All week on Vulture, we’re examining ‘80s pop culture and how it lives on today.
With Vulture doing a week of stories about the lasting influence of the 1980s and Tig Notaro set to play Carnegie Hall on November 5 as part of the New York Comedy Festival, we asked the longtime comic to name something from that decade that had a lasting impact on her. The stand-up unsurprisingly picked another stand-up: Ellen DeGeneres.
DeGeneres started doing comedy a little after 1980, performing in clubs in and around New Orleans and then Los Angeles. She kept on building an act and a fanbase relatively quietly, until her breakout set on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, after which he called her over to the couch — a near-unprecedented occurrence for a first-time performer on the show.
During that time, Notaro was a teenager growing up not too far from New Orleans, in Jackson, Mississippi, and she loved DeGeneres. “I’ve been a fan of Ellen’s for decades — before I even got into comedy,†Notaro told Vulture over email. “There’s a silliness to her that I always related to, and as much as I enjoy some of the edgier, dirtier, and darker comedy out there, I always liked how for the most part she veered completely opposite of that.â€
But as Notaro explained, it was more than just DeGeneres’s material. “Knowing she was gay before she even came out gave me a feeling and idea that I could maybe do what she was doing, too.†If it wasn’t for DeGeneres, Notaro may never have considered stand-up a possibility. “She made stand-up seem accessible,†Notaro explained. “She made it seem like something within my reach.â€