Making Things is Hard #3: Naomi Ekperigin

“‘Cause I need the creativity to feel fun and pressure-free. It can’t be, ‘I gotta sell this! I gotta make this money!’ It’s gotta be, ‘What is an idea that makes me excited?’”

Hello and happiest Thursday to you. Today’s interview is with one of the funniest people I know, and possibly one of the funniest people period, Naomi Ekperigin. She is always hilarious, whether it’s in her stand-up special episode in Season 3 of Netflix’s The Standups, or in her half-hour special on Comedy Central, or on That’s My Time with David Letterman, or Late Night with Seth Meyers. You may also have seen Naomi in her role as Carol on Mythic Quest, or on shows like Hacks, and in films like Yes Day and Family Switch. She’s also written for TV, including Broad City and Great News.

I met Naomi early on in my time in New York City, circa 2005—Katie and I would catch her stand-up shows in the back of bars when she was just starting out. Even then, Naomi was killing. It was so clear that she could make a living doing this, which is why it’s been endlessly satisfying to watch her career evolve over the years and see her unique and delightful brand of comedy spread to a larger and larger fan base.

Naomi and I talked over Facetime. I’ve condensed and edited our conversation for your enjoyment. As you read, imagine me laughing most of the time.

Is there any kind of structure to your stand-up writing routine? What does it look like?

For me, when it comes to stand-up, I don’t often just sit down with thoughts. Usually a lot of things come for me in observations and conversations I’m having with other funny people—it doesn’t have to be comics, but when I’m talking to the friends who kind of trigger a little bit of the performer in me, for lack of a better term. People who get it.

Sometimes I’ll have an idea, and basically for me, it is an idea that won’t go away. ‘Cause it’s one thing to say something and toss it off and then you’re like, “Oh, that’s fine.” But it’s more like, “Oh, I keep thinking about this.” And then it’s like, “Is there something to this?” Because it’s almost like for me a set—or a joke, or a bit—is something that I have to get out of my system. So it’s a thought that I’ve had that I think has legs or depth to it. And there’s something to mine that must now be mined in front of people. I have to make it someone else’s problem. I’m basically asking, “Are you seeing this, too? Are we thinking about this? Are we noticing this?” That’s basically what it is for me when I want to talk about something on stage.

So, it usually starts that way, and then, it’s starting to jot it down. I have my little stand-up notebook. There are these little Staples—4x6, I think?—notebooks. They’re little, which means they fit in any purse. And that’s where all the ideas go, and also that’s where my sets go. Because I write down the set in advance, just kinda jot down the list. And then when the show is over, I will go back to it—because half the time I didn’t do half the stuff I said I was going to do. Or if I’ve added to it, like I’ve come up with a new tag or detail in the moment, I’ll write that down there.

But that’s also where I’ll put all the thoughts as I’m having them, and then it’s half of a nugget of an idea, then it’s a little bit more, and then, I’ll bring it up onstage. And usually, if I want to try something new, I do that nestled in the middle of stuff that works, you know what I mean? Jokes that I know are killer. Then put something bad/untested in the middle, then close out with what I know will work, so overall, the audience has had a nice time. You didn’t know, or you forgot, that there were three dark minutes in there.

So it’s never a full set of untested material.

NEVER. Because, Lance, I’m not leaving the house to feel bad, okay? I will not put myself through that. Unless I really have no choice. Meaning I’ve got to put something together really quickly and it’s gotta be new. But I’m not normally in that situation. I normally have enough lead time to get it together.

And is little Staples notebook coming out onstage? Like, you do the bit that kills, and then you look at it? Do you do any peekin’?

You know, I try not to be peekin.’ But I’m looking at it before I go on, rewriting sometimes. Most recently, I have been working two jobs, and that’s giving me very little time for stand-up. But I had a headlining show for the Netflix festival last month that felt big—like, obviously everyone’s in town doing shows, people are coming out, they’re paying real money. I really wanted to bring my A game, but I hadn’t had time to practice much. I really had not done this long of a set in a while.

So, I had work all day—I got out of work at like 6—came home, and I just wrote everything down in marker, big letters—I didn’t write the bits in detail, but just what each bit was. I wanted to know my order. And I did bring that up onstage and have that on a stool, just in case I needed to look at it.

But that, to me, is because I hadn’t had time to practice. When I’m really in a groove, I know what comes next. But when I’m out of that practice, I’m like, “Wait a minute, what should go after here?” Because I’m a real stickler for order, for sequence, for feeling like I am carrying you through a story. Even though it’s obviously a bunch of jokes, I want them all to flow in a way that makes sense.

Because I need you to feel like you’ve gone from one place to another place. As opposed to hearing disembodied individual jokes. I want it to feel very purposeful. That, to me, when I’m watching comedy, that’s what I like the most. There’s nothing that bugs me more than being onstage and going, “What else? What else?” [Note: This was spoken as if casually searching through the files of her mind for a next joke.] Like, literally, shoot me. When I’m asking “What else?” out loud, I am in a bad place!

But I also know what that is: when you’re not fully present, when you’re kind of trying new stuff, you really aren’t sure what’s next. But as an audience member, I need you to know what’s next. That’s literally all I’m asking you to do. If I’ve come to watch you talk, the one thing I ask is that you know what’s next. ‘Cause I don’t. So you must.

Right, somebody’s gotta be captaining the ship here. Otherwise what are we doing here?

When I’m watching you flailing, I am uncomfortable for you. I am worried for you. I am going to go get us a beverage at this point in the program because I’m getting stressed.

So, generally in these interviews, we talk about a specific creative struggle. Is there one you’d like to talk about?

In general, I think what I’m dealing with is… As I get busy, in a very specific field that can kind of separate you from the realities of life—Hollywood shit—how do I develop new material? How do I develop material that is engaging to watch?

The Netflix show I did, some people came from work, and one of them said, “You have fans. You have a lot of people who like you.” And that’s amazing. That’s the dream, that’s all I want. But for me that comes with a new pressure of people who have seen all of my work. You see what I’m saying? So now I need to keep it fresh for these folks.

If you’re coming, how do I give you something new and different, so you feel like it’s worth coming out again? And also feeling like you’ve gotten a good show. There’s a new accountability that comes with having taped performances that people can watch over and over. Not to mention the whole Instagram Reels and TikTok-ification of stand up. It changes what a live audience expects of you. And so, I’ve really been trying to figure out, how do I talk about the things that are new and interesting.  And, on top of that, I have a weekly podcast where I talk about myself! [Note: the wonderful Couples Therapy, with Naomi and her hilarious husband, Andy Beckerman]

So ideas are already getting out there in so many ways, so I’m like, “What’s the different version? What haven’t I already said?” Because I’ll say this: for the most part, I don’t sit and inherently think I’m funny. I have a thought, and I’m like, “Oh that’s fun.” But I don’t know if a thought is LOL a joke. That’s for someone else to decide.

So, when I’m thinking about stuff, what gets me interested in mining an idea is whether it’s fun, it’s surprising, it’s new. And how do I keep things feeling surprising and new? That’s the thing I’m trying to figure out because that’s what makes me want to say it on stage.

Then, obviously, there’s the evergreen concern about how do you be true to where you are? Like, how do you talk about your experience as you know it to be? And I know that sounds obvious, but it’s very easy in stand-up to lie. It’s like, all people do is lie! You can literally just stand up there and be like, “I saw this thing!” or “I said this to someone.” And it’s like, “No you didn’t.” But who are we to say? We, the audience, don’t know, right? And I really don’t want to make things up. So how do I keep it honest when the reality is that most days I went to work and I came home. And for most of that work day I was around a bunch of rich white people who do the same thing I do? Pretty boring, quite honestly.

Well, does that lead you to feel like, “I need to live! Let me take a trip somewhere, and then I’ll come back with material!” Do you take those kind of leaps?

You know, this is where the pandemic of it all has changed that. I used to be more free-wheeling and now I don’t just get up and go places. I have to really think it through, so I don’t run around as much as I used to. But yes, that is the stuff I like to do. Sometimes Andy and I will hit a wall where we’re like, “We gotta get out of this house. We gotta go do something.” And that is not even a whole big trip, but like— 

Last year, we went to the Gentle Barn, in Santa Clarita, California, about 45 minutes away, and it’s a working farm where they take in rehabilitated animals, and you can come and pet the turkeys. You can brush the cows. And it was something I would never do, something that is totally different from daily life. It’s not so wild and crazy, but going to that barn, and having that fun time, unlocked for me: “Oh, there’s a lot I can still talk about on stage, just about being a through-and-through city kid. Growing up in Harlem, being somebody who’s like, ill-equipped to be in nature…”

Seriously, I found the cows to be scary—and before that I wouldn’t have told you I was scared of cows. There was an enormity to the cow, Lance, that I found to be frightening. It took my breath away. But then also, because I’m convinced the world is ending, I need to develop apocalyptic skills. And in this moment of being scared of a cow, I thought, “I would be so useless in the end times.”

So that experience gets me to that idea. And that’s something that I haven’t talked about a lot onstage. There’s something there. But that came from going to the farm because I do love animals, and I was like, “Oh this’ll be fun.” I didn’t go being like, “I need to do something cool.” It was more like, “I love animals, being outdoors is nice, and I could use some time connecting with a creature.”

I love what you just took us through, how doing something outside the normal routine of your and Andy’s life unlocked your creative process. Not like it was this mercenary “I NEED MATERIAL” but it was like, “If I do some different life things, I’m going to have different thoughts unlock.” Because your brain works that way. And that’s all great material. I would watch any set you do, but a whole set about the Gentle Barn sounds amazing.

I should do that! I haven’t even done it and I need to! And it was so funny because like, there was a mean alpaca. And then there was a turkey who was bossy and didn’t want us to be near his lady turkey. And I just thought that was so funny because it’s like, “How are you an alpaca with an attitude? What do you have to be so upset about?” And then the idea of an alpaca being a bitch made me feel better about my general attitude in life.

I know you’re writing for a TV show right now, and you’ve acted on a TV show, at one point juggling both jobs at once, which meant you couldn’t do stand-up. If you could carve out and dictate what your career would look like, what is the dream vision? Does it contain more of your own creativity?

That’s a very good question because it’s actually something I’m trying to figure out now. I really feel like I’m a little bit at a crossroads, a la Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Because you know this, Lance—as an actor, you spend so much time wanting the thing, and then you get the thing, and you realize just how little time you spend doing it. You spend 9,000 years auditioning for a job that may only take a day of shooting. I’m a series regular on a show—I mean, come on, that’s the holy grail—and so far, that has amounted to about…18 weeks of actual acting work over the course of two and a half years.

We just started shooting season 4 of Mythic Quest. It had been almost two years since we shot Season 3. So there’s a lot of time in between. So what my career would look like is… It’s funny, I’ve been feeling like I want to write a little more now. I really want to write more things. I do wonder about writing a book. I think my career looks like— I don’t know, Lance, we’re not even sure what it looks like. We’re spitballing!

No, this is great, this is great.

If we have four quarters in a year, let’s say one quarter I am acting on something. I’m all in. I’m giving it my all. So fun, we’re immersed, that’s it. Then, after that time is over, I am out doing stand-up, reconnecting with humanity, doing the things I couldn’t do because when I’m really acting, I’m drained as hell. I know it’s not coal-mining, but it’s long hours and requires keeping your energy up and your mind sharp, which means, when I’m off the clock, I’m fully powered down.

Then, the last two quarters of the year, I am writing. I am taking it slow and taking that time. I’ve gotten a lot more—you know, capitalism is a disease and we’re all sick. So I now think, Ok, how much money do I have to make in order to give myself the freedom to do nothing else? Because I need that freedom to do nothing else [in order] to walk into the creative space. I need the creativity to feel fun and pressure-free. It can’t be, “I gotta sell this! I gotta make this money!” It’s gotta start with, “What is an idea that makes me excited? And what is it that I want to make, if left to my own devices? What would make me content even if no one else saw it?” When I am not paying attention to what’s hot now, what someone might buy, what people like. The only way I can do that is if I know the lights are staying on regardless of what I put on the page. That’s the only way I can go all in.

And that is what I’m trying to carve out. You know, after the strike, a lot of people have been struggling. And I am very, very lucky to have two opportunities. So, as much as I’m like, “Oh yeah, it’s a lot right now,” I know I’m very lucky to have a lot. But also, if all goes well for me, when I’m done, I will then have a few months where I don’t have to do anything else. And I can sit at the page, and be bored, and come back, and procrastinate—you know, everything we have to do in the process of actually getting something done.

Is there a piece of advice you would give to either young you out there in her twenties, just starting stand-up, or to young people now?

I have a couple things. First is: Write it all down, no matter how small. Because you never know when it’ll come into play. Human life is cyclical. Trends are cyclical. What we don’t know in the past… In the future, we can look back and crack it wide open. The stuff where you’re like, “What was that?” or “I don’t know,” but then you look back and it’s like, “Holy shit, I know now.” The knowledge of aging. But then if you don’t have that shit written down, it’s gone. You’ve lost it. Back up the laptop, honeys. Put it in a journal. I think that stuff is worthwhile, and it’s something that I didn’t do.

I’ll be like, “Oh I don’t know what I want to talk about.” But then it’s like, “there’s so much about my upbringing that I haven’t discussed onstage.” Or I discussed it in my early days of stand-up when I was not as skilled and didn’t know how I wanted to put it. Now the rest of the world can see it, and maybe I know what I’m doing with it. So let’s go back to it. Write it down. Keep it.

And my second piece of advice: Don’t date him. Don’t think about whoever he is. Okay? We all got a him, a her, a them, somebody you are all into.  I spent too much time crushing, Lancer! I was crushing on these hos, and I wasn’t focused on me. And you gotta stop crushing on these hos. You gotta focus on you. Especially in the world of comedy? Do you know how many dirty men—dirty boys—I was crushing on when I should have been hitting more mics and writing? Get outa here! What a waste of my time.

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Huge thanks to Naomi, and huge thanks to you for reading! If you’re enjoying this space, please continue to share and spread the word. I deeply appreciate it.

And go check out all of Naomi’s stand-up! It will bring you joy.

Have a super rest of the day, write everything down, and text a friend hello! Right now. Text them NOW!