After dropping out of high school, moving to Colorado from Mississippi, and attempting a career as a music manager, Tig Notaro found herself in her late 20s in Los Angeles during the end of the first wave of alternative comedy in the ’90s. She decided to give stand-up a shot; soon after, she hit the road, where she developed her silly but deadpan observational style.
Notaro’s creative breakthrough arrived a decade into her comedy career, when she began telling a story about the many times she ran into the singer Taylor Dayne. At first, it was around 30 minutes long and regularly bombed, but making it work taught Notaro that she could be ambitious and gutsy while still maintaining her voice. It also put Notaro on the radar of “This American Life.†The tremendous success of her 2012 segment resulted in the show’s host, Ira Glass, encouraging her to record an upcoming stand-up set, in which she planned to discuss a series of recent unfortunate events in her life.
Live, the record made from the set recorded days after her breast-cancer diagnosis and soon after her mother’s unexpected death, was a major mainstream breakthrough for Notaro, resulting in a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album and legions of new fans. Now, a little over a decade later, Notaro has a thriving acting career, co-hosts the Handsome podcast with Mae Martin and Fortune Feimster, and co-directed the 2022 film Am I Ok? with her wife, Stephanie Allynne. In March 2024, Notaro released her fourth hour special, Hello Again, on Prime Video, in which she continues to prove that there is no comedian who consistently pushes the boundaries of jokes further.
Unsuccessful joke you just can’t quit
I have a story I try every now and then. It’s about a very well-known, legendary person in the comedy world who I PA’d for so long ago. I was 26. It was a pilot for HBO. There was a green screen, and he was in a green-screen suit that captures your motion. My job was to hold a heavy cord that was attached to his helmet and jump around like a little elf behind him. I had to guess where he was going to go so I didn’t tug on him at all. He would turn and scream at me any time there was any slight tug. He would just berate me in front of everybody. It was so humiliating.
Years later, he reached out to my manager saying he was a fan. He clearly didn’t know I was the PA, and he was like, “I bought tickets to Tig’s show. I would love to say hello after.†I told my manager, “Do not let him.†And then it kept happening, and I’d say no, because there was no way I wouldn’t say to him, “We have a history. I don’t want to fight or anything, but this did happen, and I just want to say something about it.†I wanted to move on.
Then a director I was working with in New Orleans invited me to this very well-known woman’s house for a dinner party. I had just been telling the director this story. So we went to this dinner party. It’s maybe ten people at a big table. There’s one empty seat across from me. Again, this is in New Orleans, and I had been performing in L.A. when the comedy legend came to see me. At the very end of the night, he walks into the house and sits in the chair across from me. He didn’t look at me. My wife, Stephanie, and I and the director were all nudging each other under the table.
At the very end of the night, the person whose house it was was sitting in her office, behind a desk, just hanging out while people are mingling here and there. And Stephanie, the director, and myself walk in to say thank you so much for having us, and he walks into the office and just says to the person who owned the house, “I’m leaving.†He then turns to me and says, “Good night, Tig†and walks out. He hasn’t come to one of my shows since.
I don’t say who it is. I open it up for guesses, and it becomes a little fun moment. But I have not ever worked that out onstage.
Favorite joke from Live
The survey. It was a gut punch to get when I was in the depths of my grief, losing my mother. Her death was very unexpected. To lose your mother and then two days later get a survey asking how your stay in the hospital went? I was so mad. I was just deeply, deeply upset. I wanted to talk to everybody at this hospital and every other person at every other hospital. I never imagined that that would ever become any part of my comedy — much less have my brother and stepfather commend me on how funny that was. I couldn’t even believe that something like that would land.
I can’t remember that night. I was shocked that I was getting laughs, because I was truly so down and out. I didn’t have a lot of faith in my ability to make any of that funny — or faith in anything, truly. My pants were falling off, and my underwear was falling off. I was so malnourished. I was so sick. I was struggling. I was devastated.
I really can’t listen to Live now. People think it’s because it was such a hard period of time for me, but it’s more so that it was like a 20- or 30-minute open mic. When I was doing interviews, they would do lead-ins with material, and I would take my headphones off. The interviewers would be like, “Oh, I’m sorry, it must be hard.†And I’m like, “No, it’s just that it’s not polished at all.†I’m glad people enjoy it, but I don’t want to hear this.
Joke with the most unexpected second life
It’s funny because the bee joke is one that I always was amused by that I wished would amuse people more, so when I was like, “Do I just do a regular joke?†it was at the front of my mind. When I would try and stick it into a regular set, it didn’t do well. It just needed me to have cancer.
Best impression
The clown horn. I don’t know how I figured out how to do it, but my son Max does it now, too. After Live, I was very scared and confused when I was going to open mics and doing shows in clubs, trying to do new material: Do I give the audience what they want, which is more dark material? Or do I just talk about what I want?
When I was returning back to the stage, I did a show in Northern California, and I was offered an amount of money I had not been offered before, and I had no material. I cobbled together a set, and even though I’d already done my impression bit before I had cancer, I did the clown horn for like 20 minutes. You see grown men getting just so giddy, and they want to hear it again. I couldn’t believe how long that satisfied them. It was so perfect, because it’s the exact opposite of what they were expecting me to give them. It was not the entirety of my existence and all the pain I experienced. I thought, This little noise will work.Â
Joke that most reminds you of your mother
The Adele bit from Hello Again. My mother pranked me and my brother and my stepfather and her friends all the time. There was always something a little weird or off, and she wanted to see if people would notice. She really inspired my comfort in awkward situations — me being like, I don’t care. I’ll go do that. I’ll go sing an Adele song with the worst voice in the world.
When I really did that at that party, I wasn’t thinking, Oh, this is new material. People were talking about it. Olivia Munn talked about it when she hosted Ellen. And I would regularly have to repeat the story, and I was at Largo and they have a piano, so I just reenacted it. It just felt like something I couldn’t really open with or put in the middle, so if I was going to do it, it was going to close.
When I was doing it live, I was actually performing “Hello†with her singing. There is an even sillier vibe to it when I was actually playing along with her. But we didn’t have the rights to the song. There were so many different avenues that we went down to try to attain them; I was performing at Largo, and after the show, the guy who wrote “Hello†busts in the green-room door and is like, “Oh, my God, did you know I was here?†And I’m like, “Who are you?†And he said, “I’m Adele’s collaborator. I write her stuff and produce it. Just so you know, if you ever want to use that song for anything, I’m all good with it.†So he was my in, and everybody was trying to get it in there. But, you know, maybe she’s not a fan.
Most expensive joke
The closer of Boyish Girl Interrupted, paying for the Rolling Stones. Ballpark? I think it was a couple hundred thousand dollars. I don’t remember exactly how much it was. It was definitely pricey, but I thought, This is worth it to me. Even before I got into stand-up, I used to love telling that story of J.D. and how he was so tough and cool. I just loved to then play the beginning of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.†I should have told the audience how much it cost.
Joke you’re most excited to show your kids one day
I’m very curious what they’re going to think about when I take my shirt off in Boyish Girl Interrupted. It was only from watching Drawn did they find out that I even had cancer. They had no clue; they would see my body, and they had no questions about my scars. But I remember lying in bed the morning after they had watched Drawn, and they had a lot of questions about what cancer was. They were pointing at my scars and they were like, “And that is from cancer.†So I guess I’m curious what they’ll think about that moment I took my shirt off.
When I first was told that I had to have a double mastectomy, I was so scared of what that was going to do to my body — on a very surface level. I Googled all these images of double-mastectomy scars. I was so freaked out. It was really the moment that I realized that I actually liked my body and didn’t want it to change. After my surgery, it took me a week to even look down at my body. But then I got this feeling of, Oh, my scars mean that I healed, so I don’t need to be scared of this. I thought that also translated onstage, where I just wanted to show people that I’m okay, but I also wanted to not lose touch with being a comedian. I just had faith in the audience that even if they were shocked, they could just move on.
The first time I did it at Largo, I felt a little insecure. Because I, like my son Max, am modest. I was definitely uncomfortable, but I remember Bo Burnham was there, and after the show he was like, “Whoa, my mind is blown. This is not just about women or cancer. This is about body image. This is about being comfortable with the human body.†That really gave me more strength and power behind what I was doing. It doesn’t matter who you are or what is going on; this is about bodies.
Longest time you pushed the stool
It started in Seattle. I moved the stool to actually get it out of my way, and it made a funny noise. I had been having a terrible set, and that was what they finally laughed at. I was like, “Oh, that’s what you want. Okay, I’ll push a stool around.â€
I pushed that stool real far in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I started out onstage. It was very up and down, as it always was: Oh, this is funny. Oh, it’s not funny anymore. And then it’s funny again. I pushed it offstage, down the aisle through the seating, and then I pushed it out the door of the venue, and everybody in the venue got up and followed me, and then I pushed it across the crosswalk, and there was traffic waiting, and people were on the side on the sidewalk cheering me. I’m sure the people in the cars were like, “What’s going on?†So there I was across the street from the venue where I was supposed to be performing, and the audience was on the other side of the sidewalk.
J.P. Buck, the booker at Conan, was like, “Okay, so what do you want to do?†And I was like, “I want to do this joke and this joke, and then I want to push a stool around the stage.†He was like, “Okay. I trust you, but do you have a set coming up? I can just come watch.†So he came and watched me push a stool. After I did it on Conan, I was driving home, and my manager called and said, “Conan’s office called saying he wants you back as a regular. He loves you.â€
Joke you miss doing most
The Indigo Girls bit is one of the bits that I miss regularly. I know it annoys a lot of people too. I remember I was performing in Florida, and while I was doing that bit, this woman in the front row said, “I thought you were nicer than this. I thought you were a nice person.†That was such an interesting take that this makes me not nice. She was serious.
It actually was originally Jenny Slate I was going to introduce onstage. I don’t know where it came from. I was having a mediocre set and I just said, “You know what? I feel like you guys probably want somebody else up here. So let’s bring out Jenny Slate.†And people started clapping. I was like, “Really? You want that? Wow, okay. Well, she’s not here … Or maybe she is.†I just started toying with it in that way. Then I ended up at a show that was a predominantly lesbian crowd. I guess you could be like, “Aren’t all your shows?†But, no, this was different, so I just switched it to the Indigo Girls, and it just felt perfect. I could do that forever.