Most people would see “Nobody Cares” and think that you were a very practiced stand-up comedy person, which was never your history prior to conceiving this. it’s been something that was buried latent in you for a long time. Not that this strictly counts as stand-up comedy, but certainly a lot of it is in that sphere or involves those skills.
Yeah. I still always have, I’m gonna say, at least 15 people in the audience who are like, “Where am I? Why isn’t she singing ‘The Sound of Music’?” And it does take a little while to win them over, because they don’t want to hear me sing a song about dicks. They’re just like, “What’s going on?”
Nobody has left. Well, at least that I could see. Maybe the people in the back have. But nobody’s left. But they certainly have scowled.
Presumably the scowlers come around eventually? But not everything is for everybody.
And I think doing Melania really helped with that. People realized that I could do sketch comedy and impressions. But I know I’m not the only performer who feels that you just have to sort of keep showing people who you are. Because if you do a lot of different things, like musicals and plays and comedy and drama… it’s harder for people to put you in a box of, this is what you do… I constantly have people be like, “I didn’t know you were funny.” It used to piss me off, and now I’m like, “Yeah, you didn’t, and it’s my job to show you that I am.”
This show came about from Audible asking you to write and perform an autobiographical piece. So did wanting to do something like this come out of that assignment, or were you always like, “Someday I’m gonna put my own voice out there, whether it’s with a comic sensibility or something else, where I will be as great being myself as I’ve been being an interpreter as I’ve been of other people’s voices”?
And slowly, I allowed myself to feel the joy of the puzzle. And I have some really wonderful girlfriends who would come to my makeshift garage and listen to me do jokes and give feedback. And they were like, “I need to hear this, actually. You can be as self-deprecating and as insecure as you want, but what you’re saying is something I actually really need and want to hear, even outside of my friendship with you.” So that gave me courage and solace as I continued to write it. Now that I’m touring with it, I’m seeing that, and that’s still the feedback that I’m getting from audiences, which is really, really gratifying.
Were you ever tempted to work more inside-baseball theater stories into the show? Because in interviews you have some hilarious stories about old-timers you’ve worked with and stuff like that. But that’s not the theme of this show. This is about pretty common experiences, or at least exaggerated versions of experiences that have actually happened to you. So you’re talking about perimenopause when you could be sharing theater anecdotes. But you’ve prioritized the most universal stuff.
You know, that’s like my mom coming through…
Whose approach to finding levity in everything you have talked about. You once described your mother’s approach to finding laughter in the worst circumstances as “giggles at a funeral.”
And I will say that a lot of these stories have the benefit of hindsight. At the time they weren’t funny, but in retrospect they are. I think that challenging topics feel more accessible to people when they’re laughing, and can make a greater impact, because laughter opens our hearts, and then once a heart is open, you can sort of slip in the message.
Do you have a final feeling you want to leave people with, when they come out?
Hmm. I’ve spent a lot of my time feeling a lot of shame about the stories I talk about — and what a waste of time. So I want to make them laugh, and I want them to walk away being like, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Let’s talk about your Melania Trump, which oddly enough is something through which a lot of people have learned about you for the first time. Will you find a place to do it again, or was that specific to the Colbert show?
I mean, it’s so synonymous, (so) I do it a little bit in my theater concerts. I do a medley, as her. And I’ve done it a bit on my Instagram, but I’m not sure where else I would do it, you know? I’m not sure where I’d go with it.
Uh, yeah.
But at the same time, you got a huge aount of very positive response for doing that. So how did that work out for you, with this whole world applauding you for this, and then knowing people are pissed off too? Because a big component of the show you’re doing now is that you have always been a people pleaser.
That recurring bit helped set up for people that you have these comedic chops, and you might be exercising them, with a comic sensibility that might be off the beaten track.
Exactly. And for the people who know me, or have a preconceived notion of who I am, my hope is that they open themselves to this version of me that’s the real part of me. And I hope that people who don’t know me at all will come and enjoy themselves, and I can introduce myself to them as the person I’ve always been. You know, as the recovering ingenue, not the ingenue.
I’d love to do that!
WIll you continue touring this show into next year and beyond?
Yeah. But we did film it, in London, and so my hope is that we’ll be able to get a distributor for it, and it’ll be out in the world in some capacity. And frankly, like, I would like to do this forever. I love theater — I’ll always do theater — but my goal with this show is to show people that I’m funny, and especially in L.A., get [00:27:00] people to hire me for comedy. My absolute dream is to be on a television comedy and just get to go to work and laugh all the time, and continue to write more of these shows and tour them. I really love it. It brings me the most joy of anything I do.
Any quick synopsis of what else is happening in your professional life? You’ve done so much television.
I’m on “Mayor of Kingstown,” which is coming back; I’m not sure when. But I am a free agent, so anyone who would like to hire me is welcome to hire me.
Yes, please. Exactly. “Dear Hollywood.”
“Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares” will be performed five times at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills: Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. Tickets and other information can found online at thewallis.org or 310-746-4000. Following the Beverly Hills engagement, Benanti will also perform at Orange County’s South Coast Repertory from Oct. 8-11. Tickets for that run are available at scr.org.
