Ari Graynor

Are you invited to improv or contribute to the finished product because you’re going through the evolution of what works? Is that something that actually happens and do you feel that happened for yourself? 
It did, in ways that were really natural. First of all, I should say our writer David Flembotte, and consequently when we went to series, are absolutely brilliant. [Flembotte] is a craftsman of the highest order, and so deep in thought. I think their writing is truly brilliant. In the stand-up there was a sort of freedom. You’re on standing on a stage with 100 people standing there and watching you. The way we shot it, there were three cameras but they were far away so you really felt like you were standing there in a club all alone.

When you talk about it like that, it paints a visual when talking about actresses. Like when they’re doing a sex scene: they think that nobody is watching but everyone is.
It’s funny because before I did the standup, and of course there’s a difference between playing a stand-up and being a stand-up, is that there is a separation between you and the material. And that’s the whole thing about being a stand-up: the material, who you are and what you’re saying, is the whole thing. And so there was a safety barrier in a sense because I am playing a character who is doing her material but when you’re up on stage, you’re on stage telling jokes and it feels like a performance. And so I would play around with some of the jokes in there and the writers and the producers were super open about trying stuff. And sometimes in shooting you do the takes that are word-perfect on the page, and you do some that are a little bit more open. And then you just see where the pieces fall. But it was nice to see the pilot and some of my jokes made it in there. Like, “I can tell a joke. Even if all those extras are paid and paid to laugh.” It’s sort of like stand-up for dummies.

It really felt the show was showcasing in taking the period of Woodstock and a period in people’s lives where you’re saying “you can do what you want. You can make it happen.” Do you feel the wave of that? I take it there because the Bernie wave is all about that, the millennial audience being independent that want to have their voice, that want to be heard. Did you feel that in the show? Was it deliberate? And how do you think the audience will react to that when it’s out there?
It’s funny that you say that. I’ve been feeling a frustration culturally. I grew up in the eighties and so many of the stories that I watched, like the trifecta of films I love so much were Working Girl, Baby Boom, and Big Business. And part of why I love those stories was the sense of dreams within them. These were all stories of people who really wanted something, and these happened to be about women who really wanted something. But there was a real sense of ambition about them, of drive and hope about wanting something and wanting to make something of yourself. And I think culturally I think we got into a pattern that a lot of the stories got very small: they were procedural or sci-fi or apocalyptic or vampires or superheroes, but then the human stories felt very insular, sort of small stories about what people are feeling internally, feeling sort of lost in adolescence. And I think there is something culturally that happens. Our culture is a mirror of what is happening in society, and our world was sort of chugging along in an easy way—people weren’t having to fight for things a lot, things were going pretty well. And now that we’re in a time—maybe, this is just sort of my own hypothesis—when we’re moving into a time where things are harder and you have to fight and pull yourself up by the bootstraps and think about what you want, what you want to say, what your dreams are. I think and hope that stories we tell will start bringing some of that back, and I do think that it’s a very timely thing with this show. Even though it’s not related directly to anything political or the Bernie movement or anything like that, I think that it’s important to—even in a fun way about being a performer—to talk about dreams again, and making something of yourself.

And there is some of what you’re saying to take it to another level. The youth today are very much about what you’re saying that these big companies are not going to drive these dreams and “I’m going to create my own dreams.” There is a rise of the young demographic wanting to start their own businesses and own their own destinies. The show says you can say what you want to say and you can come from the right direction, which the show does really well.
And that there’s no short-cuts, that you see all of these characters put in the work. And in the course of the season, I think examines in a really beautiful way too, in some ways there are these tangible goalposts: wanting to get on Carson and wanting to get on the main stage and wanting to have a certain amount of success. And yet when you get that, you’re still you and it’s still work. And you realize it’s not about getting there, but it’s about the journey. I actually was just watching a documentary, Dying Laughing, about stand-up and Gary Shandling was interviewed and some kid came up to him and said “I want to be a stand-up, what’s the easy way?” And Shandling just said quite simply and perfectly: “No, there’s no easy way, no short-cut.” And I think that’s true for stand-up but also very true for life. And I think culturally it’s a time where people just want to be famous and that’s the end goal and there’s so many ways now with social media, and there’s all these wonderful things that can be used to find a voice in the best case, but in the worst case for most people it’s just noise. It’s noise without true expression or integrity behind it. And also what I love about this show is that these are people with a true, deep passion to do something and it requires a lot of work and heartache and disappointment and success and camaraderie and competition and loss and showing what it takes to move forward. And that’s absolutely true in life and anything that’s worth doing.