Moving into her mom’s basement was the best thing that’s ever happened to Heather McMahan. The comedian, who can be described as an auditory David Sedaris for the millennial set — she hosts the Absolutely Not podcast, where she works out emotional kinks on topics like friend breakups and traumatic celery juice regimens — recently started her second stand-up tour in as many years (she’ll do nearly 50 stops at major theaters by June). She’s also working on a pilot for NBC and putting the finishing touches on an hourlong special she produced herself. And, if you ask her, all of this came precisely because she left town.
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McMahan had been living in L.A. and New York but returned to her native Atlanta with her husband to keep her mother temporary company (or so she thought) during the pandemic and amid the still-painful loss of her father to cancer. But the change in ZIP code changed her outlook. “My humor became a lot more relatable,” she says. Part of what has made McMahan, 35, so resonant with her mostly young, female audience is her willingness to strip down any pretense, to overshare in the name of giggles. “For me, comedy is cathartic,” she adds. “I take things that feel awkward or messy, and I try to make sense of it.”
She’s Zooming into this interview from the home she shares with her husband (whom her fans know as the Italian Stallion; it’s a long story) and mother; the infamous Robin McMahan never technically joins the interview, but she looms large — in both Heather’s stories about the business (“I booked a Netflix Christmas movie, Love Hard, last year in part because the director thought the person who read with me on my audition, my mom, was so insane”), and off-camera, as she sneaks in to bring Heather a sandwich (“I’m grateful, but I told her I had an important interview,” she laughs). If McMahan’s pilot gets picked up, she’ll loom even larger — the sitcom is based on her own life, exploring what it’s been like for her family in the wake of their larger-than-life patriarch. She’s writing and producing and hopes to star. “I’ll probably also have to do craft services, transportation, maybe costumes.”
Onstage, she has found power in making the personal public. Last year’s facetiously titled The Farewell Tour (the source material for her special) featured an extended bit on a botched egg-freezing attempt. “Why as a collective of women have we not talked about the horrific nitty gritty of being a 34-year-old doing vaginal suppositories and testosterone shots all day?” she asks. “Talking about that was even more vulnerable than talking about my dad dying of cancer — although, in the last three months I’ve auditioned for three pregnant roles, which I guess is because of my huge, double-D tits. I think that’s a good thing?”
Despite her success, she makes clear that memories of years working the front desk at SoulCycle and waitressing in Hell’s Kitchen while “trying to compete with every hipster in Brooklyn for a spot at [Upright Citizens Brigade]” remain fresh. She spent months, if not years, working on a different pilot for Peacock, on which they eventually passed. Her stand-up special, which she’s now editing, is self-produced precisely to avoid the agonizing pain of waiting for a network to say yes first. And she had two self-tape auditions to do after this interview (yes, her mom is going to help). “I knew I had made it, in one sense, when I could pay off my Nordstrom credit card without my asshole clenching, but I’m still hustling,” she says. “One day, if I’m ever Paparazzi’d sitting alone eating a sandwich — now that will be the big moment.”
This story first appeared in the Jan. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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