← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Lisa Ann Walter on Abbot Elementary and Her New Standup Special
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- [00:00]
Sponsor/Announcer
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. Many of you have come to love actor Lisa Ann Walter for her role on Abbott Elementary. She plays Melissa, the kind of woman who knows a guy. She got her start in stand up comedy years ago before breaking into film and tv. Now she returns to the stage in a new special titled It Was An Accident. Lisa can and definitely does get political in the special. She doesn't shy away from cracking a joke or two about the decline of American democracy, referencing the Handmaid's Tale, talking about raising four kids with two ex husbands. And she also shares a few relatable stories about coming up as a Gen X woman. It Was an Accident is streaming on Hulu and Disney. When Lisa Ann Walters joined us in May to talk about it, as well as her role in the Off Broadway run of Heather's the Musical and and her co hosting of the Met Gala counter event called Ball Without Billionaires. I started by asking her why she felt like this was the right time for her to do a special.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Honestly, I came to New York to be an actor. I went to Catholic University. I studied the Greeks and Shakespeare. Like I knew what I was doing. I did off Broadway shows. But something else that I did very well, come to find out, was get pregnant, which I did pretty much right after graduating college. I had a child and I had some friends that I graduated that were in my BFA program. Everybody was in New York and they said they dared me. It was the height of the comedy boom in the 80s and they said all of us, you should be doing this. And there were so many things going on that I never heard women talk about because remember back in the day? Oh yeah, there were like what? There was Six female comics. Three of them you saw maybe on a. The Tonight show or Hollywood Squares. And the rest.
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Alison Stewart
Mike Douglas.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Yeah. The rest of them work blue. And you never saw them. You never saw Mom's Mabley. You saw Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, one or two others. And I just got tired of hearing male comics talk about. I remember Bill cosby had a 15 minute hunk on childbirth. And I'm like, why is he telling our story?
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Alison Stewart
Yeah.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Why are there not women talking about this? So I said, yeah, I could do that. I had an hour and 15 minutes before I ever got on stage the first time on this dare that my friends gave me and supposed to do three minutes. I did 15.
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Alison Stewart
How'd you feel about your friends daring you to do that?
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Lisa Ann Walter
You know, I. It's the same reason why I do game shows. I'm competitive. I like a challenge. I. I didn't love it. On the day I was supposed to go do it, I was terrified. I think I went to the bathroom 8,000 times. But then when I did it and killed, I was like, oh, this is good.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Because there's nothing like getting people to laugh is. The reason I wanted to get on stage in the first place was to make people feel laugh, cry, you know, change their minds. And it turns out when you're funny, it's a easier job.
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Alison Stewart
It's interesting. People sometimes describe your comedy. I saw the special last night.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah. But you're really honest in it. You're very unfiltered.
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Lisa Ann Walter
I'm authentic.
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Alison Stewart
Were you always that way or do you have to kind of work up to that?
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Lisa Ann Walter
No, you know what, Alison? I was. You know how rage, female rage is like a thing now?
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Alison Stewart
Yeah.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Like we, we see it on the Internet. We're like, yeah, about time. Right. I was doing this way back before it was popular. I was, you know, I think always have been women that have been truth tellers that are just like, I've had it with your nonsense. I've got zero Fs left. I was that as a kid. I think there were things that made an innate sense to me and things that seemed unfair and I just liked calling stuff out, as was true. Just back historically, they used to burn those women as witches.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah.
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Lisa Ann Walter
And now we just call them female comics and they pay us money to get a Hulu special. I guess I'm like an auntie. Just cranky advice.
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Alison Stewart
Oh, but it's good advice, though.
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Lisa Ann Walter
It is. It's so good.
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Alison Stewart
That's the best advice. Your auntie Advice. Come on now.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
You touch on politics in the special. You say there are whole portions of the country. You just said, nope, not going there.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Tara. I used to do it when I was doing standup as a young woman, you know, with a baby going around the country. That was my. I paid my rent doing standup and there were places I had to go to. The only place I was afraid, I did a pro choice bit back then. The only place I was really afraid to do it was Indiana and didn't even occur to me until after I had done it the first time. And then I was like, oh, this is maybe not. But it was still in those days, less of a thing to speak your mind than it is now. And you were on your way to a question. I stopped.
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Alison Stewart
No, that's okay. That's all cool. We're having a conversation. What do you think is something in our society, in our culture right now that really deserves a satirical look?
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Lisa Ann Walter
I mean, God, all of it. The First Amendment is something that we should all be really vigorously supporting and defending. People that are in your position, people that are in the press, people that are doing late night comedy shows. Since the dawn of time, the jesters have been the ones that were allowed to say what the king was doing.
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Alison Stewart
Right. The tailors.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Right. Say that the emperor had no clothes. So I think if we lose our ability to allow that to happen, we're. What kind of culture do we have? We've lost our civilization, really. So that's a big one. I mean, the thing is, is that with comedy, you can hold the mirror up to nature and people can look at stuff, but because it's funny, nobody's getting yelled at. I think I touch on stuff in my act that has to do with what we're all feeling without calling out individual. Well, maybe there's one individual I call out. But you will have to watch the special. Do you know who I'm talking about?
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Alison Stewart
Oh, yes.
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Lisa Ann Walter
So dumb. There's a whole. They're so dumb that. But you'll have to watch a special to figure that out.
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Alison Stewart
Have you noticed that audiences have become more politically sensitive? Are they less politically sensitive? I'm curious what you. What you found.
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Lisa Ann Walter
There's some polarization going on. But you know what's wild is that first of all, I recognize the fact. And you're. You had a question a while ago. This is my ADHD brain. I have to button something or I can't go forward. But you asked me, like, why now? Well, the truth is, when I had my stand up at an hour and a half. Tight. And I was plucked out of Standup World to go create and star on my own sitcom, which they used to do. They used to hand them out like Tic Tacs back then. Not true. I was very lucky. And I had a lot of people because I was a female comic still in those days. Not a lot of us, certainly not a lot with children, because there were not a lot of men that were happy to help raise kids, while the woman went out every night and, you know, hung out with drunks, basically. You know, I had a very wonderful partner. It just turned out we had too much in common. He also liked men.
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Alison Stewart
But you know what's interesting? Cause when I first got this job, my boss is a woman. And said to the people who were working on the team, like, we have to support this woman who was a child doing this job because it's a two hours a day live, and women didn't get these jobs.
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Lisa Ann Walter
That's correct.
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Alison Stewart
Because you had kids to take care of. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I felt so. I felt so welcome in that moment that somebody saw that.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Yes, yes, we love that word now. But it's facts. You know, I went to. I appreciate you. I went out to California to create and star in a show. The job that my boss, Quinta Brunson, is doing now, it's a big gig. Because when you're not actively in the writers room or on stage, you were publicizing the show, you're promoting, you're flying to New York, you're going all over the country to do that. And I did not do the standup as much as I should have. Whoopi Goldberg was telling the people at hbo, this girl should have a special. Like, she was telling them, she's strong, she's badass. You should be doing a special with her. And I just kind of went like, I should have went, yeah, I should do a special. But I didn't know then, like, here's your shot. Right?
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Alison Stewart
Yeah.
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Lisa Ann Walter
So a lot of years went through, and then Abbott comes along, and I'm headlining all over the country. And so Hulu said, yeah, Disney family, let's go. Let's make this happen.
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Alison Stewart
You know, it's interesting. You do a lot of crowd work. I do in the special. How do you know when it's time to get back on your well crafted jokes?
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Lisa Ann Walter
Well, there's a couple things going on. I mean, first of all, there are comics that are like, I formulated my hour. My hour is set. I'm proud of it. Crowd Work is leaning on something. My crowd work is person is purposeful. There's a means to an end. I. I'm really good. Part of that is the adhd. Part of the other is trauma, kid. So you learn to figure out who people are and feel them before they even open their mouth. But I am really good at finding the people that are going to feed me what I need to move to the thing I want to do anyway. So that's part of it. But the other thing, if I'm being honest, the reason I did it in a club, Helium Club in Philly, first of all, Philly, because they love me. I've never had a bad show there. I mean, once they decide they like you, forget about it. You're it. They keep bringing me food, though. They got to stop. Like, up two sizes. But that was part of it. The other part is I wanted to do a small room that was intimate. I didn't want. I love a big theater. I love those theater shows where comics go in and they just. It's crazy screaming. But it's not the same as doing a comedy show. Like, you're used to seeing it where you're in a room. The thing that I wanted to throw back to from how I came up, which is I'm on a stage and right in front of me is the first row. And the laughs travel. It's science. The laughs travel from the front of the room to the back. There's no waiting for the laugh. You can gauge it. You could feel it when it's slowing down and when you can hit your tag and the next thing is going to pop. So that was the experience that I wanted for my audience and for the home viewing audience to have was like, you're in the room with the wait staff and everything else and the picking of the people, just because I think a lot of people see me and they already feel like I'm familiar. They feel like they know me. A lot of them grew up watching me from the Parent Trap or whatever, and they feel safe and homey, like your cranky aunt who's giving you advice. And that feeling of, we're just folks talking. Yeah, that's what I like to carry in my shows.
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Alison Stewart
When you're thinking about what comics have available to them now, you know, whether it's social media, whether it's YouTube, what are you not jealous of? But what do you think? Man, I could have really used that in my career.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Wow, that's a really good question. I could have used post. Me, too. That's what I could have used. I was on the road at a time. I was just bringing this up with some people last night that were at my premiere party. I remember going to a gig, and I used to wear a skirt and hose and high heels and a little jacket. And I remember the club owners in New York, one of them who was very good to me, and that was my home club, the Comic Strip. And Lucien would say to me, you can't dress like that. They won't listen to you. And I said, no. Sexy is part of the power package. It's probably a big reason why I got an offer to star on my own show, because I wasn't hiding it. I was like, you don't get to take that from me. This is part of who I am. And I purposefully would disarm the women first by saying, I'm one of you, but then I would get the men immediately. And they're like, oh, she's a female comic. I can. Like, clearly she can get laid. So there's not a. There's not that dynamic going on. And golly, I went. I strayed too far away.
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Alison Stewart
You were there before. Me too, but me too came into the picture.
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Lisa Ann Walter
So because I was sexy, I would oftentimes go to gigs. First of all, all the comics would hit on you whether you were sexy or not. It was if you were a girl and you were on the road, you were. They were trying to make you.
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Alison Stewart
Yep.
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Lisa Ann Walter
And the club owners were. And the bookers were. And it was a very difficult. As many businesses were, if you did, you know, you're loose. And if you didn't, you wouldn't get rebook. Rebooked. Right. So it was a tough time. I had a gig out in Long Island. I remember being in a coat room where they would give you cash. I had two babies at home. I was, like, buying milk money. A lot of times I wasn't even taking the $26 motel because I wanted to drive home and save the money, because we had rent. Right. So he's holding the money out, and the next thing I know, I got a hand up my dress and another hand down my shirt, and I'm thinking, where'd the money go? Like, it was just there. Wow. But that was prolific in those days, and there was no place to say anything. So now I look online and I see. I don't know that anything's changed that much. Maybe the outright grabbing is slightly less.
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Alison Stewart
But you have a way to talk about it, though.
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Lisa Ann Walter
You have a way to talk about It Right. Directly to people, other women. Hey, by the way, this is going on.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah.
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Lisa Ann Walter
You know, maybe stay away from this guy.
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Alison Stewart
Let me ask you about Heather's the musical. That's exciting.
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Lisa Ann Walter
That's a segue.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah.
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Sponsor/Announcer
Woo.
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Alison Stewart
Here we go. We're gonna run out of time.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Sexual assault.
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Alison Stewart
Moving on.
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Lisa Ann Walter
Yeah. Well, you know what? It's very dark.
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Alison Stewart
It is. I've seen it. It's dark.
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Lisa Ann Walter
It's dark. I have my best girlfriend, Elaine Hendricks, who was the mean girl in the Parent Trap. She comes to see it, and I get the story afterwards that she's talking to her friend who's like a musical theater guy all the way through going, are they gonna kill that girl? Like, had no idea what was coming. And I was like, yes.
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Alison Stewart
What do you like about being on the stage in that?
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Lisa Ann Walter
Well, as I said, I started in theater, so it has been three decades, and the first jobs I did when I came to New York was off Broadway. So just being back on stage, doing a piece, that's not just me talking. Although I get a piece of that in the middle of the show. I get an improv bit. So I get a little piece of being who I am and never knowing what I'm gonna say. And neither does I live to make them laugh. If I can make those kids who are insanely talented, like they popped out of the womb taking voice lessons, if I can make those shoulders do church giggles behind me, my day is a success. So it's great. I just like being back on stage, making people laugh and feel.
- [15:54]
Alison Stewart
That was my conversation with Abbott elementary actor Lisa Ann Walter. Her comedy special it was an Accident is available on Hulu and Disney. On the way, Daily show comedian Josh Johnson will talk about his new HBO called Symphony. This is all of it
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Lisa Ann Walter
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Sponsor/Announcer
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- [16:26]
Lisa Ann Walter
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- [16:28]
Sponsor/Announcer
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- [16:37]
Lisa Ann Walter
The snack wrap plus Caesar sauce equals extra crispy chicken Caesary greatness. Sounds delicious. Caesar sauce at McDonald's for limited time.