Last Things First: Alison Leiby

Episode #386

Alison Leiby is a writer and comedian who started her own showcase at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City called It’s A Long Story. Leiby’s story is still being told. In TV, it has included late-night writing on staff for Comedy Central’s The President Show, and The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, as well as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She’s written jokes for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, published essays in McSweeney’s, Cosmo, Marie Claire and The New York Times. And her initial work punching up jokes for Broad City has led to a lengthy working relationship with Ilana Glazer. Leiby executive-produced Glazer's Comedy Time Capsule and her Amazon Prime Video stand-up special, The Planet is Burning. Glazer now is presenting Leiby in her first Off Broadway production of Alison Leiby: Oh God, A Show About Abortion, which begins previews April 25, 2022, at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan for a limited six-week run. Leiby sat with me to talk about how her comedy and writing career evolved from late-night TV to prestige comedy to her own very personal and politically active work.

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If you’d like to read the condensed transcript of our conversation below, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription!

NOTE: This would be a great week to read the transcript, because my apologies for the audio quality on this episode — my sink decided to become haunted by ghosts (or more likely, whatever my neighbors were doing with the pipes) and caused a ruckus for a few minutes. I hoped I could edit around it, but I should’ve just yelled CUT and asked Alison to bear with me as I relocated my computer and microphone. Argh. OK. Enough of me making excuses. Let’s get to the transcript!

But first, here’s Leiby from last year doing a shorter set that mentions her pandemic experience, abortion included, as part of a Comedy Central webseries presented by Ilana Glazer: