s all young dudes, which is great! I don’t care who comes to see me. But there’s just this myth of who likes who, and it drives me crazy. For me, working in TV isn’t fun. It’s working with really corporate people. There’s nothing fun about it. The hours suck. The only fun thing is when it’s on the air, is getting the deal, and going, “I got a TV show!” and then seeing it on the air. Nothing else about it is fun for me. I am just really focused in on what I love doing, but I would be a moron to not take some of my natural talent—I’m not saying I’m that talented, but I have enough acting and writing talent to go, “Well, why don’t I just keep my hand in there just in case something happens.” What, is it going to kill me? But I’m really not pumped about it, as you can see. I’m like having a breakdown even thinking about it.