I had the chance to chat with comedian Karen Morgan after our 20th Anniversary Power Women gala, where she entertained the audience as our evening’s entertainment. With 20 years of comedy under her belt, this ex-trial lawyer has the pulse of Gen X right at her fingertips, and her comedy routines are anything but unfamiliar.
Moonah Ellison: I’d love to start the interview. First of all, your shoot [photoshoot] looked great by the way.
Karen Morgan: Oh good! He [photographer Nathan Heyward] was so kind, he was so sweet. You know, It’s not my element, I’m not a model-y, fashion-y person, so I felt a little silly but he was really nice to make me feel comfortable so that was helpful.
ME: I’ve learned that you come from being a trial lawyer. I mean, I’ve got a million questions already…
KM: What I like to share with people is that, first, I didn’t start doing stand up until I was 40. I had been a trial attorney before that. But there was a little step in the middle of having three kids. I practiced law for many years, criminal defense and medical malpractice work, all trial work. I had my first son and went back to the law, had my daughter and went ‘I don’t know if I really’… I didn’t feel fully vested. Trial work is so 24 hours-a-day kind of thing. To be a litigator you really have to be just there all the time, and I felt like at that point my family really became more important. So in my head, my third child, that was like ‘nope this is it I’m going to stay home for a little bit’ and so I was home with all three of them.
ME: So tell me how you got into comedy?
KM: I was home with these babies so I had literally at that point, as a woman with a brain, needed some stimulation that wasn’t just being a mom. A friend of mine was teaching a stand up comedy workshop at our local comedy club and it just so happened that Nick at Night was having the search for the Funniest Mom in America right when I did my graduation [from the workshop] show for him. I never intended to do this full time, it was just more of a fun, get out of the house and have adult company kind of thing. But I became a finalist, I went to New York three different times before the finals.
According to Morgan, over one thousand tapes were selected in the first round then they narrowed it to 21, then 14, and then she was in the top 7 and in and around New York for a week doing various comedy clubs. She didn’t win, but was a finalist, and when that was over, Morgan took two of the women that were on the show with her on tour, a sort of Blue Collar Comedy tour (Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy) but for moms. That tour lasted five years.
KM: I started to miss being home, but the irony was that 2020 was the year all my kids would be in college at the same time and I would be able to go out on the road. I had a full travel schedule, full tour schedule, and then on March 12th it all shut down. So I’ve been kind of regrouping ever since then, and so now, I’m kind of back out there, you know, as we all are, kind of back out there, out of the Covid hole, kind of there.
ME: So, come on, we’ve gotta kind of break this down a little bit. Because you’ve given me this synopsis: here’s where my life was, here’s what I did, here’s where I am. How do you go from being a lawyer with other peoples’ lives in your hands, a judge, a jury, the plaintiff, the defendant… you’re almost doing this for real, but in a different style. (laughing)
KM: No one’s going to jail if I mess up a joke. No one’s going to lose a big pile of money if I mess up a joke. But there are similarities, I have done comedy longer than I’ve practiced law and writing is the challenge in comedy for me. When you sit down to write a set or write a bit or craft a paragraph, I’m more of a storyteller than a joke writer. And then being a trial lawyer, you’re sort of performing your writing in a way, to a judge and jury. But there’s just really no way to be funny, maybe in some cases you can be funny, somebody asked me this not too long ago: “Did you ever try to make the jury laugh?” No, you don’t want that to happen. (laughs)
ME: How long were you at home before you decided I’m going to do this five year tour?
KM: I think it was spring of 2004, I can’t really remember. Mack was 2, so 2004. And the workshop ended and then my teacher sent my tape into Nick at Night. And it was immediate—that kind of jump started me into the comedy world very, very quickly and I didn’t have time to sit around and think about it. It just seemed kind of fun to try.
But when it comes to Morgan’s comedy set, her kids don’t get burned. In fact, they’re pros just like their mom.
KM: They’ve known obviously since they were young what I do. Not until they were older did they come to the shows or anything because in my early days of comedy, a lot was about parenting. I’ve never said anything private or really mean about my kids without letting them know first. I’ve had discussions with them, and they’ve all been great about it, and they get it, they understand. And so I tend to make fun of my husband, it’s truth-based, but it’s not actually
everything that goes on, if that makes sense. I don’t do a lot of crowd work, I don’t make fun of people. Most of my comedy comes from laughing at myself or laughing at situational things and it’s not mean spirited.
ME: Who do you look to as a leader in the comedy space or a mentor?
KM: I actually don’t watch a lot of comedy. I write all my own material and I don’t even subconsciously want somebody else’s material coming in. So I don’t watch a lot of it, but I follow certain comics online or on social media and I tend to follow and respect comics that work clean. I’m a big fan of Brian Regan and my friend Greg Warren is amazing. My friend Vic Henley, who sadly passed away during Covid and lived in NY. He was a big mentor to me. He was at Auburn when I was at Georgia, so we grew up loving college football, he was like a brother. Now I’m following some people on social media. There’s this girl from the UK, her name is Sarah Millican and I think she’s hilarious. I’m a big fan.
For Morgan, almost 60 (“in a year or so”), anything’s possible. She now lives in Maine, a little far removed, a little up in the woods. There’s no manager, no agent, she does everything herself. Practicing law gives her the ability to read a contract. She recently finished recording an audio album and that’s gonna go to Sirius XM and hopefully they’ll play it; in October she’s off to the UK to see Squeeze in concert and while over there, “I’m gonna start reaching out to people, like comedy booking agents in the UK, to see if maybe I can get some shows over there. Because people keep saying ‘You should go to the UK, they would love your stuff’ so those are the things I’m not afraid of trying. Hey, I’m gonna be there, I might as well try and see what I can find.”
Morgan also dreams of performing at the Edinburgh festival in August but in Maine, the month of August is sacrosanct to the locals. “It’s such a hard weather year, we all wait for August. And most of my competitive swims that are in the ocean are in August here and I can only do my competitive ocean swimming in Maine in August.”
A book is in Morgan’s mind, but not sure of the theme. The pandemic had created paths Morgan wasn’t expecting. “I did a podcast only during the pandemic, this is how I met my friend in Birmingham, England. It’s called the Purple Bike podcast and it was all about going through the pop culture of when we grew up from 1975 to 2015. And I would go through each year, 1975, 1976, and I would go through what we were doing, what we were watching on TV. And that podcast eventually became part of the standup act in that Generations bit that I do when I’m talking about growing up in the 70s. So the podcast turned into that and I feel like there’s a book there. And I don’t know quite what it is yet. I feel like its forming like an amoeba, over my head, but I feel like our age group people are so nostalgic for how we grew up, and how proud we are to have grown up when we did, and yes it’s different now, but I just feel like there’s a certain, there may be something there that I could turn that particular part, that nostalgic and funny part of my life, into a book.”
“… I’m more of a storyteller than a joke writer… then being a trial lawyer, you’re sort of performing in a way, to a judge and jury… “
By Moonah Ellison
Photography by Nathan Heyward